This is the final post in my series of broken links and digital preservation. From a how-to guide to resurrecting old websites, code fixes and storing them on the web. Below are some of the projects I saved and deployed. They are a mix of university projects from the early 2000s, an old agency website and a WordPress design project.
Nano
This was a university project from ~2003. It was a mini-site brochure-style website for a (fake) company. I had to rebuild the database for the news and portfolio section. The project demos don't work because they used Shockwave which is no longer supported. It has some funky transparent PNG rollovers on the products page; a truly monumental task considering the lack of support for them at the time, in Microsoft's dominant browser Internet Explorer 6.
Visit the project at https://nano.trovster.com
myMove
This tiny-looking website was designed to work on mobile devices. Again, this is a university project from ~2003, so this was before the iPhone and modern mobile devices you use to browse the Web now.
The project idea was to show student housing located around the university, split into different zones so you could focus on a specific area. You could view property information and then add the ones you are interested into a shortlist. I had to rebuild the database for the properties, so there are only a few examples. Incredibly, there were still some of the original property images that could be used. The shortlist functionality isn't supported in the static HTML version.
Visit the project at https://mymove.trovster.com
Creation
This is a completely bespoke website that I built when working in my first web development role at a digital creative agency called Creation.
Luckily an export of the database existed in a backup but I had to recreate the mod_rewrite rules to make it function correctly. The website was designed and built around 2007, before responsive web design became the norm, so it is fixed-width and optimised for 800-width browsers.
There is some AJAX functionality – that actually uses XML! – which doesn't work correctly with the static HTML, but because this was built with progressive enhancement the pages still work correctly. The contact page doesn't use integrated Google Maps – which has become synonymous with maps – instead has static images representing three zoom scales!
The real treasure trove is the news section. It features some posts about Microformats and web conferences I attended at the time, such as dConstruct and Future of Web Design. It appears my favourite movies or bands haven't changed much in over fifteen years!
Visit the project at https://creation.trovster.com
Design and Hype
This was a WordPress-based website that was designed by Aaron Tolley. Although an export of the database existed in the backup, the majority of the images are missing and only a few pages show the lovely content.
The project idea was to showcase interesting designs and art from around the web and try out experimental development techniques. It uses WordPress's categories and tags to group and filter content. It has sideways scrolling of thumbnails, JavaScript filtering using Isotope and infinite-scroll loading of paginated content.
Visit the project at http://designandhype.trovster.com
Firefox
This was a little fansite for the web browser Firefox. I have been using Firefox as my main browser since it was named Phoenix (2002). I built the website to promote alternative browsers to Internet Explorer, which was the main Web browser at the time. For some reason, it is aligned to the right, but it features four different alternative styles you can switch between.
Visit the project at https://firefox.trovster.com