News

Spacerock is 25!!!

A look back at 25 years on the web

Published: December 13, 2021

The site became my playground, really.  I was learning the ins and outs of HTML and graphic design for the web.  It has undergone so many changes as the web evolved - and contniues to.  What started as an avenue for my business just became my playground - my sandbox.  I developed other sites to work my website development company which I ran for years.  It supported my ex husband and I for a few years before we split, but sort of went by the wayside as social media evolved and not everyone wants their own website anymore; the purpose has changed.  I still entertain the idea of doing side jobs for people who would like that - I work for a municipality now and it's a great place for me to be.  I even get to teach. 

This website gathered a lot of cobwebs in recent years, but I started reworking it last summer (2021) and bringing it back into focus.  The language that runs it had changed - a lot - and I wasn't willing to take on the new features.  I was going to watch this website die a slow, painful death and then something inside said, "No, don't do that."  It wasn't that difficult to get up to speed and I understand why the language changed and became more robust.  It wasn't a stretch to convert things over.

The site clearly is still a work in progress; there are parts that don't work so well on mobile devices, and I am taking them one at a time.  I have a tablet I am making notes on from everything to how I program pages to global variables I am using as a reference - it's about 40 pages at this writing.  (It's a cool thing called a reMarkable tablet and I just love it.  It's been life changing!)  There's something about hand writing programming notes that makes it "stick" better in my head. 

What's in Spacerock's future?
I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't know.  All I can say is that I have some development plans for it like:

• A mailing list
• Streaming Recommendations and News
• Recipe Club (started it before and never panned out)

The domain name itself has been a subject of - not contoversy, but chargrin - to some audiences over the years.  For a while, there was a site about meteors called spacerocks.com and I had a link on my home page that said "For meteor site click here" (the entire sentance was a link, not just click here - which is a huge pet peeve of mine - for good reasons too....).  Also, there is a genre of music called space rock and a few pissed off folks had sent me some not so kind emails about that. 

As recentely as about 5 years ago, a firm was offering to buy the domain from me for about $3k.  I said that was fine but it never panned out.  I'm not married to the domain name; it's not like I have a huge OR ANY following; my last name isn't Drudge...this is just my little website where I 'do stuff on the web' and experiment with my own skills.  Maybe more read it than I think; I haven't run any reports lately, and perhaps it might scare me if I did.  The jury is out on that.

As we head into another year - 2022 - I'll continue to play with this site.  It's gotten more updates lately than it has in years - mostly due to my making the CMS that runs it something I can do right from my phone.  I may be old but I participate in life on my phone like your average millineal...wow...my site is a little older than a millineal...

I hope you have enjoyed this piece; you are probably the only person who has read it.  I hope to be writing another one of these in another 25 years!