I found my first website

November 13 2016

After years of scouring through old emails and searching the depths of Google, I finally stumbled across what I think was my first ever website — or at least the first one I made in HTML. Naturally it’s far too embarrassing to share the link, but it is an absolute treasure trove of internet clichés.

For context — the website was made in 2001/2002. I would have been 11 or 12. I was a giant wrestling nerd.

“Soon, I got bored with making web sites so I got into Visual Basic.”

(Spoiler alert: the whole Visual Basic thing didn’t work out, you make websites for a living now.)

Intro paragraph in Comic Sans

Obviously, it was in Comic Sans. (My hometown was definitely relevant to the contents of the site).

<font color="#FFFFFF" face="COMIC SANS MS"><b><u>WWE Harrow </u></b></font>

There is a marquee tag inside a font tag inside a table tag inside a center tag.

table of wrestling events with a marquee tag

There were GIFs.

wrestling gif

Even the bullet points were gifs:

<img src=”Bullet2.gif” width=”15" height=”13">

And some Flash, that for some reason referred to a file in my local Program Files directory?!

<embed src="file:///C:/Program Files/3D Flash Animator 3.3/movie_11.swf" align="baseline" border="0" width="640" height="480" quality="high" bgcolor="#FF0000" wmode="window" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash">

The only other page that doesn't work anymore relies on some third party javascript.

“This is some WWE news updated all da time. Thanks to Smash Wrestling and Firetank 4 this.”

This was back when Web traffic was a tad more distributed, and webmasters were acutely aware of all the power they had to influence the masses.

Screenshot saying: Don't take any of my opinions seriously — (Spoiler alert: nobody did)

It's Albert's birthday today.

list of wrestler's birthdays — (who is Albert?!)

I used to read a lot when I was a kid.

“After I read his book, he immediatley entered my Top 5, either 2 or 3. His book was easily the best book I have ever read, and I have read it about 6times now. I’ve also read his 2nd book.”

(Spoiler alert: you read better books)

There’s even an interactive element!

screenshot of a survey on the website — This site must have been made in the transition period between WWF and WWE — which is why some of the titles are inconsistent. The disparity in the capitalisation between favourite and Favourite however is inexcusable.

Spoiler alert: the form action is just a mailto, so the results literally get sent to my email as a query string.

email client with a query string of the survey choices — What happens when you try to answer the survey

Semantic HTML wasn’t on the forefront of my mind back then.

dev tools showing awful HTML — I don't think I knew how to margin

Color contrast wasn’t particularly great either.

Blue text on black background. Sorry.

The inexplicable background change on one page didn’t really help.

Black text on blue background. Sorry. Again.

There was a links page. Because, you know, SEO.

“If some of them don’t work or you want your website on then email me here. Plz only e-mail me once.”

(Spoiler alert: nobody emailed.)

It’s good to know I was just as self deprecating then as I am now:

Spinaroonie! is a game I made my self. It dont have much 2 do wid wrestlin but it is a casino game based on Booker T. Very Crap. Its the first game I’ve ever made. “This is a site dedicated to WWE. It’s not very good but itll get better”

(Spoiler alert: it didn’t.)

That last little intro line was apparently a good place to put a random link to an exe file. (spoiler alert: it doesn’t really work anymore).

<p><font color="#FFFFFF" face="COMIC SANS MS">This is a site
dedicated to WWE. It's not very good but itll get better.</font><a href="roster.Exe">Roster Editor</a></p>

Finally, in an unprecedented act of mercy, Angelfire removed the site in 2004.

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