Wow, Worldoweb turns 10. Many things have happened in the last 10 years. We have seen Apple, Amazon and Google dominate the technology field. The annoyance of subscription models to in-app purchases becoming the firm favourite to drain anyone’s bank account. I hope you enjoy reading part 1 of this series of WOW’s trip down memory lane where we compare worldoweb from 2008 to now in 2018.
Read Other Parts in the series
Worldoweb Turns 10 – A Little History
In 2008, I sat at home building my 1st website for my friend’s jewellery business. Whilst building the website using PHP I came across and tested many scripts. I needed a contact form on the website so I tested many form scripts. I decided to note these down on paper. Paper gets lost and recycled so I decided to make an online diary. I was also interested in computer security, or lack of it in Windows OS, so I thought I would combine both. WOW was born!
Decisions
In 2008, researching the internet for blogs would have WordPress.com or the rival blogger at the top of any search engine. I decided to go with hosted WordPress as I didn’t know anything about setting a server up. It was easy to set it up, all I needed was my email address and a password.
I justifiably wanted the right design, but the hosted version of WordPress was rather limited back then. After some deliberation, I opted to go for a self-hosted blog. I researched web hosts and came across relatively cheap hosting. I took the plunge and there was no turning back.
Naming Convention
Figuring out what I was going to call it was another task. Not wanting to call it something that tied me to a particular subject, but catchy enough so it rolls off the tongue. I looked around and came up with the world of the web, then did my Yorkshire thing by removing bits from it and came up with worldoweb.
Visualising a logo with a world in it! I bought it and was now in charge of a website and domain. Yikes! What the hell do I do with it?
I discovered wordpress.org and downloaded WordPress 2.6. Back then the only option to install WordPress was to upload the files onto the server. Looking back, I do believe that it gives you more of an understanding of how it works with the database.
Worldoweb, with WordPress, installed, now what? Change the theme to something more suitable. I browsed the WP Theme Directory, downloaded one and uploaded it to the server. With limited knowledge, I tweaked the theme to suit my requirements and even created my logo, badly!
First Post
Yay, I’ve started a blog. Let’s get posting. My first post was a comparison of 3 different PHP forms that I had written down earlier. I sat back and admired my blog post like a proud child when mastering to read. It was the start of things to come and I would never know I’d be doing this 10 years later. I learned a lot more through this journey.
Conclusion
Worldoweb was born from a simple idea whilst building a website. It’s true to say I had no knowledge of WordPress when I started. I’ve learned from any mistakes and gone on to build bigger and better. Here’s to another 10 years! See you in 2028.