I found my first website.

After years of scouring through old emails and searching the depths of Google, I finally stumbled across what I think was my first ever website — or at least the first one I made in HTML. Naturally it’s far too embarrassing to share the link, but it is an absolute treasure trove of internet clichés.

For context — the website was made in 2001/2002. I would have been 11 or 12. I was a giant wrestling nerd.

• “Soon, I got bored with making web sites so I got into Visual Basic.” (Spoiler alert: the whole Visual Basic thing didn’t work out, you make websites for a living now.)

• Obviously, it was in Comic Sans. (My hometown was definitely relevant to the contents of the site).

<font color="#FFFFFF" face="COMIC SANS MS"><b><u>WWE Harrow </u></b></font>

• There is a marquee tag inside a font tag inside a table tag inside a center tag.

• There were GIFs.

Even the bullet points were gifs:

<img src=”Bullet2.gif” width=”15" height=”13">

• And some Flash, that for some reason referred to a file in my local Program Files directory?!

<embed src="file:///C:/Program Files/3D Flash Animator 3.3/movie_11.swf" align="baseline" border="0" width="640" height="480" quality="high" bgcolor="#FF0000" wmode="window" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash">

• The one other page that doesn’t work relies on some third party javascript.

“This is some WWE news updated all da time. Thanks to Smash Wrestling and Firetank 4 this.”

• This was back when Web traffic was a tad more distributed, and webmasters were acutely aware of all the power they had to influence the masses.

(Spoiler alert: nobody did)

• It’s Albert’s birthday today.

Spoiler alert: nobody knows who Albert is

• I used to read a lot when I was a kid.

“After I read his book, he immediatley entered my Top 5, either 2 or 3. His book was easily the best book I have ever read, and I have read it about 6times now. I’ve also read his 2nd book.”

(Spoiler alert: you read better books)

• There’s even an interactive element!

This site must have been made in the transition period between WWF and WWE — which is why some of the titles are inconsistent. The disparity in the capitalisation between favourite and Favourite however is inexplicable.

Spoiler alert: the form action is just a mailto, so the results literally get sent to my email as a query string.

• Semantic HTML wasn’t on the forefront of my mind back then.

I don’t think I knew how to margin

• Color contrast wasn’t particularly great either.

The inexplicable background change on one page didn’t really help.

Spoiler alert: the real 1s aren’t there anymore.

• There was a links page, because, you know, SEO.

“If some of them don’t work or you want your website on then email me here. Plz only e-mail me once.”

(Spoiler alert: nobody emailed)

• It’s good to know I was just as self deprecating then as I am now:

Spinaroonie! is a game I made my self. It dont have much 2 do wid wrestlin but it is a casino game based on Booker T. Very Crap. Its the first game I’ve ever made.

“This is a site dedicated to WWE. It’s not very good but itll get better”

(Spoiler alert: it didn’t.)

• That last little intro line was apparently a good place to put a random link to an exe file. (spoiler alert: it doesn’t really work anymore).

<p><font color="#FFFFFF" face="COMIC SANS MS">This is a site
dedicated to WWE. It's not very good but itll get better.</font><a href="roster.Exe">Roster Editor</a></p>

Finally, in an unprecedented act of mercy, Angelfire removed the site in 2004.