The Evolution of Glenn's Web Page 

...or....how did this get so disjoint?

Ancient History

Back in '03, I started playing around with HTML, mostly to share stuff about our incoming son. This was all done under some long forgotten microsoft tool, but I mostly wrote that HTML code by hand. Comcast at the time offered web hosting, so I'd FTP the files up there and share 'em with friends and family. This went on until 2010.

Enter the Mac

In 2010, I started using a helmet-cam whilst skiing, which meant I was producing family ski videos on the Mac (via iMovie). In doing so, I found iWeb, and used that to make the newer websites look a little more polished. I now had two Comcast sites...one for Lafayette (where I hosted those ancient history pages) and one for Fraser (where the iWeb stuff lived)...and I linked the two of them together.

Comcast Pulls the Plug

Then, in 2015, Comcast decies they're not going to host web pages anymore. Fine. I stop the iWeb development, and mostly transtion to social media.

2021

So this year, I get the itch to bring those pages back. I've got the files for the Ancient History site, but my Mac that was running iWeb had died. I did manage to get the domain file, but by now, Apple had deprecated iWeb. Boo!!!! I thought it would be as easy as browsing the domain data...unfortunately not. Apple does everything convoluted; they were storing site info in XML data. I did some python code to crawl page content, but that only did rudimentary pics and text...all the cool formatting would take a LOT more work.

Grabbed Alli's old laptop, and I could run iWeb again...and so I exported both to a raspberry pi and a local file.

So, let's look at the Pi first. Got Apache up and going, and the host was happy. The pros: I had full control over the web server. The con: in order to really make this an externally visible webpage, I'd need to both poke a hole in my home internet, and also play some IP games (as Comcast, or rather, Xfinity makes you pay for static IP).

Then I remember that GitHub does site hosting. Move the pages into git, and voila!

But now instead of old, complicated, proprietary Apple XML I have convoluted Apple HTML, Javascript, and CSS. Since my goal is to get the old site up, I try and be as surgical as I can with my changes...trying not to change too much stuff. I install Dreamweaver to help as my IDE, and off I go.