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# Some website redesigns
- URL: https://werd.io/some-website-redesigns/
- Published: 2023-07-04T05:05:50.000Z
- Updated: 2023-07-04T05:05:50.000Z
- Author: Ben Werdmuller
- Tags: #Import 2025-06-13 09:21

I mildly redesigned my homepage today, in order to do a better job of what this site is and what you might read on it.

I’d hoped to use the Internet Archive to go back and look at all my blogs — I started my first personal website in 1994 and my first blog in 1998\. Sadly, those seem to not be archived. But I *can* go back to look at my first blogs on platforms I built for myself.

First up, my blog on Elgg, circa its public release in 2004 (sadly missing a few profile icons):

![The author's first Elgg blog, circa 2004](https://old.werd.io/file/64a3a77ff8a630677f0f86e2/thumb.jpg)

And then the very first version of *this* site, using Idno (which became Known), in 2013:

![The author's first version of this site, from 2013](https://old.werd.io/file/64a3a7be890593f7d30d1eb2/thumb.jpg)

The form of the blog hasn’t really changed much in those 20-ish years. In fact, I’ve maybe gone backwards; for example, I don’t check into spaces on my website anymore in the same way as I did in 2013, although I could. I just write.

At its heart, of course, a blog is just a diary; we wouldn’t *expect* it to. And that diary-like design makes it easy to transform into other formats like RSS and JSON. But if we *were* to reimagine what a regularly-updated website might look like, what would we do? How might we move from a feed to something else? Is that even possible?

At the very least it’s clear that what was a relatively *revolutionary* design - a web log that anyone can publish and anyone can read - has transitioned to being the subject of relatively mundane iterative design. There are no revolutions in blogging, just steady updates.