History
This page details the long, colorful and often technobabble-laden history of the Temple of Andrex, from its birth on August 11, 2005 until the present version, launched July 1, 2009.
Table of Contents
- Pre-Temple
- Birth of the Temple – Version 1
- iI and Aspirations – Version 2
- Growing Pains – Version 3
- Home Sweet Home – Version 4
- Five by Five, B – Version 5
- Facing the Future
Pre-Temple
In the beginning, there was the Temple… well, not quite. The story of the Temple begins before it was originally released.
I originally was new to the blogging “scene,” so it was difficult for me to choose a provider. It came down to either Blogger, which I wanted because I liked Google and agreed with its simple-is-best philosophy, and Livejournal. I stuck with Blogger.
Why is this relevant to the Temple of Andrex’s history? Because it motivated me to seek out additional HTML templates for Blogger to spruce it up with. This was my first exposure to (rough) HTML source code, and I not only read it, I understood (parts of) it, and made tweaks here and there. The experience I gained here motivated me to create another website, one that would house my projects, works, and Internet personage separate from my real life identity- the Temple of Andrex.
Birth of the Temple – Version 1
Versions: 1.0, 1.5
Codename: “Temple of Andrex”
Released: (1.0), (1.5)
Hosts: Geocities (1.0), Freewebs (1.5)
URLs: http://www.geocities.com/templeofandrex (Inactive), http://www.freewebs.com/templeofandrex/
Doctype: None
CSS: None
Other Tech: Geocities Javascript Image Rollover
I needed a place that would let me express my Internet personality, Andrex.
Version 1 of the Temple as it looked right before I upgraded to Version 2. (Click to enlarge.)
The first Temple of Andrex was created on August 11, 2005 and was hosted on Geocities*. At this point, I was not quite versed enough in HTML to create a whole website with it, and I was familiar with Geocities from the many failed websites I had created with it over the years. And again, I was also familiar with it because it’s what my older sister used. The name came from my e-name, Andrex, as well as a Dragonball Z fansite I admired, the Temple O’ Trunks. I liked the way the site owner made updates and maintained the site.
On August 23, I took the source code from Geocities and uploaded it to Freewebs (now merely Webs.) This was important because at the time Freewebs only provided a source code editor, and not a WYSIWG one. This forced me to pick through the source code myself, although I was already getting good at that. I didn’t make huge edits to what I had taken from Geocities, but I was getting proficient at creating new pages and updating the front one.
However, as I gained more familiarity with HTML, I knew it was time for a facelift. This time, using CSS.
* Geocities is actually closing down at the end of 2009, so it’s a good thing I got out while I could, eh? 
iI and Aspirations – Version 2
Version: 2.0
Codename: “iI”
Released:
Host: Freewebs
URL: http://www.freewebs.com/templeofandrex/
Doctype: None
CSS: Some Level 2.1 (Assumed)
Other Tech: Guestbook Widget
Version 2 was given the codename “iI.” My original explanation for this name was, “[it's the] Roman numeral for ‘2,’ except the first ‘i’ is lower case, making it sound all cool like ‘iTunes’ and junk like that.” Solid reasoning, eh?
My target with iI was to challenge myself coding it. The biggest challenge was to create two “blocks” that were side-by-side; Version 1 was a top-down monolith. I managed to forgo the cardinal sin of web design (using a table-based layout) and jumped straight to CSS and divs. Looking back, I’m actually a bit proud of myself. I was ignorant of web standards at this time, but apparently not all that ignorant.
Version 2’s design, codename “iI.” (Click to enlarge.)
If you notice, Version 4’s design was somewhat based on Version 1’s: horizontally-ordered, with the banner on top and navigation on the bottom, sandwiching the content in-between. This design, Version 5, is more based on Version 2’s, with left-aligned navigation and right-aligned content on a black background. Both times it has been coincidental, and I don’t really plan on continuing the trend, as Version 3… well, it was like the red-headed stepchild in the Temple design family.
