Hello World! The Story of My First Website.

Everyone always remember their Firsts. The first time they rode a bicycle, the first time they spoke in public, the First job interview. First time is always special because these experiences are what determine whether you will continue doing the same or never try this again. This is the story is of my first website.

The first website I created was for me. At the time I was interested in becoming an animator and was pursuing it as my career. I had some amateur works good enough for a beginner show reel. Most people carried their show reel with them in CD/DVD or pen drive. I wanted to put them on the internet. It was 2008 and there were very good, reliable video hosting sites like YouTube and Vimeo, But for some reason I was obsessed with hosting my show reel in my own website. the problem was, I had no money nor had a clue on how to build a website.

Luckily we had gotten a new computer that year ( yes, I got my first computer at the age of 20 ). It was a PC by a local manufacturer in India called Zenith. It had a Intel Pentium 4 processor with 256MB of RAM and 256GB Hard Disk. it was the best PC I could buy at that time, it was fast too, Like light reaching us from the sun it boot up in 8mins. However, it was good enough for programming not so much for animation. I had taken up a internet connection from our trusty BSNL, 2mbps with 2GB FUP. well it was either this or back to a dial up connection.

This is the actual model I had.

Apparently, that’s all I needed. It was not easy though. I followed a lot of tutorials, reverse engineered other websites and somehow I finished the website. but that's not all. You have to host the damn thing and hosting has a completely different learning curve which you can only learn by trial and error. on top of that it costs you money. Thankfully there were many free hosting services, not as awesome as the services we have today but still they worked. Found a free hosting service along with a free domain provider. My first domain was “ganirockz.co.cc” (I know, stop laughing). and then changed it to vfxboy.co.cc (as if this was better). In fact there is still a faint snapshot of it in the internet archive.

Well It was alive for sometime.

Yes it was all copy paste programming and hacks from all over the internet. The site was more of a Frankenstein’s monster than an elegant portfolio website, but hey it was live and kicking. I sent the link to all my friends in Facebook. I put the URL of the website in all my profiles in the internet, shamelessly plugged my website into every conversation I was having with anybody.

Was I satisfied? NO.

Now I wanted every flashy feature I saw in the internet on my website too. Long story short by the end of that month I was creating My own WordPress templates.

My website kept getting better over time. Unfortunately I cannot say the same about my animation skills. Open source culture in animation isn’t as open as in the world of programming. The tools used like Autodesk Maya or Adobe after Effects are really expensive. The resources required to learn and develop your skills as an animator were all either inaccessible or unaffordable.

At the end of my failed journey as a animator I realized I had a thing for building websites, so moved toward programming and never looked back ever since, which brings us to the reason why I am writing this post. For the last ten years I’ve been consuming all the resources I could get my hands on, but never even wrote a comment or raised an issue in GitHub. I am senior fullstack developer now and over the years I have created many websites, web apps. solved complex problems. faced many challenges and I owe all my success to the open source community.

Everything I know I learned from the internet and its time I gave something back.

I created my first website in 2008. In 2018 I am creating my new website. but this time its for sharing what I know, not to showcase.

My new year’s resolution for 2018 is to contribute as much as possible to community, By sharing all that I know and learn through blogs and tutorials.

I know life will always get in the way but I am going to follow a rule. No matter how busy or lazy I am, I will dedicate one hour of my day to contributing to open source, either by sharing knowledge or by lending a hand with my skills.

Happy coding.