I don’t really like this layout, to be quite honest. I mean, I think my illustration is cute, and the font of the navigation links is also cute, but, I don’t know. It just doesn’t do it for me. I think it’s the weird transparent table that encases my content. The graphics look nice, but the actual coding looks kind of tacky.

Because I’m so out of practice with web design, I have no inspiration for designing a new layout. I also spent too much time on that flowery/squiggly illustration to get rid of it.

Browsing other sites would obviously be the best form of inspiration. I used to be so up-to-date on all the latest design trends (or at least the trends that were popular amongst teenagers with personal websites), but now I am definitely not.

It’s kind of funny to think about all the trends I once followed. I mean, every site in that genre (the teenage girl personal site genre) had the same content: “Me,” “You,” “WWW,” and “Site” categories, which contained more or less the same pages: “10 Facts About Me,” “This Or That,” “Guess Who,” “Site of the Month,” “Link Me,” and all that other fun stuff. It’s funny how conformist everyone was.

And then there were the design trends that everyone loved. Like the 3D spikes designed in 3D Studio Max trend. Or the chromeless popups trend. And the inline frames! So many inline frames! Why were people so opposed to tables?

I wish I could remember all the sites I loved so much so I could look them up on archive.org. There was jennyspage.com (.net?), which, honestly, wasn’t that amazing, but everyone thought she was a goddess. My personal favorite was moon-beams.net (I think that was it), hosted by Caitlin, who, by the way, introduced me to my musical obsessions with Good Charlotte and Simple Plan when I was 13. How embarrassing. There was that girl from New Zealand who ran the Nova Boards (omg, my life used to be on those boards) who actually was a legitimate graphic designer, but her site didn’t have much content, so she wasn’t as popular. There was a girl named Emily who always used the term “cool beans” and had a name for her infected thumb. She was friends with Jenny of Jenny’s Page, I think. And Mo, who copied Jenny’s Page’s layout one day as a prank and caused all this wank when he claimed it was original content. We used to talk on AIM a lot. He kind of reminds me of aurosan on LJ, actually.

And everyone had these little cliques. Like the clique who included Jenny and Emily and others. I can’t remember any of the other cliques. I think that was the main one, but they were totally the ~popular~ group amongst female teenage web designers.

Wow, seriously good times.

Gasp! I just logged into Geocities for the first time in ages, and they’re shutting it down later this year! Way to destroy my pre-teen years, Yahoo! I’m still a little heartbroken over Homestead’s decision to charge people, and that was, like, ten years ago. I think I have Homestead to thank for beginning my nerdy obsession with web design.

There are so many other fun web design-y memories I could go into. My Harry Potter sites, my Sweet Valley sites, my countless Fanlistings… I sometimes forget how big of a role web design played in my early teenage years, but it was kind of my life for a while. I miss it. Posting on LiveJournal and occasionally updating the UFO/Dark Refrain sites and designing Jessica’s cake site is really not the same as being completely immersed in it as I once was.

I wonder if there are still little communities out there of teenage girls who make dumb personal websites. Now that we have MySpace and Facebook and easy blogging tools, I kind of doubt it. There’s no real need for people to actually code with HTML or design in Photoshop anymore unless you’re doing it professionally. (Of course, back then, you could use Geocities’ Page Builder and Dreamweaver and all that fun stuff, but to be respected in the world of teenage personal websites, you had to actually do it yourself.)

We’re now in an era where tons of young people are online more than ever and know their way around the internetz pretty well, but they aren’t really all that internet savvy, are they? How many of them even know what CSS is? Or can code a basic link in HTML? Not that most people have any reason to know these things — I’m just a nerd and am glad I have that knowledge (even if I’m far from being an expert), because web design was an amazingly fun (albeit super nerdy) obsession to grow up with.

So that’s just me reminiscing about the good old days of the internet. (Of course, I missed the true good old days of Usenet and dotcom booms/busts, but the early 2000s were a fun time for the internet too.) It’s funny when I hear about all the “new” perils that come with MySpace and the like, because I think, “Pfft, I’ve been dodging creepy internet pedophiles long before MySpace came along.” I guess the difference now is that really dumb people can easily use the internet now, and they have no idea that you shouldn’t be posting your full name, address, and phone number on your MySpace page and making friends with supposed 14-year-old boys who ask if they can meet you in that deserted alley near your house. (Insert Chris Hansen/Pedobear gif here.)

I could fill several novels with my internet nostalgia, but I’ll stop for now. Besides, I ought to back up my ancient Geocities sites so I can continue laughing over my poor use of grammar years from now.