The History of Southanuk
24th July 1999 – Southan UK is created
On this day in the summer of 1999, Joseph Southan created his very first website called Southan UK. At first it was a primitive site with not a lot on it. The majority of the pages contained less than 7 lines of text and many references to Pokémon. However, there was very little other content on the site. Since the site was created on free web space provided by Freeserve and ZY.com there was little I could do to the site and eventually I craved a greater challenge.
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Click here to have a gander
2001 – SouthanUK moves to Blueyonder web space
In late 2001, after getting broadband internet, I moved the website to my Blueyonder web space. This allowed me to branch out and explore more web technologies that I wanted to try. It was around this time that I found flash and subsequently started animating small things in flash.
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In an attempt to make my website seem fresh and inspiring, I created a section to the website totally out of flash and named it SOK. The SOK flash system went through 4 very different iterations but in the long run could not satisfy my need for flexibility.
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Archive.org is awesome – Click to see some history
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24th June 2004 – Southanuk moves to privately hosted web space
Again my thirst to try out new web languages meant I had to vacate my Blueyonder web space and switch to a private web host. However, this also meant I had my very own domain name; www.southanuk.co.uk . The expansion in web space and capabilities allowed me to further develop Southanuk [the name lost its capitalisation and space to become Southanuk.] In the initial months following the transition from Blueyonder, I stuck with the old and failing SOK system. In a delightful change of effort the site became part flash and part dynamic PHP site. PHP was fairly new to me at the time so all I could do was create a basic site with a basic admin back end system. However, this too became too arduous for me to maintain and so in a big change of direction I switched to the blog system, WordPress. This was the most flexible and easy to maintain situation for me. Through many, many changes in theme, Southanuk has come to be the site it is today.
Older Southanuks? Click here!
Today:
Southanuk is a fully featured blog with Facebook Connect and OpenID integration. Delivering podcasts and posting videos, Southanuk has come a long way from the days where the only content was Pokémon facts.
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I do hope you continue to enjoy the content that is being posted on the site and continue to follow the site’s progress. Here’s to 10 more years of Southanuk!