mike[space] dot net

The first website I had was sometime around 1997, when I used the space provided by my university. I think it was originally simpsons themed, before I came up with the virtual pub name of The Dragon Drop, which had a very badly drawn dragon for the pub sign. This all fell into misuse come graduation, but getting back into the web 6 months later, I decided to get my own domain mikespace.net. And ever since I've been keeping some kind of journal online, initially I think I hand coded the posts, then I used blogger, then I tried rolling my own, and finally I gave all that nonsense up and switched to it's current guise, which is using drupal and gallery 2 for the various content management requirements.

The Look

As well as how I update the content, the look of the site has changed a fair bit over the years as well. I can't exactly remember when all the different designs were in place, so years are it for the earlier days ...

August 2006 to current

After the switch to drupal, this was the first look that I settled on, a bastardisation of the marvin theme. The mountain outline is actually from a photo looking toward Queenstown from Coronet Peak.

2005

Screen grabbed when I switched over to drupal, so actually a shot from 2006, but this was the finall css designed site that I came up with before going back to off the shelf stuff. Not that different from the previous design really.

End of 2002

My first fully css site ... interesting choice of colour I'll be the first to admit! Better than my brown phase though ;-) This was also the first time I added the tagline "Everybody needs a place to drink", which was my little joke after the bbc ads for the newly launched bbc4 "Everybody needs a place to think". Given that I am writing this in 2006, it might be time for me to come up with something a bit more contemporary!

Somepoint in 2002

After much ridiculing of the first brown effort, I switched to something a little more muted. I think there might've been a bit of css in this, but it was still the basic table design ...

2002

Now that is a brown site. I had got bored of the green, and was pressed for time for coming up with something new. In the end, nothing much changed beyond the colour scheme. There's still a part of me that likes the colour combination, but don't tell anyone.

1999/2000 ish

The first incarnation for mikespace.net. A lot of the basics were born here, and haven't really changed, most of the front page text is the same, as is the about me section. Okay so it's all css and content management, but it was all nice and simple back then. I've been out of web development for so long now that I view this old thing with a certain nostalgic pleasure ;-)