blakewatson.com turns 20

Nowadays I’m used to signing up for services and discovering that the username blakewatson is already taken—yes I’m one of those people who uses their real name everywhere. But that’s okay because I have something the other Blake Watsons don’t. Back in 2005 when I was learning HTML and obsessed with the incredible knowledge that you could just upload a file to the internet and everyone could see it, I made the decision to purchase the domain, blakewatson.com. To this day, that decision stands as one of my best. It was cool and nerdy to have your own personal homepage. And okay, maybe it’s still a little nerdy now. But in an age where corporate social media is the default, a personal homepage is a breath of fresh air.

It’s obviously very cringe for me to look at now, but here is a screenshot of the earliest version that I have a record of. This was probably the first one I published.

This is a screenshot of BlakeWatson.com. It's a simple website with the domain name stylized at the top as a banner. Then it has what looks like a table layout of different sections you can click on: Bio, poetry, music, games, and stuff. Each category has a description of what it's for. The footer says copyright 2005 Blake Watson. It's simple white and blue colors with borders on a grey background.
This is the first version of my website

Before purchasing the domain name, I had made various personal homepage sites using free hosting and free subdomains of other services. But this represented the first step I took to take ownership of my web stuff. I was learning HTML and a little CSS and for the first time I wasn’t using WYSIWYG editors but writing the code myself.

My website went along like this for a few years until I graduated college and started attempting to freelance. At that point, I turned my website into a web designer’s portfolio inspired by the web designers I looked up to and admired at the time.

As I posted in Hard refresh, you can see how my website’s design progressed over the years until I took a full-time position and stopped freelancing.

A screenshot of a bunch of my personal websites from 2005 to 2013. The designs progressed from personal site vibe to experienced designer.
Early history of blakewatson.com

Once I stopped using my site for freelancing, I converted it back into a personal webpage. This time, more like a web designer’s blog. I built it using the now defunct, Python-based, static site generator wok. It started off as a super simple text-based design, but I finally gave it some love in 2016.

Red background with a sleek, modern for 2016 feel. Clean design. The homepage is sparse and shows the three latest posts.
As seen in 2016.

It definitely has some text contrast issues that I was a bit ignorant to at the time. I got around to giving it a small refresh about a year-ish later.

Same design as the 2016 version except the red background is a darker red-to-dark-blue gradient an the type contrast is improved.
Some time later in 2016 or possibly 2017.

In 2019, I moved my site onto WordPress, self-hosted.

Similar elements to the previous design, sparse with three posts on the homepage and a sidebar, but the colors are completely redesigned using a deep purplish black background with light text for the foreground. Still using clean sans serif type and a minimal layout.
My site as seen in 2019 after moving to self-hosted WordPress

Finally, in 2024, I rebuilt it using the static-site generator, Eleventy, with the design that is seen today.

Screenshot of my homepage in dark mode inside of a Safari window. There are 5 journal articles listed in the widest column. A card with my avatar, a one-sentence bio, and some social links are in the sidebar. Below that are 3 microblog posts.
Screenshot of the homepage for posterity. Try changing the color theme :-)

You should have your own website

All the cool kids are doing it. Well, maybe not all of them. But some of them. Having your own website is a way to have more agency over how you are represented on the information highway—the living digital library that represents the sum of human knowledge.

Lots of people are saying this.

Okay, that’s five people, but I was kind of in a hurry when writing. I’m sure there are many, many more.

Working on your website is just a lot of fun. If you want to kill some time and feel like doing something nerdy, there are at least a hundred things you can do with your website. 32-bit cafe also has a bunch of ideas. It can be quite addicting as you wield your newfound power and see it come to life.

If you don’t know how to code and don’t want to learn, there are plenty of services that will help you build a website without coding.

If all you want is a simple text based website with a blog, try these super easy indie services:

If you’re looking for something a bit more, try these.

These are just a few services. I can’t vouch for all of them, but when I asked around online, these are the responses I got back. Many of them from web developers who recommend these services for their non-coder friends.

If you are interested in coding your own website but don’t know how to get started, check out my web book, HTML for People. It’s easier than you think!

Twenty

It’s pretty surreal to think back on those early days. 2005-me had no idea how the next 20 years would pan out. But, I think he’d be happy knowing he made at least one smart decision amidst some of the dumb ones.

Hopefully this site will live on for twenty more years. If it gets slurped up by the Wayback Machine or, heck, even AI, then who knows, maybe it will live on forever.