The Evolution and History of Saturday Morning Central

Yesterday I launched the newest (and hopefully improved) design for Saturday Morning Central. December 14th was kind of an important day for the site because it marked the one year anniversary of what I like to call SMC Prime, or, the not-launching-the-site-and-only-running-it-for-a-month version.

Now with 100% less pink!* *excluding 80sTees ads

SMC started as I was fiddling around with web design in 2006. I’d always been obsessed with cartoons, toys, games, and pop culture, and I thought it would be fun to try my hand at running a site. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing, so I designed it using tables, which is the ancient 90s way of designing websites (oddly X-Entertainment is still using tables, ahem), and the site was only updated a few times before I abandoned it.

Circa 2006

Thankfully my design skills started improving slightly, and about a year later I began thinking about revamping the site. I still didn’t really have a plan or know what I was doing, but in this version I added a blog. Version 2.0 launched sometime in the fall of 2007, and was updated a few times before being abandoned again.

Circa 2007

After this I fell in love with WordPress and actually learned how to design and develop websites in a modern way. I was busy with school and life, and didn’t think much about Saturday Morning Central for a looong time.

Then, around a year ago, I decided to ahead and relaunch the site and actually try to do something with it. On December 14th, 2008 I finally took the “Coming Soon” page down and started blogging.

This design lasted a few months.

Version 3.5 didn’t last very long either, but at least I started posting more.

I changed things up a bit with version 4, but I was dying to get rid of the pink once and for all. I improved the way posts were displayed and added a featured gallery on the homepage, but I still wasn’t very happy with it, hence the new design.

I still have some cool features that I intend to implement soon, and if you find any bugs please let me know.

Sorry for such a long post, but I thought it would be amusing to see the ugly beginnings of the site, because after all, this is a nostalgia-related blog.