This is the current version of the website. No archive post yet!

Archive Video:

Original announcement video (November 2014):

Archive Video:

Original announcement video (March 2014):

Archive Video (August 2015):

Original Archive Entry:

This one might have been my favorite. I was starting to figure out how I wanted to handle all the dynamic content on the site-- that is, through content management systems. The homepage was just a portal, or, as I referred to it, an online business card. There were separate installations of Wordpress for the tech articles and my personal blog; the tech site had a busy-looking theme, while the blog had a simple theme. The forums stayed at the same address, and didn't really change in this iteration, nor did the Livestream page change, although I did dump Livestream and start using Twitch because Livestream lost a recording that I was planning on downloading and uploading to YouTube.

The "Nerd Club" button was there for multiple reasons. Originally, it was a placeholder for a paid service that I planned to launch. I hoped that the empty button would create talk, and once the Nerd on the Street Nerd Club launched, I planned on linking that button to a Webjam page. I've used Webjam internally for website collaboration multiple times in the past, and I loved it for its easy-to-use permissions system and wide range of modules that lets you create a completely different experience for different user-groups. I wanted to create a premium online tech-support community for paying members to enjoy. Unfortunately, not long after the launch of the Nerd Club iteration of the NOTS site, Webjam closed all free accounts and took down any web pages that weren't paying for premium packages. I might or might not peruse the premium path in the future, but for the time being I realized that people wouldn't pay me for online services any time soon. The next thing I planned on using the "Nerd Club" name for was the next version of the website, which you'll read about in the next post.

By this time the website was most certainly moved over from the PowerMac G3 to a Dell Dimension 8400 as the server, which was also hosting our Minecraft and Mumble servers at the time, and running Puppy Linux. I kept the thanks for Maddie Reignagel at the bottom of the page anyway, as I can't thank them enough for all the old Macs they passed my way. Also, I had a thanks to Melinda Grigg for helping with the website's development. She helped code some of the more advanced CSS, such as the hover-shadow buttons and the background-image-as-a-header, as well as the rounded corners. She also made the background image, which I used in another website or two in addition to this one. She said she made it big enough that it would never have to repeat on the screen, but in actuality, anyone with a 1440p monitor will see borders on either side; I didn't have the heart to tell her that at the time, though.

Long story short, in contrast to the Alpha and Beta sites, this iteration was made completely with Aptana Studio, and was designed as a static companion to several other websites with content management systems, rather than as a template to be changed. You can find it at nerdonthestreet.com/gamma.

Original Archive Entry:

Ah, now THIS is more like it. Still not the prettiest thing you'll see around, but this website uses purely CSS elements to spice things up a bit. The excessive hr tags and the "stylized" menu button text were another example of well-intentional experiments that ran awry... but hey, it is the Beta site, after all. Unfortunately, articles still require their own HTML pages at this point, though code cleaned up using Aptana Studio 3 (a web development IDE) was easier to copy-and-paste between pages.

I went ahead and ditched the "floating footer" idea in exchange for a navigation column that expands downward to meet the footer, which I thought looked good "framing" the text. Still a fully text header, and no button images either, though the links next to the channel trailer did give the page more purpose.

Some important notes about development at this time: I did have live streaming set up at this point, using the service "Livestream" at the time. While I've since changed services multiple times, know that the Gamma Site's live page existed, as well as the Nerd on the Street Forums. The Forums represented a big step up for me. They were my first introduction to content management systems, as well as to PHP, mySQL, and basically anything other than plain old HTML/CSS. I spent a long time looking for a theme, and eventually ended up using the same one they used over at the Nodus forums (back before they closed in 2013.) I used myBB for the forums. Both the theme and the CMS were important to me, as before I got into a sort of "forum fever," I absolutely hated them due to being very cluttered, often filled with links, and offering only a simple system of communication.

You can find the website at nerdonthestreet.com/beta.