About this site
The biography of a website.
DavidDaniels.com predates Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn — and this is its story. Much of what you see dated before 2020 is a recovery project, pieced back together from the Wayback Machine, Flickr, SmugMug, and other corners of the internet where this site once lived.
2001
The domain is registered in November. The site goes up as a simple static page. The internet is loud, slow, and full of promise.
2003
AOL pretends to be the internet. I switch to being a true web surfer.
2004
MySpace lets new users learn HTML and CSS to build their own spaces. I’m one of them. Half the early web design education in America happens here.
2005
The site converts to WordPress. It joins the early blogging boom — content management is the new frontier.
2006
I join “The FaceBook” with a college email address, before it opens to the public.
2008
I join Twitter in May, when it’s still SMS-only. Long before Elon. Social media becomes a key way to share posts and find readers.
2009
I buy my first iPhone — the 3GS. The mobile web revolution hits home. The site gets its first mobile-friendly tweaks.
2010–12
Responsive design lands. The site adapts to the explosion of phones and tablets. HTML5 and CSS3 become the new normal.
2015
The #Travel category begins. Notes from the road become a recurring format.
2017
I move to Charlotte, NC. The site follows seamlessly.
2020
March 13 — lockdowns begin. The site becomes a creative outlet as the world shifts heavily online.
2022–23
I start experimenting with AI tools — for writing, for images, for site improvements. The early ChatGPT era.
2024–25
Quiet years of cleanup: better performance, accessibility, and modern web standards under the hood.
2026
The 25th anniversary redesign. Twenty-five years of evolving with the web — from static pages to a modern, AI-assisted platform. Which brings us here.
— Twenty-five years in, still figuring it out.