Introduction

This is my history of the Internet and Web Design. It is rather boring, and I was going to do it in timeline form…but seriously, I cannot even remember what I did 5 minutes ago. So, I am hoping that this will be a bit easier.

Internet History

My internet history begins on a bright sunny day in the fall of 1997. My best friend at the time asked me if I wanted to stay after school in Mr. C’s class room to go online to chat. I did not have the slightest idea of what she was talking about, but my Mom wasn’t picking us up from school until 4:00 or so. I also did not feel like walking home…I was lazy and just a bit spoiled. The both of us stayed after school, went to chat on this one website ¹ and she asked me if I had an e-mail address. I asked her why, and she told me that we could send each other notes. I then signed up for jessicamezo@hotmail.com which was still in use until I managed to completely forget the password to it.

A few months after this, the computer that my Mom had been paying for via Publisher’s Clearing House arrived in the mail. It was about this same time that I became addicted to playing The Sims. Not long after we got the computer, we got Internet at home. It was dial-up, and I absolutely adored it – except when I was trying to download items for The Sims, then I would whine about it constantly. I soon discovered the wonders of IMs and this site called TeenOpenDiary. It is now closed, and I lost all of my information. But I used to post on it semi-regularly with poems and other such things.

I soon discovered the now closed Geocities, and decided to try my hand at creating a website. I had several different ones – Gray Chill, Rose Suede, Faded Illusions…just to name a few. I never really got anything accomplished with any of them. I think that at the time, I was more interested in the actual idea of having a website then actually owning a website.² During this same time period, I decided to try to keep an actual blog but I originally wanted to keep it separate from my website. Sadly, most of them are now closed…one was called Suicide Memories and I honestly don’t recall how I came up with that name.

One day, I decided that I wanted to just work on one site and be able to create updates. So, I decided to combine one of my Geocities accounts with Blogger. To my complete and utter surprise, it worked out really well. Sadly, since Geocities is now closed…I cannot show you how it looked. :cry: A couple of months later, I decided that I was bored with Geocities and bored with owning a website in general…unless I could have a domain or a sub-domain.

I soon received my first domain, Nouveau-Prep.net, which you can view some of my ramblings on there here. Sadly, it did not last very long…but I soon became hosted by Kristin at her old site, Dirty Martini. I called my site Elegance, and you can view it here. I don’t even remember why I moved…but I am pretty sure that it had to do with Kristin not having Internet access?!

After this, I went back to having sites on free hosts such as Angelfire and others. I soon grew frustrated with having to do everything manually, and I really wanted to give owning a domain another shot. So, I talked to my neighbor and asked him if he’d consider getting me a domain and hosting. He agreed, so I decided to get girldisappearing.org, skies-fall.info, and rainiedaze.com. I honestly don’t remember who I was hosted by, so if it was you – please let me know! Sadly, all of them eventually expired and I didn’t bother renewing any of them. Plus, I was wanting a one-word TLD that described me and that I could develop a bit over time.

At this point, I was ready to get started and I didn’t want to waste any more time…I honestly decided to pick the host by whatever person had most recently updated their blog. Plus, I used Google to find a list of available one word domains, and then looked up all of the ones that looked like actual words.Thus, we have bemusedly.net!

Web Design History

Let’s be honest here…I totally suck at creating web design, graphic design, anything to do with design. It takes me forever to create a simple patch, and if you’d ever see one of my layouts you’d be embarrassed for me. I definitely need to practice, but I just haven’t been in the mood.