Happy 30th anniversary! Thirty years ago today, the first corporate website for what is now Leeds Beckett University was launched on an unsuspecting world.
I know. I was that webmaster.
Leeds Metropolitan (as it was) University made me permanent after a series of temporary contracts in the Computing Services team. And I thought, now that I was permanent I ought to pick up a project as well as doing the stuff I was already doing in IT support and teaching the odd course.
There was something called CWIS – Campus-Wide Information Service – that kept getting bumped as no-one knew what to do with it. That sounded like ‘information management’ to me, and I did want to be a librarian still, so I went for it.
Two of my colleagues then remarked “you should have a look at this world-wide web thing, it might be useful.” I’ll have thus written my first test pages in July 1994. Then I got myself seconded to the Communications and External Relations team, and the rest is Internet history.
The first draft of the site no longer exists, but, in common with what you could do with HTML at the time, only had had black text on a grey background; text, blue (unvisited) or magenta (visited) hyperlinks, and that was it. Images, tables and colours hadn’t been invented then, let alone JavaScript and jQuery.
The funny thing is that the Internet Archive didn’t start large-scale indexing of websites until 1997, so how do I know that website is 30 years old today?
Um… did I mention I was the webmaster?
As the site was constantly evolving, I set up a What’s New section. Every few months the page got large enough that I could either delete what was there or… archive it into a section called What Was New. See for yourself.
The site was obviously of its time, a time when people took responsibility for the content they created by putting their names to it (and mine is definitely all over the shop). According to What Was New it was “revamped” six months later. But it was early days for public web sites. Our comparators were few, so we did what we thought was right. Here’s why you should study here, here’s what you can study here, and here’s some information if you’re already here.
There was also no Search Engine Optimisation to worry about, there being not much Google about (it was pretty much AltaVista or nothing).
I often think that in the rush to ‘design’ a new website we (you) forget about the content. The content is not necessarily what you think is important, but what your visitors are looking for. The web is a place to find things, not for you to show off.
That site might not look like much but it was way better than the one that came after it (we all said so). Our third attempt was much better. By that time I’d been pigeonholed as “the web guy”, and you know how much I hate being pigeonholed. Ironically then, it was the best of times, the worst of times, and probably the time I peaked!