This website is one of the first websites I have created.

History

The firstversion looked very bad: there were animated GIFs and frames that gave the website a very unprofessional look. Sadly I haven’t any screenshot of this version.

The second version was a bit better: I had discovered PHP, that allowed me to replace the frames by includes. But my free host didn’t provide any database, so all pages were saved in text files.

This architecture didn’t ease the modifications I had to do: generation of an RSS feed, creation of a simple administration interface, change of design…

Present state

A few years ago, I changed of free host, and I rebuilt completly the website to use a database and a homemade template system. I changed the design too (but the present design is still far from being XHTML valid).

You can see the website of “Le fil à soi” in its present version.

Conclusions

I am not yet satified by the design of the website, but I am limited by my skills in graphic design.

If you have to build a website for a very small business too, you should use a Content Management System (CMS) (drupal for example). It will allow you to reuse themes and plugins, and to customize the website as your client want very rapidly.

The next step for me would probably be to migrate this website to a CMS, and to convince the owners that they should pay for a real host and domain name.