Yesterday I was notified that I registered on WordPress.com for the first time fifteen years ago. I wasn’t going to mention it but Matt blogged a screenshot of his notification so it piqued my interest and curiosity.
I decided to look up what WordPress.com looked like back then, and it was a very simple message. There was no way to sign up. Nothing to hint at what it would eventually become. It wasn’t until later in the month when a registration form was added.
I took a quick look at what I was blogging about in July 2005. Wow, I used to post a lot didn’t I? See how easy it is to dive back into history? Try do that with Twitter and Facebook!
On the 26th I did blog about WordPress.com inviting people to sign up. Four reactions only but Matt’s post has more comments on it.
I was concerned about the price of petrol in 2005. I paid €1.05/lt on July 27th and Tesco announced they were going to increase prices to €1.20/lt. It hasn’t been that price in the last decade but it did hit a low point during the recent lockdown. I’ve been tracking fuel prices since around 2010 so I should make a blog post about that sometime. One thing it does reveal is working from home saves fuel. We refill the car once every 2 weeks usually.
That sent me scurrying off to find out when my first WordPress self-hosted post was – 4 Sep 2005. What a different world that was way back on version 1.5, and so much easier to edit posts on the fly rather than in a desktop app and pray that the upload/update didn’t mess up the entire site.
Things change with time, mostly for the better, but I have to admit I use the browser for 99% of all my editing and still use the classic editor on my photoblog because of the tag tree.
I would not like to go back to 1.5 times. Almost all the time updates work with little or no intervention. No need to ssh into my server, wget a zip file and copy it over my install. Ugh!
BTW – I love that you found Ghost Town in a museum. That tune is going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day ..