The History of Shouzer
Well, I’ve been working on taking some of the archived sites I have on my computer and taking screenshots of them. It’s a slow, laborious process, but it’s kind of cool. I’m putting all the shots online so people can check out the progression that Shouzer (and my web stuff in general) has gone through.
You can check it out here. I’ve separated the different pages into their relevant folders. I’m planning to put up an actual page with descriptions and such for everything there. Right now, though, here’s a quick summary.
Back in 1999, Kyle and I had the idea to create a website. It was going to be what was then called an E/N site, or everything/nothing site. This is more or less the precursor to weblogs, now known more commonly as blogs. In that regard, we were pretty far ahead of the curve.
We’d both had a couple of other sites on the internet back then, which were more or less your typical homepages. I doubt most people even have what you would have considered a homepage nowadays. This was our first venture working together though.
One day in class, Kyle thought of the name ‘Shouzer’. I have no idea how or why, but it was original and it stuck. We were so confident that we would one day own shouzer.com, that the original sites were names shouzer.com, even though they were actually hosted at shouzer.virtualave.net. There was no ‘.com’ about it. In the shouzer.com folder, they’re layouts 1 & 2. Looking back, I’m still extremely impressed by layout 1. Like I said, this was over 5 years ago. That would have made me about 14-15. That was skill.
After the second layout, we split up for some reason and created separate sites. I don’t know why, really, but we did. The result was two sites called Blatantly (mine, short for blatantly arrogant and biased) and Plugworthy (Kyle’s, as it was worth a plug). The progression of Blatantly can be seen in the folder. It was about this time that I also created the Shouzer Network, or Shouzernet for short. The screenshot of that page can be seen in the ‘other’ folder.
After a year or so, we decided to get back together and create The DKS Weblog. While I kept posting on Blatantly for a little while after that, it was more or less the end of that site for me. Like when we split, I can’t really remember why we decided to start blogging together again, but we did. That site lasted a good while. I believe it was somewhere in the range of September 2000 to January 2003, and I had a lot of fun with it during that time. I remember there being a couple months when the site was down while I redesigned it, but I can’t remember either why it was down or for how long exactly. Maybe Kyle could remember that a little better.
It was in February 2003 that I purchased the domain for Shouzer, but the ‘hellsing’ coming soon was up forever. The first post I have in the database from the site was in November 2003. So it obviously took a while to get the site up and running. This was likely a result of my laziness, mixed with the fact that it took a rewrite of the blogging software we used. The real Shouzer.com was my first ever experience with a database, so it took some getting used to. It was also my first time ever creating an entire layout from only CSS. It was also the end of my senior year in high school. Suffice it to say, there were a lot of things going on keeping me from finishing the site.
Since then, the site has gone through a few changes, but not much. The site went through 3 layout changes, and then I migrated the DB and software over to WordPress, which required us to use WordPress themes for the layouts. I haven’t had the time or motivation to create my own layout yet, but I’m hoping it’ll happen sometime next semester. The biggest thing I regret is that the WordPress-based site doesn’t use shouts like the old site used to. Shouts were a system that let anybody post anything to a thin column on the side of the page. It was a nice way for friends to keep us updated with their lives even if they don’t have accounts to post on the main site. I liked shouts a lot.
Wow, this turned out to be a monster post. I ended up writing a lot more than I planned to, and I only scratched the surface. I guess I care about this site, and its beginnings, quite a bit.
[Edit:] I got rid of the ‘other’ folder and just put all the files in the main folder. It seems to make sense from a hierarchical perspective.
scott said:
Nov 14, 05 at 11:09 pmI can tell Jared wrote the blurbs for the Shouzernet.
About jared: “He’s a stud at coding, and a stud in real life.”
fyi, this is a paradox. I have learned that it is impossible to be a stud at coding and a stud in real life. I don’t care what you say; there’s no such thing as a cool computer scientist.
About kyle: “He only has room to get better.”
kyle said:
Nov 15, 05 at 12:53 amlol, i didn’t even notice that. i don’t even remember noticing that THEN.
scott said:
Nov 15, 05 at 7:17 amHe has no respect for you Kyle. You should go show him who’s boss.
jared said:
Nov 15, 05 at 12:04 pmer, kyle wrote his description. i remember that much. in either case, i’m still a stud at coding and a stud in real life.
jordan said:
Nov 15, 05 at 4:04 pmscott, i think i would have to disagree with that. take the matrix. they were both studs in coding and real life, however, i guess you could make the argument that it wasn’t really real (in the first movie, at least). actually, come to think of it, they were pansies outside of the matrix, for the most part. maybe you are right, scott. anyway, my new goal for college is to be a stud in coding and life. wiki.
scott said:
Nov 15, 05 at 5:31 pmIt’s not going to happen. You will have to give one of them up.
I know it hurts, but you need to hear the truth.
kyle said:
Nov 15, 05 at 5:34 pmbut this begs the question scott. can one give up being a stud when he never was one to begin with?
scott said:
Nov 15, 05 at 6:34 pmhahaha
touché
jared said:
Nov 16, 05 at 12:08 pmcommenting is a privilege–one that can be taken away just as easily as it was given. now, like i said, i’m a stud at coding and a stud in real life.
scott said:
Nov 16, 05 at 2:31 pmYou can take away my right to comment, but that doesn’t make you a stud. It just makes you a dictator of sorts. Although you really are a stud.
jared said:
Nov 17, 05 at 12:43 ambehold the power i wield, scottie.
i’d like to point out that you seem to devote a lot of time to things like saying i’m not a stud. are you trying to make up for something?
scott said:
Nov 17, 05 at 9:46 amI believe I only mentioned you once, and that was after you confronted me on it. So, no, I don’t devote a lot of time saying that you are not a stud. Get over yourself.
jared said:
Nov 17, 05 at 11:18 amerm, which post did you make that didn’t have anything to do with me? you said i wasn’t a stud in your first comment–a first comment about a post that had nothing to do with me saying i’m a stud. yet that’s the first thing you mention.. it’s sad really.
kyle jumped on the bandwagon a few posts up, too. there were a number of things i could have said to him, but i’m pretty sure he has low self-esteem, so i let him get away with that shit.
if you can manage it, i actually would like to get back to the topic at hand, which was the history of shouzer. i didn’t want this post to become about it. it was about all of us.