Building Websites Since 1996

A note from our founder, Sara Whitford

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I've been building websites since the olden days - way back in 1996. I first learned during my senior year in college at NCSU when my dad called and asked me to learn how to make a website for his company, which had just opened a business that specialized in selling "Custom Built PCs." They were all the rage at the time!

This is my dad showing me his Commodore Vic-20 sometime circa 1983 or so. I've grown up around computers.

You want me to make a webpage?

I told him, "Daddy, I'm an English major. Not a computer science major!"

"You're smart," he said. "You'll figure it out."

I didn't have the first clue about creating a website. All I knew was how to get around on the limited number of websites available in 1996 by using what were, at the time, popular search engines like WebCrawler or Lycos... in a Netscape browser in a Unix lab at NCSU, no less.

My mom bought me my first PC when I was in 7th grade at Babbages at Crabtree Valley Mall. It was an Amstrad. I was most excited about getting Broderbund's Print Shop Software.

If you're old enough, you'll remember this...

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Anyway, I decided I better buckle down and learn something about how "webpages" were made. I found a site with the full list of HTML tags and I printed them all out on my dot matrix printer. It took A LOT of paper, especially since they all just printed in one column.

I cut my eye teeth writing pure HTML. After that (in the late 90s and early 00s), I moved on to using WYSIWYG editors like Coffee Cup, Frontpage, and later, Dreamweaver. Then I learned CSS and became adept at writing DIV tags instead of TABLE tags, which was a step in the right direction towards mobile-responsiveness (and other really cool design effects).

Back in 2010, I started playing with CMS (Content Management System) platforms for creating websites. I ultimatey settled on the then-up-and-coming WordPress (the privately-hosted .org version, not the .com). I still say it's the best thing that's happened to website development in my nearly 30 years of web design.

Enjoy a trip down Internet Memory Lane