Astralmeta.com is an old website I created way back in 2013. See the screenshot above (courtesy of Archive.org’s Wayback Machine). It started as blogspot site (called blog sites back in the days), which was eventually transferred to a hosting service running on a WordPress-powered website. Back then, I don’t know any programming. I was merely editing Blogger’s XML Template to design the blog site and I know the design was not too shabby, but I couldn’t say it’s that pretty good either although I could boast that the site is 100% W3C compliant. Back then, being a 100% W3C compliant web designer is already something. You are a bloody perfectionist! But nowadays, it’s meh. There are now a lot of very skilled and talented individuals out there who can do the same and more, and with that comes innovation, aside from massive competition of course.
I envisioned the site Astralmeta to be a community website aiming to connect people and encourage them to share their stuff with others and at the same time encourage them to help one another, building a network of sorts. Of course, nothing can be more disappointing than having that vision dashed. Thanks to social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter. There’s also StackOverflow which is overflowing with web developers, there is Reddit acting like a huge forum, and other sites that are well established and have gone ahead of me. Sadly, this idea of mine could have worked back in the 90s, when nobody had thought about it before. Nowadays, such an idea is obsolete. People no longer need sites like mine.
So what’s the point of bringing it back? Well, I have other visions. If it can’t work as a community, I’m simply going to turn it into a web resource site to host mine and my friends work. Who knows? Maybe someday, it would attract other people and encourage them to do the same. My site could help them promote their work too… well, that is assuming my traffic goes up as it can give them more audience. Currently, I’m redesigning and reprogramming my site from scratch. I’m not relying on any existing theme and I am refraining from using so many plugins. This way, I have better control and understanding of what is going on in my website, particularly on the SEO side. I plan the website to be more user friendly, with a quick login and some social media integration. Having learned JavaScript, I could also implement some cool special effects. Oh, there is one thing I would like to add in the list… SCSS. It’s something I am trying to understand right now. Once understood, I could apply it in the website too.
The theme will remain as spiritual and mysterious as it was before. Having religious symbols and names, and some mysticism embedded in it. You’ll never know, they are in my code.
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