History of a Website

Hello. If you're reading this, I assume it's because you're interested. If you're not interested, well, I've tried to make it pretty easy to find your way around the place, so feel free to set off for another part of the Tower. Don't worry, I shan't be offended.

This is the second version of the site to grace the web. You can see a screen shot of how the original Grishny's Tower appeared if you like. As I began to redesign it, I thought it might be interesting to put down a record of exactly how this site came into existance. Although the Tower itself has only been around since 2005, I've chosen to begin with my own first forays into the world of web design.

1999: I took my first steps into the wonderful world of web design, beginning in what is probably the worst way possible, designing my first site in Frontpage. I also learned and built a site in Flash 3 this year.

2000: Although continuing to use Frontpage to set up HTML templates, I began the process of teaching myself how to write code by hand, practicing on a website known as Sketch, an on-line newsletter. The creation and subsequent management of Sketch allowed me to learn the basics of HTML coding and good web design. It also involved my first and last usage of frames in the design of a web site.

My family's on-line photo album was also begun in March of this year, using free hosting on AngelFire. It was set up initially using a Frontpage template, but as new pages of photos were added I started modifying the code by hand to create new layouts.

It is also in 2000 that I began toying with the idea of a personal web site to be devoted to housing all of the miscellaneous "interesting stuff" that I'd been collecting since high school. I started some of the initial preparation work for the site at this time, typing in all of the handwritten, hand-illustrated stories that I and my friends had composed during our school years.

2001-2003: My web design experience continued to increase as I created and helped to implement web sites for two different employers. However, I was only involved in the graphic design aspects of these sites; the coding was handled by others.

2004: Lacello Design was born. The LD web site marked my first attempt at designing and and coding a new site from scratch since Sketch. Lacello Design was meant to be my business site, housing my on-line graphic design portfolio and resumé. It also helped to introduce me to the use of cascading style sheets (CSS) in web design, which I then used to add some new formatting to my family photo album when I consolidated it under the lacellodesign.com domain the same year.

November, 2004: I participated in National Novel Writing Month. I decided at some point while writing my 50,000 words that it was finally time to buckle down and create the personal website that I'd been daydreaming about for so long, so I would have a place to post my novel, Helec the Explorer, when I finished it.

December, 2004: I'd settled on the name and the theme long before. (How is another story all by itself.) During the first couple weeks of December, I pulled out pencil and paper and began sketching out the graphics for my Tower. The first folders for the site were created on December 17. The design and coding of the site proceeded quickly, and Grishny's Tower officially opened on January 10, 2005.

2005: The Tower opened with slim pickings... only one feature existed in each of the "rooms." But my plan was to add content gradually as finished it, and it worked pretty well. By July, all of the main features I had planned to implement were in place and complete, not counting open-ended projects like the Keychain and Doodle collections.

2005 also saw the development of Doug Sanders Photography, a site that I designed and implemented for a former coworker and friend. I only mention it because I took a month off from working on Grishny's Tower to develop it, and because it helped further hone my skills at web design in general.

2006: In January of 2006 I took on the task of designing a web site for the North Hills Bible Church in York, Pennsylvania. Although I took my time at it (the site went live in July), updates to Grishny's Tower were few and far between early in aught six and continued to be so through the end of summer and into autumn.

This version of the Tower was begun on October 30, 2006. The goal with this iteration of my site was to make the design cleaner, and make further and better use of CSS to separate the appearence of the site from its content and make it more standards compliant.

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