Growing Pains – Version 3
Version: 3.0
Codename: “Clean”
Released: (Assumed)
Host: Freewebs
URL: http://www.freewebs.com/templeofandrex/
Doctype: XHTML 1.0 Strict (Non-Valid)
CSS: Level 2.1 (Assumed)
Other Tech: Embedded Guestbook, Non-Andrex Design
I launched Version 3 at an interesting time. At this point, I was looking to “legitimatize” the Temple into a “professional” venue for my vaporware works, i.e. my rinky-dink Game Maker games and Elyisum-based MMOs.
Also, while I had implemented Freewebs’ guestbook widget in Version 2, Version 3 marked the first time it was on every page (albeit at the bottom), and this was because I had started to open up a bit more now that my traffic was greater than one (myself.) You may be wondering, why isn’t there any sort of feedback on this version of the Temple? As far as I’m concerned, with my Facebook profile and the Project Gforum shoutbox and forum, both parties (real and online) that need to reach me, can, and in more suitable manners than the Temple can provide.
The “Games” page of Version 3, also known as Vaporware Central. (Click to enlarge.)
As I said, Version 3 was all about making the Temple “professional.” I felt that, at this point, I lacked the skills necessary to create such a design, so I went and cribbed someone else’s. I believe I launched it in January 2007, however all the updates from that version have been lost to the ether, so that’s just my rough guess based on memory and circumstantial evidence. The design itself was a complete turnaround from all previous (and future) ones: it was blue, it wasn’t made by me, and it lacked a real “style”- style in this case referring to the special font attached to each version’s banner. Compare: 1, 2, 4, 5. Version 5’s is actually just text (enhanced through CSS 3), but it does have a distinctive font. Version 3 is the only one that doesn’t match this pattern.
It certainly served its purpose, and the design itself was just what I wanted at the time. With Version 4 though, I sought to correct myself and once again return to creating designs that “fit” the Temple.
Home Sweet Home – Version 4
Versions: 4.0, 4.5
Codename: “Powered by Andrex”
Released: (4.0), (4.5)
Host: NearlyFreeSpeech.NET
URL: http://templeofandrex.com/
Doctype: XHTML 1.0 Transitional (Valid)
CSS: Level 2.1
Other Tech: PHP, MySQL, Shoutbox
After more than a year, I returned to creating designs for the Temple, and on August 28, 2007, I launched Version 4. Thinking back, this design was the most radical and important change for the Temple yet. The first, and perhaps biggest, change was that I moved it to NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, and paid for hosting and a domain name. The Temple of Andrex finally had templeofandrex.com to call its home.
As for the design, I first researched my own previous designs and what I wanted to take from them. I realized the Temple’s primary colors were red and black, with white sometimes as secondary. I especially liked Version 2’s aesthetic of red and black. Secondly, I researched the many different technologies and standards powering the web, and settled on making my site XHTML 1.0 valid. This was huge, as not only is the XHTML syntax very strict, but I also had never dealt with purely-valid code before, so the transition was a bit rough. Thankfully, I was able to make the transition and the design actually turned out pretty good… if you had a high resolution monitor.
Version 4 after the PHP upgrade, I guess you could call it 4.5,
(though the design is mostly the same as 4.) (Click to enlarge.)
A primary focus for this style was to make it iPhone and Wii compatible, but… it didn’t work out. As clearly seen in the above image, even with a semi-decent resolution, it was still cramped. I committed one of the cardinal sins of web usability: taking control of the scrollbar away from the user. I did this because with the navigation at the bottom, I thought it would be too pesky scrolling to the bottom for everything. And while that did work itself out, it turned me off controlling the scrollbar for good.
In the Summer of 2008, despite not really updating any of the content at all when this version was live, I gave it a behind-the-scenes “bump” so that I could automatically post content to it. In developing Project Gforum earlier in the year, I learned PHP and MySQL, and applied those to the Temple, making this the first version that I didn’t have to edit any index.html file manually for new updates. I even rigged it to update the RSS feed, although both implementations were basic and flawed. This constituted what I now call “Version 4.5″, as it was a fairly big improvement.
Version 4 was a very good step in the right direction: I returned to make its design, I made sure it was valid and well-formed, and I tasted the power of dynamic updating. It was time to take these ideas and ratchet them up to the next level, with a bigger focus on usability.
