In realizing that this is at least the third re-design for majordojo in a year, I was curious to look back even further and go back to when majordojo and my online existence was born to see how it has changed not just over the past twelve months, but the past six years. Thanks to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, this was incredibly easy. What follows is a little screenshot history of majordojo.

Majordojo was born as a hand edited HTML web site. I got the name "majordojo" during my morning commute. I was sitting in the back seat of carpool thinking about the concept of a "dojo" for some reason when an AC Transit bus rolled by with an ad that somehow remarked on majordomo. I thought at the time that the play on words was really clever so I bought the domain as soon as I got to work. I think the name is far less clever now, but so be it.

2003

In 2003 I discovered Movable Type (version 2.63 to be exact) and majordojo turned into a blog of sorts. When I first started using Movable Type I was far less interested in the blogging aspect of the software and more interested in a web based interface to help me manage a web site. The fact that Movable Type can so easily be used as a generic publishing tool has always been its greatest strength.

2004

This was the year I thought that left-handed navigation menus were sooo 2003. Oh yeah, and I discovered tabs.

Later in the year I learned how easy CSS really was. So I borrowed liberally from what I thought was the best pure CSS design out there at the time: Mozilla, to produce a pure-CSS powered majordojo.

2005

This was the year I started working at Six Apart.

I forget the inspiration for the design, but I am certain it had something to do with a brief obsession with rounded corners that most likely stemmed from the fact that I was working for one the earliest Web 2.0 companies out there. And what is Web 2.0 without rounded corners?

2006

This was the year of The Style Contest. I was sincerely hoping that my favorite design, Red Curve, would win. I didn't. But I adapted it for majordojo anyways.

But alas, I grew tired of it, and had a brief love affair with 2813; a theme I loved for its cleanliness. So I adapted it to use Movable Type's default template set.

But as I said, it was just a brief affair. 2813 would not last. I just didn't feel like the design worked well with ads, and I felt there was just always too much negative space everywhere.

And so, I changed majordojo again. This time I drew my inspiration from Chris Pearson's design for 901am (ok, I copied it).

This most current iteration uses Movable Type's default HTML standard as well, proving I think yet again, just how adaptable the standard is.

And there you have it. The brief history of majordojo. And now to start looking for the next design for majordojo...