I’ve used the Internet for about 10 years and I’ve had a website for about 8. I’m sure many of my memories are similar to other webmasters.

I decided to share some of the most interesting, and most embarrasing, memories of web ‘design’ and general use of the web which I have.

I think it demonstrates the progress I, and webmasters in general, have made that we’ve stopped some of these barbaric practices.

• Remember when you used a WYSIWYG editor? I used one called firstSite, which you can’t even buy on Amazon marketplace today. It was pretty user friendly though, having simple FTP as well as more complex facilities such as the ability to insert applets! Eventually, I progressed onto Dreamweaver and finally onto dynamic CMSes which didn’t even require an editor!
• Remember when you used your ISP’s free web hosting? I used NTL’s for quite a few years but I eventually needed more webspace and the ability to use PHP etc.
• Remember when you searched for free hosting, after you stopped using your ISP’s? I did, and I remember the number of ads I got. On the whole part, these free webhosts were pretty unreliable with the exception of Bravehost, who unfortunately filled my sites with lots of adverts.
• Remember when you used to have a guestbook? I had one which was always full of lots of spammy compliments which I naïvely believed!
• Remember when you tried to make a form for the first time? I do, and I remember wondering why it didn’t work. If only I realised I needed formmail, and a button why simply said ’submit’ wouldn’t do unless I made it POST.
• Remember when, after giving up making your own form, you turned to a site like Bravenet? I do. I remember using Bravenet for everything from site search to polls to guestbooks. The amazing thing is that Bravenet are still about, but now they call these ‘widgets’. How very 2 point oh of them.
• Remember when you used to use Blogger? Perhaps not, if you’re a blogger who started on WordPress.com, but I remember Blogger. Amazingly, it was probably much more flexible than WordPress.com but even self-hosted Blogger didn’t compare in flexibility to self-hosted WordPress. In all honesty, a CMS with pretty much no support for anything dynamic is bound to fail. I remember detesting Blogger’s comment system, as it had no Gravatar or TrackBack support, so I had to turn to HaloScan. Poor Azhar still uses it.
• Remember MovableType?
• Remember your first comment? Honestly, I can’t and my comments were lost in my MovableType to WordPress switch
• Remember when TLA worked? Before nasty Google started to penalise?
• Remember using blogging traffic exchanges, like BlogMad and BlogExplosion? A bit embarrasing, I know, but I came across Azhar, Paul, Danette and Sarah there… so it isn’t all bad! In all honestly, traffic exchanges gave me the initial readers I needed.
• Remember when some of the top blogs around were members of 9rules? Remember when Mashable, Rev2 and Paul Stamatiou were?
• Remember Solution Watch, which at one point was one of the most prestigious Web 2.0 blogs online?
• Remember when you used a desktop blogging client? For some reason, I thought it would be wise to do this until only a few months ago. Looks like I wasted $20 on ecto.
• Remember when you tried to get OS X running on your PC… back when Macs were PowerPC based.
• Remember before OS X existed and it could be argued that Macs were inferior to PCs?

Please excuse this awfully punctuated post, but if you have any similar memories feel free to add them to the comments.

I love Adium, which is a Mac multi-network IM client. Today saw the release of Adium X 1.3, which added some essential features, which have been missing for some time.

One of these missing features which this version adds is particularly useful for me: MSN personal messages. MSN is the most popular IM protocol in the UK and this, therefore, is particularly important. Ever since my switch to OS X, I’ve been missing the ability to see people’s personal messages (whether it be their status, their juicy gossip or their wit). In fact, the only way I could view them before was using a single-network MSN client, like aMSN or Microsoft Messenger, or this dated, homebrewed and unreliable custom build of Adium. Adium achieves this by using the msn-pecan plug-in for its library, libpurple (the library it was in common with Pidgin).

Another useful option is adding a search option to contact lists, allowing you to quickly get someone’s email address or quickly provide the IM address of a buddy to another buddy.

The new version also adds support for Facebook IM, MobileMe, several new icons, redesigns the ‘Get Info’ option on contacts to be more Inspector-like and performance upgrades.

Adium 1.3 supports Adium’s position as the prime OS X chat client and adds some much needed features and in general just makes Adium much more intuitive.

Adium 1.3 will run on a Mac with OS X 10.4.0 or higher.

(Direct download link)

Whilst I’m sure 100s of other blogs have covered this before, something I feel invaluable are Wikipedia user scripts. These aren’t Greasemonkey scripts, but rather changes you make at the Wikipedia end. User scripts allow things ranging from previews of links, provide rich text editors to changing the links of ISBN numbers to your preferred site.

Once you have a Wikipedia account, you can install some pre-chosen user scripts by logging in and going to your ‘my preferences’ page and then clicking ‘Gadgets’ and selecting the ones you want.

An alternative way to install scripts, or scripts which aren’t supported by the automatic installer, is by typing in Special:MyPage/monobook.js in the search box and clicking ‘go’. On this page, go to edit and in a separate window/tab go to the list of scripts at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts. On this page, choose the scripts you want and follow the installation instructions. To see the scripts, you might need to do a hard refresh by holding shift + refresh in Firefox or control + F5 in IE and/or purging the Wikipedia cache.

Some user scripts are specialised for Wikipedia power editors, but others like Navigation Popups are useful to pretty much everyone and once you’ve installed it, Wikipedia won’t seem right without them!

If you’re not using the Monobook skin, firstly you’re mad and secondly you’ll have to use the .js pages listed at this page as opposed to monobook.js.

This post is sponsored by Park Let.

Park Let is a website which allows its users to rent, buy, sell or lease a parking space. Park Let explains it was set up due to the founders’ experience regarding parking in public car parks in the City of London, which they found were often unsafe, unclean, expensive and full, and that they set up the service as they realised a large number of residences and companies did not use their car parking.

Park Let allows people or companies with spare car parking spaces to let or sell them, and allows those you need them to rent or buy them. Park Let takes a 15% commision from the landlord on rentals (in addition to a £20 admin fee for the first month) and 2.5% for sales, which is quite reasonable.

Available car parking spaces range from ones in secure, underground carparks in central London to driveways. Prices differ too: a secure, underground carpark in EC1 could set you back £300/month whilst a driveway in Ripon will, contastingly, only cost £55/month.

Park Let attempts to be safe and fair, too. It allows people with the spaces to specify whether their spaces are available between Monday and Friday or all week. It also says that, like a normal carpark, that the tenant leaves their vehicle at their own risk and that they are responsible for any damage. Park Let takes responsibility for collection of payment off the tenant via Direct Debit and will assist the landlord in the event of non-payment.

Park Let has a nice interface, you search for a parking space using a Google Map which is a useful visual representation of the area and allows you to visualise the space’s location.

Park Let is an easy-to-use, good value and innovative site. If you’re in need of a parking space (or you have one spare!), you might as well check it out!