Hi! I'm Alex, and I re-launched my website after nearly 20 years!

[alexwsmith]

Hi all! I just made an account yesterday. I hope to be active on here and make lots of new friends.

I’m Alex, I’m in my 40s and I used to have a site that was active from 1997 until about 2007. It was mainly a place to host my tracked (mod) music but I had other odds and ends on there too. What was left of it went offline in 2009.

Earlier this year I was randomly sifting through my old files and I happened upon my old mods folder. The nostalgia instantly came flooding in! I listened to some old tracks I’d forgotten about, both of mine and others. In amongst it all was one that I’d never released in that form so I thought “what the heck” and uploaded it to the ModArchive - a website that’s hosted tracked music since 1996 and is still going! I've had a page on there since 1998, I think, It had been 19 years since I’d last uploaded a track there, and it got spot lit with a good review, which was a nice boost.

Off the back of that, I started thinking about my old website, and I decided to re-launch it. I wanted to bring together all the creative stuff I've done (that I'm still happy to own up to) since I was a teenager up to the present day. It’s mostly music, including most of my tracked and Mp3 music from 1998 to 2007, previously unreleased mod music (as well as some new stuff too), and I’m currently building a proper page to showcase the music I’ve been releasing on and off since 2015 under my "current" project (originally titled Unmet, recently rebranded A.W.S. Unmet on account of someone else releasing music under the name Unmet, and our releases getting all muddled up on various platforms). There’s also a page dedicated to some games I made based on the Dizzy games from the 80s and 90s.

Much of the site is still under construction, and I suspect it will be forever! Please do come and have a little look if any of this sounds interesting to you. Find me here: AlexSite v5.0 - Music, Games and ... that's pretty much it!

Hopefully I'll see you around these forums 

Alex

[cyberfun1 (dizz)]

Welcome back to the Web.
Have I heard your name before?

[nobo]

Hey, thanks for sharing your site.

I'm also a 40s guy who had websites in the late 90s and early 2000s. Kind of like you I fell away from thinking about them for 15-20 years and had the giddy experience of reliving my youth by getting back into it.

Unfortunatetly all of my websites were full of youthful angst and oversharing -- not the kind of stuff I would try to revive lol.

          

How significant of an update was it to get everything ready to relaunch?

I do see some places where you are citing the old magic

Code

<font size="2"></font>

 

[alexwsmith]

Welcome back to the Web.
Have I heard your name before?

Thank you!
Possibly - I have a very common name 😅 I've not been too active on the web recently, apart from piping up occasionally in a couple of Discord servers, so it may not be me!

Hey, thanks for sharing your site.

Hello!

Unfortunatetly all of my websites were full of youthful angst and oversharing --

Oh yes! Same here. I did a lot of that sort of thing back then too, especially in my "about me" pages. Unfortunately I did a lot of my moaning and lamenting in the notes of my music mods as well, a lot of which is still sitting there on the Mod Archive for all to see. Ah well, it is what it is!

How significant of an update was it to get everything ready to relaunch?

I basically started again from scratch. I took some of the text from the old pages (especially the games parts, which is the section I started with) and used that as a launching point, but the code is all "brand new". I only knew basic HTML back in the day which is where I started from again this time around, hence ...

I do see some places where you are citing the old magic
<font size="2"></font>
 

Yep, I admit it. I'm still living in the 90s 😆 Since I got back into it I've been learning more and more how to do things properly (I can do basic CSS now, yay!), so I am planning to go through everything and replace all that sort of stuff!

[nobo]

Yep, I admit it. I'm still living in the 90s 😆 Since I got back into it I've been learning more and more how to do things properly (I can do basic CSS now, yay!), so I am planning to go through everything and replace all that sort of stuff!

Eh, if it works it works. Although updating your old knowledge and finding out the new ways people do things can be fun. I've personally hit a point again where I've had enough updated knowledge and just want to stick to what I know again. And there's nothing wrong with that either.

      

Remember these old tablenest layouts lol
https://othala.goeshard.org/static/html/tablenest/

That's one of my old layouts from 2003. I slapped some CSS on there it didn't used to have that makes it pop a bit but it's otherwise very archaic HTML. I encourage you to marvel at the insanity of the code. 

