It’s been 10 years since the domain StarKeith.net was registered, so let’s take a trip down memory lane and look at how the site (or the home page of the site, at least) has evolved over the years.
Way back in November of 2001, not long after my domain was registered and my hosting set up, StarKeith.net was little more than a “coming soon” page.
You can see the logo I had created for the site – both the text (in a futuristic/computer-y style font) and the round StarKeith logo I had invented as a kid. Back then, I had envisioned using the domain to build upon the fictional world I had invented for some stories I wrote as a kid. In a way, this was sort of a variation on the modern websites that spring up around popular science fiction shows – for example, Memory Alpha, a wiki for Star Trek. My original idea of StarKeith.net was similar to what Memory Alpha became years later.
By 2003, the site had begun to take shape:
You can see the design influences that Star Trek had on me back then. I deliberately patterned the site’s layout and style on the LCARS style from Star Trek: The Next Generation (of which I was – and still am – a huge fan).
By 2005 however, the main landing page of StarKeith.net had changed to be more of a “portal” for the various web projects I had hosted here. By this time, I had my own blog, my old personal site back from when I was in college, as well as a short-lived attempt at forums!
Eventually, I decided to move away from the fictional part of the site – I had not updated it in quite a while, and my enthusiasm for it was fading. At the same time, my own blog – as well as the blog for my pet rabbits – were becoming quite popular (well, sort of) and I wanted to bring attention to them. Also, I was tired of the black background, so I went with something much simpler and lighter, which leads us to the way the site appears today:
The current site works a bit better as a landing page, as well as a general place to point people who are interested in me. Online identity has become much more important these days, and I wanted the main page of StarKeith.net to reflect me, rather than the fictional worlds I had created as a kid.
And there we have it – a brief look back at the evolution of the main page of StarKeith.net over the last 10 years. It’ll be interesting to see where we go in the next 10 years!
