A Brief History of LloydyWeb

Lloydy100

January 1999
URI: members.tripod.com/~lloydy100

My presence on the World Wide Web officially began on January 14th 1999 with the forerunner to this site, Lloydy100. It was created shortly after I began using the Internet on a regular basis and it all started when I was surprised to find that you could get free webspace, and registered with Tripod to set up a page.

I found the ability to create my own webpages exciting, and at that time was unique amongst my friends (and to some extent still is). It also provided a good outlet for my design 'urges'.

LloydyWeb 2.0

Autumn 1999 - Summer 2000
URI: lloydyweb.freeuk.com

Site was renamed from 'Lloydy100' to LloydyWeb and was hosted by FreeUK. The first re-design made use of my increasing knowledge of HTML with the inclusion of frames and 'sophisticated' navigation menus.

This was important as initially there were six sections: Home, Events, Projects, Entertainment, England and Amigan. This was later added to by Welcome and Archive, whilst Amigan was renamed Digital and given a wider scope.

LloydyWeb 3.0

Winter 2000 - December 2001
URI: lloydyweb.org

The purchase of the domain name lloydyweb.org came alongside a completely re-designed and reorganised site. This had the concept of a house with five rooms: Welcome, Lounge, Studio, Library and Attic.

This was realised initially using DHTML, but this was very slow, and was soon replaced with a Flash alternative. Although much better, it was slow to start of with, but later revisions made use of preloaders - though by this stage my knowledge of Flash was great enough to produce a very small file!

I also used other newly acquired skills with CSS styles later applied to content throughout site (although not for defining layout at this time).

The last revision included a homepage outlining key content on the site, and better access to the Internet meant LloydyWeb became updated monthly, instead of every three months.

LloydyWeb 4.0

January 2001 - December 2001
URI: lloydyweb.org

A new year, another re-design, and yet another reorganisation - sections now being 'Profile', 'Portfolio', 'Lounge', and 'Stuff'. This site was regularly updated up until May, when my degree took over and the site went by the wayside. Having read a lot over the Summer about XHTML and CSS, I soon realised my site was a bit cumbersome and could be greatly improved - faster, leaner and more accessible.

LloydyWeb 5.0

January 2002 - May 2004
URI: lloydyweb.org

Over the 18 months that this version of the site existed, it continually evolved to the point where it became quite unrecognisable from the initial design. Increasing use of CSS, XHTML and continued refinement of the code made the site ever more leaner, accessible and beautiful.

Click here for full version history | View a screen grab of v5.5 (PDF)

LloydyWeb 6.0

June 2004 - October 2006
URI: lloydyweb.org, lloydyweb.com

I had increasingly started to provide an updated page of events and news in the previous version of the site, so it was no suprise that this version finally saw the integration of a proper Blog (with this entry being my first true blog post).

At launch Blogger was choosen to power my blog, but soon after I finally grasped Movable Type, and never looked back. Indeed, as I grew acustomed to this powerful publishing tool, other parts of my site came under it's control too - namely the Photos and Reviews sections.

Click here for full version history | View a screen grab of v6.6

LloydyWeb 7.0

October 2006 - Present Day
URI: lloydyweb.com

Whilst version 6 of this site was the longest lasting design yet, it's upcoming retirement was annouced on the blog with the following entry “Paul's Blog Still 1.0”.

This new site takes on board all the developments that have happened on the web over the last two years, both in terms of incorporating the social networking sites I now use (Flickr, del.icio.us, Last.fm...), as well as implementing newer code methodologies and techniques I'm learning (XFN, Microformats...).

With a cleaner and more refined design that can grow over time, this new site will hopefully better represent my skills and experience as a Web Developer.

Click here for full version history

About the Author

Headshot LloydyWeb is the home of Paul Robert Lloyd, a British graphic designer with a passion for web standards and attractive design.

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