Five by Five, B – Version 5
Version: 5.0
Codename: “Space Flare”
Released:
Host: NearlyFreeSpeech.NET
URL: http://www.templeofandrex.com/
Doctype: HTML 5 (Valid)
CSS: Level 3.0
Other Tech: Wordpress Source, Web Fonts, RGBA Colors
The following the release of Version 4, I launched Project Gforum, a website made to enhance G4 forum user’s experiences on the forum. I learned PHP and MySQL just for it, and they let me make the site dynamic- my websites would no longer be contained to static .htm pages.
This is important because that year would be the only one yet in which the Temple did not get a new design. As I mentioned earlier, I did upgrade Version 4 to a dynamic update system using my experiences building Project Gforum, but it was only a cheap stopgap I used to convince myself I was still interested in the Temple. To be honest, my full attention was diverted to Project Gforum and I had no intention of glancing back here.
I needed some free, installable blogging software that I could customize extensively, and I chose Wordpress. Then in April 2009 I launched the second version of Project Gforum, which ran on Wordpress. The next logical step was, of course, the Temple of Andrex.
At this point I began to question both the usefulness and the overall purpose of the Temple, as I had begun merging my real life and Internet personas, and of course my real life blog would always be the preferred silo to direct people to. Not to mention, because of Wordpress, I finally had “pages” like /about/ and /work/, which took some of the Temple’s edge.
But in the end it wasn’t about what advantages the Temple offered, or even what I had wanted at the time. After I launched Version 3, staring at the corpses that were my older sister’s blog and website, and thinking I could do better, I promised to keep the Temple going until it was, at least, seven years old. So even if I wanted to, I couldn’t abandon the Temple just yet.
With this finally decided, and having ample free time due to the Summer, I got to work on Version 5. After installing and setting up Wordpress, I got to work on the design. As always, I began from scratch. Originally I wanted to match its XHTML 1.1 declaration, but the recent buzz of the web was the upcoming HTML 5 spec, so I decided to take a look at it.
In the process, I had my eyes opened on how I should have been using XHTML (but wasn’t) and where it was going (places I didn’t like.) Because of these facts, and because of how much I liked what I saw in HTML 5, I made the switch. It wasn’t even that hard, as I had been validating-minded for years, and most of the enforced XHTML rules were “best practices” in HTML. Granted, I had to stop thinking all tags absolutely had to be closed, which changed <br /> to merely <br>, but even the former is still valid in HTML 5 (if discouraged, due to the fact SGML parsers would litter >s around the document, even if they’re not supposed to be used on HTML 5.)
Version 5 introduces a space aesthetic to the Temple using HTML 5. (Click to enlarge.)
What about the actual design? It was based on some random and rough concept doodles I had drawn in my notebooks about five months before. I knew for a while I wanted the navigation to be a big, front-and-center vertical stack on the left, leaving the content on the right. I also knew a little later on I wanted the sun to be apart of the design. Why? I had developed the idea over the years the Temple was actually in space, (but don’t ask me how I came to it.) In addition, the main colors of the Temple have traditionally been red and black, with white sometimes standing in as secondary. The sun can be seen as red, and the blackness of space can be seen as, well, black. Even if the sun in the final background isn’t necessarily red, Version 5 still presents a red theme with the various links and navigation.
Because of Wordpress, NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, the Temple URL, and the semantic tags HTML 5 is introducing, this is the most solid version of the Temple yet, and it’s all due to years of work and experience finally culminating here and now. I started truly web designing and developing with the first version all those years ago, and I’m a little proud of the progress I’ve made in that time.
Facing the Future
So what does the future hold for the Temple, then? I said I would keep it going for at least seven years, which would put the Temple’s current expiry date at August 10th, 2012. During this time I hope to do yearly design refreshes, both for visitors to my website so they don’t become bored, and myself so that I don’t get rusty with new and emerging web technologies. I also hope that I will be able to clear up the Temple’s ultimate purpose, which will be the real deciding factor on if I continue this place after the seven years are up. Time will tell, but this place has a special place in my heart no matter what happens.