I finally completed a long overdue redesign of my site.  I would like to take this opportunity and share how this site first  appeared.

Back in 2006, I helped one of my friends to translate texts for his website.  To return a favor, he offered me a domain name and some space on his server. I had some basic knowledge of HTML, so I decided to set up a website of my own. Dreamweaver template, couple hours of work and in February of 2007 I published the first version of my site. At that time, shmatkov.com domain was already taken, so I went for shmatkov.info (a couple of years later shmatkov.com became available, I grabbed it, and now the site is accessible through both domains).

Shmatkov.info back in 2007

Since the launch, I added a blog in 2009, then a Russian version in 2013. Can’t say that I took a good care of my site due to poor time management lack of time. However, I always tried to introduce something new to make the site look fresh and appealing.

Blog added in 2009

Russian version added in 2013

Still I felt that the website lacks some modern functionality and its graphic design looks outdated.

This August I finally had some free time and I spent it on the website redesign. WordPress template, Sela theme and here it comes – now my site has a fresh and responsive design, which looks good on all kind of devices, including mobile phones and tablets. I also re-wrote some content.

I believe that I still have a lot of work to do, but at the moment, I feel very satisfied with what I have achieved. My main goal now is to update the site regularly, especially the blog.

In this post I used Internet archive Way Back Machine to add screenshots of my site pages in the past.