Many people may not know this, but I actually coded my first webpage way back in 1996, and it was all thanks to my brother who inadvertently sparked my interest. He was a freshman at CMU and as part of one of his assignments, he needed to create a web page. I don’t remember if he shared a link with my parents or me, but somehow I managed to find his site. It was simple, but for some reason I decided to explore further and delve into the source code. To my amazement, HTML seemed relatively straightforward. I promptly saved the page and began experimenting with edits, eager to observe the results. This newfound fascination prompted me to craft my own webpage, marking the beginning of my web development adventure.
It’s truly remarkable to witness the evolution of the web over the years. Since I started writing HTML, I’ve observed the transformation of web development, progressing from static pages to server-side rendered sites using Perl and PHP. Then came the Web 2.0 era, characterized by animations and asynchronous calls, where libraries like jQuery took center stage. Eventually, developers realized that keeping logic on both the frontend and backend in sync posed challenges, leading to the creation of frameworks like Backbone and Knockout. These early frameworks paved the way for what we have today in React, Vue, Svelte, and Angular. Yet, we’re also seeing a shift back towards placing more of the workload on the server to enhance performance for users and bots. The pendulum never stops.
Why do I mention all of this? Because I recently revamped my entire site architecture and parted ways with the CMS. I have a deep appreciation for Craft CMS, and if I ever require a CMS with a high degree of flexibility with a user-friendly interface, it remains my top choice. However, I’ve returned to serving static content. While all of the source code resides in a private GitHub repository.