So exactly how did ruizwashere.com come to be? Well, the domain (http://www.ruizwashere.com) was created and activated on Sunday, May 18, 2008. I encouge everybody to visit every once in a while to see what’s going on with me.
How did it start? Well back in May 2008, I was working on a freelance Photoshop project during company time. A friend with a DSLR camera took a really cool picture of my keychain (which displayed my senior prom photo) and myself working in the background. The picture was really expressive and the angle was perfect. I decided to freelance on it and give it my own twist. A few swirls here, a few splatters there. It looked great, but it still needed a title, a slogan, a watermark, something to complete it, show that it was mine. I felt that just putting “ruiz” would be far too simple. After much thinking and brainstorming, “ruizwashere” was the final product and I liked it.
Finished result.
A few days later, I was going through my usual internet browsing routines. I was browsing through one of my favorite message boards at Neowin.net, which is a website and community full of people who are passionate about technology. In the message boards, there is a small section dedicated to web design. Members can either showcase or ask for help with their own websites. I did not visit this area much due to the fact that I did not have a website and I wasn’t interested in web design at the time. I stumbled into a discussion where a member wanted to create a website but wanted suggestions for a web host. Other members gave their suggestions and personal recommendations.
After looking through all of the recommendations, I found a very appealing host that offered a lot for a very fair price. I was still very hesitant about going through with it because I didn’t have much experience when it came to making websites. I knew very little when it came to HTML and nothing at all when it came to CSS. The only reason why I knew a some HTML was because when I was 13, I was a staff member at a website called Golden Sun Adepts Refuge, which was a fansite dedicated to the popular GameBoy Advance title, Golden Sun. The site was very popular back in 2003, but now it is dead along with the game. You can Google “Golden Sun Adepts Refuge all you want, you’re not gonna find anything at all. The only thing I could find were these two videos I made a long time ago to promote the site. They were uploaded by a member onto Youtube. I thought they were soooo cool at the time but now that I look at them, they look really corny! Man.. fun times as a kid…
Click here for the second one!
UPDATE February 19, 2009 -- I used the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to see if I could track any previous versions of that website from so long ago. To my surprise, I found a few results. Please note that the display of these pages are not 100% accurate due to the fact that they are outdated and links to images, etc. may have expired. It still gives you a good idea of that the site looked like back then. As a staffer, I went by the name of “Rinkukun.” Yeah, such a corny name, but hey, I was still a kid growing up at the time, barely a teenager. Nonetheless, looking back at something like this, to me, feels really surreal. I look back at the posts and contributions I made to the site and realize that I may not have been much help. I probably caused more problems than solutions. Still, good times…
October 14, 2002 -- The early days
July 24, 2003 -- The popular days
ANYWAYS, after a heated 15-minute debate going on in my head, I decided to man up and purchase my domain. The host then charged me, and had my very own personal chunk of the internet set up within a day. All that was left to do was… get started. I was pretty rusty when it came to HTML and I wasn’t too sure if I could really pull it off. So instead of jumping right into the action and making a fool of myself, I decided to take a few days to study HTML and work out the kinks. One thing I noticed while studying, was that the web has changed a lot since 2003. These days, websites rely heavily on another form of web design code called CSS, which I also had to learn along with XHTML. But enough tech talk. During my study period, I wanted to let my friends know that I was going to make a super-cool website that was super cool. So I made a small splash image and set it as the main page for the website.
ruizwashere is coming soon!
After I was done, I changed my Facebook status to “Ruiz Akpan: http://www.ruizwashere.com”. Next thing I knew, everybody was talking to me about my website. “OMG Ruiz! You have a website! It’s gonna look SO COOL!!” “Man foo, that’s dope! Your site is gonna look tight!” I couldn’t believe how much hype a single splash image was generating. This added even more pressure onto me because I knew that whatever I was gonna make, it HAD to be good. Crappiness was not on option. Unfortunately, when it came to making my first layout designs, it was…
Version 1 (Click to view)
This was my very first layout design, which never went public. After many feeble attempts to make it look “good”, I simply gave up and didn’t look back at the site for a week. My morale for the site decreased and I realized that making a web page was going to be harder than I thought. Though I was crushed by reality, I was not defeated. I decided to try my hardest and give it another shot.
Verson 2 (Click to view)
And ruizwashere -- v2 was born. Version 2 was just simple page that explained the site a little bit and nothing more. The page was up from late-May to mid-July 2008. During that time I didn’t do anything for the site. I was too busy focusing on my high school graduation and summer college classes immediately after. When I was finished with all of my summer classes, I finally had some time to work on the site  again. Like version 1, I was still dissatisfied with the layout and didn’t want to continue the site in this direction. So I went back to the drawing board.
