Publishing a Portfolio with Publii - Part I or my history with web publishing.

Side note before we begin: It's difficult right now, knowing that I have virtually no audience right now but that these posts might be read at some future time, knowing exactly what audience to write for when creating these entries. But not to be deterred...

A brief and laughably incomplete history of web design, through Ryan's eyes

In the beginning... there was the web. Websites were hand crafted HTML. Later on tools like Geocities made it possible for simpletons like third-grade me to build our own websites, or, more likely, put some "Under construction" GIFs on a galaxy background and call it good.

Later on... tools like Dreamweaver came along. These made more sophisticated web design available to a wider audience. Kind of. The code Dreamweaver spit out wasn't great, and cross-browser compatability was...hope for it, don't expect it. I used Dreamweaver in high school to keep up a website for my technology class, but I wasn't really using it as much more than a very lightweight layout helper. The look and feel was lovingly and carefully mostly hand-coded, with Dreamweaver mostly being used to help add new pages / links / etc. while keeping some common elements such as navigation.

On a personal note, this was a big time in my life for skeumorphic design, and I remember fondly crafting a portion of the website that somewhat emulated a Sony CLIÉ.

Considering that portions of my site were done in Flash, I was actually surprised to crack open my archives and see how well portions of this site actually managed to still load in a modern web browser

LAMP takes over the world (wide web)
Truthfully, this was probably going on a lot earlier than I knew - but in college I worked (in a non-technical role) in a web design shop and learned conceptually about modern web architecture. CMS, separate the content from the layout, put it all in a database, generate pages on the fly.

That's great but...
I'm thrilled we have offerings like SquareSpace, WIX, and the like today. These types of tools are clearly the right choice for many small businesses and other members of the web-public, but as for me personally, I have longed for something a little simpler and more akin to my early experiences in web work.