Date Started 2026-03-31 20:48
Date Completed 2026-04-02 19:47

This website is for me to show off the projects I have completed, currently working on, and what I didn't finish. It's also going to be a home for my blog entries, and other cool or interesting things I happen to find.

I wanted to build a site in the style of the Internet I remember from my youth, and because of that I also opted to use the "old" way of doing things. Not too old though, because table layouts are a pain.

Specification

The spec for this site was also not that intricate:

Most of these are quite self explanatory, and some I don't even understand myself. But the project was started before I used my noggin, so I was stuck with it.

For example, the "Cool Stuff" section is more or less a links section, but I already have one of those... I cannot explain why I have it there, but oh well.

Execution

So, I wanted to make an old school website, and therefore I decided on not making it 'look' old school, but actually be old school. I decided on using HTML 4.01 and old CSS without any bells and whistles. The one exception is the source code highlighting.

I even went as far as using capitalized tags in the source, as can be seen in the banner image of this project page. No templating system is being used either. It's all by hand, just like the good old days.

Source Code Highlighting

For source code highlighting I had to go a little modern. I decided to use Highlight.js which is very simple to implement. I downloaded the files, decided to use the default theme, and included it as described in the documentation.

An example of how to highlight the code:

          
<PRE>
    <CODE CLASS="language-c">
        ... code here ...
    </CODE>
</PRE>

Style and Choices

Going for that old school style, I decided to use old school HTML. I opted for HTML 4.01 strict, and for that I use the following DOCTYPE: 

          
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
 "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

So, if you take anything away from this website, let it be that the way I chose to make it is not at all how it is currently recommended to write these things.

Guest Book

For the guestbook I went for Atabook, which is a free service by Kicya. I set it up, but I haven't put in on the actual site yet. I deem that the task is complete, seeing how it works, but until I see the need for comments, I won't put it on the actual site. I am also not sure how I feel about using a public free service for it, but that's my paranoia.

Pages

For each page, I decided to give it a different banner, same page layout, and a navigation bar that fits the content. I'm not sure what else to say about that.

Result

The project, I would say, was a success. Everything is there, even if it isn't used. Everyone is free to read the source code, and copy whatever they need. The style of which I am writing this site is so old that I don't recommend it though, but by all means, do what you want. But please mention where you took it from (it can be in a comment in the source if you don't want it cluttering your page).