I bought this domain about 18 years ago with no other purpose than to have a domain name. During that time, everyone was saying that if you did not buy your domain name now there would not be any decent domain names left. I cannot recall what domain names I tried to get, but as you can see I settled on webdebris.com.
As for what the content of my website would be I had no clue. I really just wanted something to play around with. I think my first web page was some information about a game I used to play. I had developed it in FrontPage since it was free.
But that was enough experience to lead me to my next project. The business where I was employed decided they wanted to have an Internet presence and I, being the only one in the company who had actually attempted a Web page let alone had their own domain, was selected to design a site. This was a common practice with small companies on a tight budget.
So I built the site the only way I knew how. Using FrontPage I added the content they wanted along with whatever images, animated gifs, and dividers I could find. Clearly the whole project was a failure. I ended up with a business website that looked like an animated homepage nightmare.
The problem was two fold. First I did not know the ins and outs of proper HTML design. Secondly I was not a graphic artist.
The first problem was easily remedied, I hit the books. Starting with the HTML basics I began to learn the do's and don'ts of design. There was a lot of things I had not taken into account such as making your website search engine friendly, do not use frames, and so on.
As I did research my own website started to reflect what I found. The flashy annoying gifs were being replaced by informative content about web design. My HTML code became more structured, traffic started to increase, and positive email about my content started arriving.
But unfortunately my site just became stale to me. Whatever I tried to do I was never happy with the outcome. I played around with some Javascript and such but to me the final product was just non satisfactory and I never really understood why. So I let it go and the traffic died out as the information became outdated.
The world continued to turn and events unfolded that would set me on a new path. 9-11 brought my previous job to an end and I was hired by a brand new company. As you can guess I was again selected to create a website presence. I had not done any HTML work for years but I was more than happy to give it another go.
This time there where new concepts like CSS, liquid layouts, higher versions of HTML, and flash. The company provided me with the Dreamweaver suite which I loved working with. And to top it off, one of my coworkers was a wiz at Photoshop and had a knack for color schemes. I have to admit the finished product looked good. The owner of the company received a lot of complements about the website.
This inspired me to redesign my own website. After it was completed I had mixed feelings. I had many complements on it and the coding was fairly clean but I was just not happy with it. I failed to understand what it was all about for me. So once again I walked away from it.
In 2009 I was working on a ASP.NET web project for my newest employer. I was struggling with some CSS code I needed and was trying to find a solution through Google when I ran across a link for the website www.csszengarden.com.
Wow. What an eye opener this was. This was exactly what I was struggling with in all my previous works. I was awestruck by the way they separated presentation and markup to produce the cleanest code I had ever seen and yet have a literal harmony of using web standards but still presenting an extraordinary pleasing visual experience.
Can I, a techie hack with little artistic talent, create a visual appealing website while using these same web standards?
This is what WebDebris is about.