– [%5D(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__bnNGgqRugY/SDaIJVrlcOI/AAAAAAAACFI/XlRHXDKvue4/s1600-h/1996.png)
In [January 1998](http://web.archive.org/web/19980124214618/http://www-ee.swan.ac.uk/index.html) the site looked like this. You’ll possibly note that the home page isn’t even about the department! Instead it contains a link to the [actual home page](http://web.archive.org/web/19990220180852/www-ee.swan.ac.uk/DeptEEE/). [%5D(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__bnNGgqRugY/SDaJKVrlcPI/AAAAAAAACFQ/mxTonpXRrV0/s1600-h/1996-home.png) I clearly didn’t know much about Information Architecture then. However to ensure that the site was consistently formatted, I *was* using a templating tool called HTP (which is still [available](http://htp.sourceforge.net/) from sourceforge).
– [%5D(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__bnNGgqRugY/SDaJj1rlcQI/AAAAAAAACFY/g8sTpKqXZog/s1600-h/jan-1997-index.png)In [January 1999](http://web.archive.org/web/19990220180852/www-ee.swan.ac.uk/DeptEEE/) the site was formatted to a corporate style using table layout and had a guestbook!
– By [January 2000](http://web.archive.org/web/20000816224159/www-ee.swan.ac.uk/DeptEEE/) we had style sheets (note that the links turn red [%5D(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__bnNGgqRugY/SDaJ3VrlcRI/AAAAAAAACFg/O5Dsu_ivye8/s1600-h/2000.png)on hover) and custom bullets. The University’s site at this time was using images of text in order to use the Palatino font that the consultants had decided that its corporate branding needed! I was using Times [%5D(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__bnNGgqRugY/SDaK7VrlcTI/AAAAAAAACFw/ZCKR9roqA1I/s1600-h/jan-2000-index.png)Roman Italic! The three column layout was done with tables.
– From 2000 to 2005 the web site design stayed pretty constant. The only thing that changed behind the scenes were that I moved from HTP to the [Perl Template Toolkit](http://template-toolkit.org/) for the site templating.
– [%5D(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__bnNGgqRugY/SDaKQlrlcSI/AAAAAAAACFo/cqt5y5VnhHM/s1600-h/engineering.png)In 2006, the Department finally turned off www-ee.swan.ac.uk and the [engineering web site](http://www.swan.ac.uk/engineering/) was established. This is run inside the University’s Content Management System (CMS). That site is undergoing a relaunch this summer.
Thanks for your valuable input Chris, much appreciated that you chose to share with the wider academic community.
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It was my pleasure. Hope to meet you in person one of these days!
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