My web development history

While my history in web development has been relatively recent, starting with a web development certificate that I obtained from the UC Irvine Division of Continuing Education (was Extension) in September 2019, my own personal history of website creation goes back to the University of California at Riverside back in the late-90s, where I studied computer science in undergrad.

I will eventually have go back and get my old website code from back in the days, although I’m sure you will be able to use the Wayback Machine to go back to the days when I had a website for a Christian group I set up back in 1997.

The old days

When I launched a website for Asian American Christian Fellowship back in 1998, it was initially hosted on the Associated Students’ UCR website as a domain. There was no Jekyll, Gatsby or similar static site generators back then, so everything had to be hardcoded in. I used HTML layout software to create some of the pages. Pre-Adobe merger Macromedia had a software package called Dreamweaver that assisted me in creating their website.

The site was done with initial technologies at the time. HTML 3.0 was starting to become mainstream. I also used Flash, but it was not fun to do as I had no designer background whatsoever.

Our group also posted some media onboard, like photographs. No one had digital cameras back then - all photos had to be scanned in and uploaded. We also had recorded messages (the predecessor to podcasts) from the speakers and posted them online to this website.

The website also incorporated an early attempt at a messageboard that was driven with Perl scripts. The messageboard did not have as many visitors, so I never bothered keeping it up. After another year or so, I set up a new messageboard using phpBB software.

(Note: As of now, I probably will not bother with messageboards, as everyone these days go to Reddit or social media like Twitter to discuss topics. Also, the recent data privacy regulations make it cumbersome to maintain messageboards, since the people who run them have to promise the members can delete their accounts and take their data with them.)

Before I left UC Riverside in 2001, I had to train a freshman (girl) to hand the site over. (One of which now works at Skechers the last time I checked.) With the nature of the university years, the site as it would have looked now would not be the same anymore.

The DVD and Blu-ray Disc days

When I got my job at a DVD authoring production house in 2001, I had to relearn everything, naturally enough. It was a switch to disc authoring, which although utilized some of my programming skills, did not touch anything that was web development related.

Time passed and I then moved my web development to blogrolls, while my job eventually took over and web development was put on the wayside, as I focused predominantly on software for DVD, then HD-DVD and then Blu-ray. It was not until my layoff in mid-2018 did I consider returning to web development.

Web technologies back then and now

The web started to evolve a lot in the early 2000s. The dot-com bust was on the backburner as Silicon Valley recovered and Google and Facebook rose in prominence. People were moving toward websites that can create pages on their own. Websites now have the ability to become storefronts, and offer services like booking airplane tickets, hotel accommodations, and bank.

New technologies were also being developed as websites started to become more complex, yet need to run fast at an instant.

TLDR

• did some web development in college
• when I got a full-time job, web development became an afterthought
• the adjustment came after my layoff in 2018 and I studied web development in an extension program

Now I am currently looking for work. It has been a journey filled with setbacks and challenges, but in which I hope I will not only have full time work but enjoy it.