[ValyceNegative]

Welcome back to the webs, Alex! It's such a serendipity to meet a Mod musician in (virtual) person- I have recently opened a Tracker music suggestion thread https://forum.melonland.net/index.php?topic=5961.0 and your gallery would be the perfect fit for it! Actually, I can't wait to take a deep dive and give a good listen to your TMA uploads :3

I love your site! It perfectly brings back the same atmosphere of sites of the late 90s. It's like we never left that Internet era! Sometimes, amidst the pursuit of the perfect web corner, we tend to forget the beauty of simple, clean pages.
If Wayback Machine has archived some of your old pages, you could add them in the About section as some sort of "Version History"!

I wouldn't even worry about using old code conventions- in the IndieWeb, if it works, it works xD I built one of my sites using only table structures and it feels just fine to me!

(Also, if you'd like to exchange banners, I'd be delighted :3 )

[alexwsmith]

Eh, if it works it works. Although updating your old knowledge and finding out the new ways people do things can be fun. I've personally hit a point again where I've had enough updated knowledge and just want to stick to what I know again. And there's nothing wrong with that either.

100% this. I love learning new things, and evolving what I know, and finding new ways of doing stuff. But there does come a point where I get frazzled and have to take a step back for a while. I think I've reached the age where new knowledge pushes out old stuff. It's like, I understand how to create a grid based div container, and order the child divs using CSS, but it's meant that I've forgotten how to tie my shoes. Swings and roundabouts, I guess!

Remember these old tablenest layouts lol https://othala.goeshard.org/static/html/tablenest/
That's one of my old layouts from 2003. I slapped some CSS on there it didn't used to have that makes it pop a bit but it's otherwise very archaic HTML. I encourage you to marvel at the insanity of the code. 

Oh that takes me back. I saw loads of websites with these back then. I never had the patience to try and do one for my own site though.
I've taken a quick look at the code.  Exquisite!

Welcome back to the webs, Alex! It's such a serendipity to meet a Mod musician in (virtual) person- I have recently opened a Tracker music suggestion thread https://forum.melonland.net/index.php?topic=5961.0 and your gallery would be the perfect fit for it! Actually, I can't wait to take a deep dive and give a good listen to your TMA uploads :3

Thank you! It's great to be back 😁 And that is excellent timing on the tracker thread lol! I will check that out a bit later, and I'll post some of my favourite tunes that inspired me back in the day, along side a handful of my best ones. I can't wait to give that a look!!

I love your site! It perfectly brings back the same atmosphere of sites of the late 90s.

Thank you so much! That really means a lot to me, it's exactly what I was going for. 

If Wayback Machine has archived some of your old pages, you could add them in the About section as some sort of "Version History"!

That's exactly what I plan on doing (when I get round to it 😅)! The Wayback Machine has a number of iterations saved, and I found some versions backed on 25 year old CD-Rs that still works!

The very first version seems to be lost to time, but the next version is saved on Wayback - here’s the earliest save from Dec ‘98 Early AlexSite - please forgive the rather aggressive “About Me” page that overshares far more than is reasonable for a personal webpage. I didn't know any better back then!

I wouldn't even worry about using old code conventions- in the IndieWeb, if it works, it works xD I built one of my sites using only table structures and it feels just fine to me!

That’s very true! I guess my only concern is that browsers will drop support for “the old ways” in the future, but I suppose if they did mine wouldn’t be the only site that would break!

(Also, if you'd like to exchange banners, I'd be delighted :3 )

I’d be honoured to exchange banners! I’ve had a little look round your site, I absolutely love your artwork and your characters. I’m going to use the Candy banner, my eye was instantly drawn to that one. I’ll sort that out when I get home a bit later.

I really must sort my own button out though - I knocked it together in 10 mins in ms paint, which is about my level when it comes to artwork. 🤣

[fairyrune]

welcome back, alex! i hadn't heard of tracker music before i saw your site. it makes me want to tinker with the software you recommended. i've been a musician for a large portion of my life, but there's a world of difference between playing an instrument (as i do) and composing something. i admire the skill!

have you been busy browsing new indie sites since you've come "back online"? is there anything about them that surprises you?