Version 3 (Click to view)
And with Version 3, ruizwashere.com was officially up and running. I was really proud with this one. You know that feeling that you get when you accomplish something that was very difficult and you can’t help but to feel very proud about it? Well that’s how I felt, every single time I viewed the page. Instead of praising and idolizing my own work, I decided to get other peoples opinions about the site. Most people enjoyed it, but the fact that it was “too simple” was the biggest complaint. Not only that, but the page was a little sloppy too. I made this layout without a blogging engine in mind. I later placed the CuteNews engine into it so that I could organize my blog entries and allow users to comment. The main problem with it was that it was subject to so much spam. Spammers would just flood the comment entries with garbage. After hearing the complaints enough times, I began to realize that it really was “too simple” and that more needed to be added to it. Here we go again…
Version 4 (Click to view)
Awesome, in a period of only a few months, we’re already at Version 4, which went public in late August 2008. Now, I really liked Version 4 too. I kept it up for a little while, but I still kept recieving the same complains that it was “too simple”. Also, the CuteNews engine was still in there, so I still kept recieving spam no matter how many IP addresses I blocked. While Version 4 was still up, I switched to the WordPress engine and re-designed the entire theme around it, which really wasn’t easy. WordPress is quite advanced compared to other engines so learning the kinks was pretty difficult. Making a theme for WordPress is not like making a theme for a regular page, you have to build the theme around the engine. Whatever. Anyways, I switched to WordPress and the spam issues were gone. But still, the website looked too simple. fml.
Version 5 (Click to view)
I was finally satisfied for good. Version 5 stayed up from early-September 2008 to August 2009. It was a very good layout that nobody could complain about. The only thing I changed over time was the top banner image. At first, it was a picture of me writing into a journal, then I changed it to a picture of my “cool looking” room, and finally to a picture of myself on a couch. The layout was no longer simple and was filled with more information and pages, though they weren’t complete. It’s been over half a year and I’m now getting started on extra pages such as this one.
While version 5 was up, I took a long break from updating the site. I stopped blogging for nearly half a year. I felt really guilty because I told myself I wouldn’t do anything like this, knowing that I pay for it. Soon after I returned to blogging, version 6 went up in late August 2009. It was basically the same structure as version 5, but visually enhanced. As I blogged more, I continued to add new content and features to the site, which resulted in even more bugs and glitches. Pages would sometimes not render correctly, mainly because of my coding for the theme. It was not structured correctly and overall a big mess. It was time for an overhaul.
So finally in December 2009, I decided to change themes. I wanted something new, but I also wanted it to be easy. After doing some research, I found very nice WordPress theme called Pixel. It was simplistic and met all of my needs. I took the theme and modified into my own. The result looks very nice and I’m happy with it. Best of all it took very little time compared to all of the other themes. So yeah, the theme you’re viewing right now is version 7 and it’s here to stay for a while.
Thank you for taking to time to read. Revised December 17, 2009.
Ok my friend i first want to say that your site has come a long way :) to be honest you prob know but your site became really good, im jealous lol i mean you can see it every time a new picture comes up theres somthing different about that one wither it be the color or the style or anything. its like your now thinking about the littlest details in that picture and those are the ones that people look at. Your site is really easy to go threw too. every page makes you want to click to the next one to see whats next and im starting to get that “i wonder what he will post next” feeling you know. your time spent on this site is really paying off. and keep with those jokes while your writing your entries because it really seems like your talking to the person reading it in real life lol i know you so i would know haha. propz on the colors of the brush marks on the sides lol i knew you prob change them up from the last time i saw them haha. but hey man keep ya head up you doin very well when it comes to this k. and nobodys stuff iz the same az yours lol cuz your beast like that. but hey man keep “LiViN iN sTyLe”
-Devo
Wow, holy crap. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to catch your comment. I know it’s really late, but thank you so much for your comment, it’s really encouraging for me to read something like this. It makes me just want to strive even harder to use my site to reach out to more people.
Again thanks, I’m very thankful that you appreciate the work that I do. :)
teat
tstst
Ok my friend i first want to say that your site has come a long way :) to be honest you prob know but your site became really good, im jealous lol i mean you can see it every time a new picture comes up theres somthing different about that one wither it be the color or the style or anything. its like your now thinking about the littlest details in that picture and those are the ones that people look at. Your site is really easy to go threw too. every page makes you want to click to the next one to see whats next and im starting to get that “i wonder what he will post next” feeling you know. your time spent on this site is really paying off. and keep with those jokes while your writing your entries because it really seems like your talking to the person reading it in real life lol i know you so i would know haha. propz on the colors of the brush marks on the sides lol i knew you prob change them up from the last time i saw them haha. but hey man keep ya head up you doin very well when it comes to this k. and nobodys stuff iz the same az yours lol cuz your beast like that. but hey man keep “LiViN iN sTyLe”
-Devo