Another website change?

It’s weird to think that over 20 years ago, I decided to create my own personal website. My website has been up and running longer than many of the social media platforms that are out there. Which is a scary thought!

This site has had several iterations through the years, including rebrands (it has had a few), repurposed, platform changes and even a domain change!

Life of Mike History

2001/02 – mdalgarno was born

I’ve been interested in developing my coding skills for a few years, so I decided to create my own website.

“mdalgarno” was the original name of my website, and it was to be my playing ground to try all things coding.

I was using Macromedia Dreamweaver to build my site. At the time it was a tool to get me started. On reflection, it makes me shudder at how awful it was.

2003 – First rebrand

While the first iteration of the website has been lost (it was grey), it wasn’t long before I was making my first changes. And yes, they were questionable.

Look, I never said I was a designer, which you can see from the above. I don’t think 50 shades of shit brown would ever be successful!

2004 – New logo

I was quick to learn that the brown theme wasn’t for me, so I return to fifty shades of grey.

While the domain name was still ‘mdalgarno’, the site was updated to my full name

2010 – Custom logo

Well technically, it wasn’t a custom logo.

I was an avid collector of Bad Taste Bears and became friends with the creator, Pete Underhill.

So, one of the gifts he did was my name in his style. I think it was either a bookmark, on an envelope or something.

I did ask if I could use it for my website, to which he agreed, so this became my new logo for a while.

2013 – Uni website

When I went to university, I decided that I would convert my personal website into a professional one.

This was a copy of my portfolio website that I created as part of my course.

The personal website continued, via WordPress on a free platform (which I can’t remember the name of).

2014 – Move to WordPress

This was the first approach to using WordPress on this website. And with that came a new logo.

It was still a portfolio website, but it was also a moment in time when there were hardly any updates being made.

2015 – Life of Mike

After getting married, it felt that my old website domain was now obsolete. So I wanted to revisit my online presence and give everything a refresh

Along with a social media update, I relaunched my personal website under the new name (and domain) of Life of Mike.

The plan was to also launch a professional website, but alas that is still in the making. And again, this is part of the 2023 Goals to get it up and running.

2021

After six years, there was a little rebrand to change the logo and theme that was being used on the website. And this is what you are currently seeing at the moment

What’s in store?

I will be honest, I haven’t really been a fan of the latest update. It never met the expectations that I had, and I still feel restricted.

Additionally, I want to expand on my skills, which will also give me the level of freedom that I want. So I can deliver a website to meet my requirements, but also have the flexibility to make changes if and when required.

No new look

For now, there is no intention to change the look of the website. Not yet anyway. My priority at the moment is to get the professional website up and running using the latest technologies.

And once that has been done, I shall be in a better place to tackle implementing those changes to my personal website.

Whether the site continues to run on the WordPress platform is still to be decided. But I am sure the best decision will be made whatever that outcome is.

Content overhaul

Content is key, and I would say that recently there has been a lot better structure to the content that is being delivered. However, I also feel that there have been some restrictions I have brought onto myself, that I want to address.

So I have set myself a goal to evaluate the content that I am delivering. I plan to restructure the content, archive some that are no longer required and look at the future content.

Today is all about

Since I started this photo-a-day project back in 2011, it has become the central part of the website. And it is going nowhere. In 2021, it also had a little overhaul.

I see these posts continuing as a look back on that month.

New Year Goals

This is another section of the website that will be remaining, but it is going to have a little renaming to just ‘Goals’

Who says that you have to set your goals at the beginning of the year? Although, I am unlikely to change this for me.

It does mean that I could create additional goals throughout the year, or discuss other goals that I haven’t explicitly highlighted as main goals.

Monthly Thought

When this type of category post was created, it was designed to try and increase the number of posts that I wrote.

Instead, I kind of felt it was restricting me. These types of posts took a lot of time and research, which I didn’t always have. This in return delayed the publishing of the “Today is all about“ posts.

Additionally, sometimes I can have multiple thoughts that deserve a discussion, but I don’t have the time, or energy to do that.

So “Monthly Thought” is no more as such. It’s going to be renamed…to what I haven’t decided yet!

The nature of these posts will still be the researched and thought-out ones that they were. They will also still be those personal ones that I do, but just not on a regular monthly basis – hence the name change!

Soapbox

With the invention of social media, I’ve been known to get onto my soapbox about the odd thing here and there.

Sometimes these posts require additional information, explanation or promoted further.

These posts like the social media will be more off the cuff, unlike the “Monthly Thought” types.

What’s On

I’ve done review posts previously, so these are just going to be renamed into their own section of the site.

Currently, the majority of the reviews have been in relation to theatre shows, but I can potentially look at books, films and television shows.

Cross stitch

I got into cross stitch a few years back, so I feel like it should have its own space on the site.

I would like to have a catalogue of all the work I have done through the years. And potentially other things cross stitch related

Hopefully, the changes I have planned will