10 Years of Bad Layouts and Inept Photoshopping

Wiskate.com over the years (click images for a larger version):

We’ll have to call this one an “artist’s re-creation” since I haven’t been able to turn up a copy of the first version of the site. The text is the real “hello world” first update that I found in an “old news” html file in a folder though. So shy, so wide eyed. Note the sweet Hi8 video grab faux film sequence of Nate doing a noseblunt in that Racine warehouse. Photoshop 3.0 surely had some great filters. That isn’t the actual 1998 header though, and I really don’t remember what the original logo did look like. Probably horrible and dumb.

Wow, the utter essence of Photoshop pre 2000. The extreme horniness for bad filters can never again be matched. Again, video grab of Nate noseblunting. Pasted onto a goddamn faux floppy disc label! My mind is blown. The tan fog and “100100100101001” (digital, get it?!) in the background are just icing on the early internet cake. I might have to bring this logo back, I’m so in love.

I think this was the very first thing that appeared at the wiskate.com URL. A sort of placeholder from when I moved the site from it’s original not so easy to remember address to the much more serious real domain name. It was sort of a big deal to have a registered domain back then! Maybe. Again, note the sweet Photoshop 3.0 filter action. At least I didn’t apply a lens flare.

It seems I kept the tan fetish alive after I redesigned the site for the new address. I actually think this layout is pretty decent, especially for how old it is. Notice how often video clips were added. I must have had much higher stamina at that young age. The little banner ad to the CKY site (I think we traded links) certainly is a nice touch.

The ever so lovely “jizz logo” era. This is when the site was at its peak of popularity probably mostly due to the fact that there actually weren’t many skateboarding websites on the internet at all at that point. This also is when I started filming with Greg a lot, Ben was really getting a lot better, I met a lot of other good Milwaukee dudes, and I got my first (and only, I still use the same one) 3 chip video camera so the quality of the video clips was much improved and traffic kept quickly increasing. In fact, it got so popular that we were kicked off our host and were m.i.a. for awhile while I figured that situation out. I ended up hosting the video clips on a different server for a site that posted video of live shows of indie and punk bands. I think I paid them only once and they soon stopped updating their site. Their site did stay online in an abandoned state for several years afterward and they never again asked me for money. Bonus!

As soon as I saw the baby punch in Nate’s sketch book I knew that it had to be used for a new layout. I’m not sure what’s up with the Halloween year round color scheme, but those were much scarier times. I think this is when I got more serious about trying to make a video and I wanted to save the good clips, so this is when the neglect started.

Speaking of scary times! I had almost forgotten about this layout, no trace of it exists on my computer and I think it was used for less than a year. The little banner and news update for the premiere of my video is a nice piece of nostalgia. The “I PUT OUT” license plate still blows my mind to this day. I’ve yet to witness a better personalized vanity item

Here we have the evolution of several (thankfully) unused layouts into…

…this stupid thing. I’m sure most of you remember this quite well since it was used for three maybe even four years. In fact, some remnants of this layout still were used in some of the backwater sections of the site up until just a few months ago. I wanted it to be as obnoxious as possible and I think I quite succeeded because it bums me out just to see it. This layout represents the ups and downs of the site quite well. It featured times of updates several times a day, and also periods of no new stuff for months. Most of those updates were just non-skateboarding nonsense, but a little bit of shredding related stuff did sneak in there once in awhile. All those updates are still available if you navigate to the older pages via the page number links on the bottom of the page.

I don’t have any screen shots of the various versions of the message boards that were on the site over the years, and for that I am thankful. That level of stupidity deserves to be forgotten.

That brings us up to date with the various versions of wiskate.com over its decade long existence. This current layout is already way too old but I certainly don’t feel like trying to make a new one. At least I’ve done about 10,000 times better at adding new video stuff and skate photos this last year. In fact, I’m quite sure that there has been more skateboarding stuff featured on the site this year than the last five previous years combined. Less nonsense, more skateboarding. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.