haywalk.github.io as of 2017-02-14Written 2025-04-03
As of today, I have been self-hosting this website for five years. Five years ago today, bored out of my skull because of the COVID lockdown, I dug my 2GB Raspberry Pi 4B (which I named spacehippie) out of its box that it had been in since Christmas, installed Apache, and registered haywalk.ca. That December I would upgrade to a 4GB Pi 4B (beeblebrox), and then four years later I'd upgrade again, this time to a ThinkCentre M700 (marvin).
I figured that this occasion would be as good a time as any to look back on some old versions of my website from through the years.
haywalk.github.ioThese are screenshots of my old GitHub Pages site, haywalk.github.io, which I set up in 2017. Before then, I was using a dodgy Russian hosting provider, but that site was identical to the site in the initial commit of my GitHub Pages repo (the first image below). This was what taught me how to use GitHub!
This version of the site was me trying to be as '90s as I possibly could be. I learned HTML from a 90s handout and made the most obnoxious site ever!
haywalk.github.io as of 2017-02-14My first revision was to tone things down a bit. I based this version of the site loosely off of Linus Åkesson's site.
haywalk.github.io as of 2017-11-25From 2018 until I started self-hosting, I was trying to make the site simultaneously obnouxiously '90s and offensively Spartan:
haywalk.github.io as of 2018-02-22
haywalk.github.io as of 2018-10-27www.haywalk.caThis was the year I set up my server and began self-hosting. I ditched my previous site and started from scratch. I was more of a techno-minimalist at the time, so I initially tried to make the site as offensively Spartan as possible.
haywalk.ca as of 2020-04-15
haywalk.ca as of 2020-04-28Eventually, I decided I wanted to upgrade my site's appearance, and came up with this design, with dropdown menus done in CSS:
haywalk.ca as of 2020-09-26However, I became fed up with the drop downs, as now I felt that the site was too modern. Inspired by Luke Smith's site at the time, I came up with this revision, introducing lists in columns, which I would keep for several years:
haywalk.ca as of 2020-12-16The revisions in 2021 were simply tweaks to the color scheme:
haywalk.ca as of 2021-01-20
haywalk.ca as of 2021-06-18
haywalk.ca as of 2021-11-16
haywalk.ca as of 2021-11-22And the one revision in 2022 was much of the same, this time returning to what I refer to as the "green machine" theme of early 2020:
haywalk.ca as of 2022-05-172023 saw the introduction of what I call the "Halloween" theme, which has persisted until today (at least in dark mode):
haywalk.ca as of 2022-09-21The summer of 2024 saw the first departure from the column-list system in years: I made my site into a blog, with posts in reverse-chronological order. I also added the Hat Man logo:
haywalk.ca as of 2024-09-13
The only major revisions this year have been replacing the remaining column-lists with emoji, and adding light mode. Here's the site today!
haywalk.ca as of 2025-04-03, in dark mode
haywalk.ca as of 2025-04-03, in light modeThis has been a walk through every major revision of my website. Self-hosting has been incredibly rewarding, and has taught me almost everything I know about Linux administration, networks, troubleshooting, reading manuals, and keeping backups. And I don't ever plan on stopping!