website

A Whole New Michael’s Piece of the Web

For several years now, I’ve been saying I was going to re-create my website (michaelgatti.com) from the ground up. Apparently all it took to make it finally happen was a global pandemic. After many, many hours of finding the right WordPress template and plugins, learning how to use WordPress for more than just a simple blog and creating a few hundred pages, the new site is now live.

You’ll recognize much of the content from the old site, but it’s now all mobile-responsive which is important since there’s a fair chance you’re reading this on a phone. Also, it’s been a few years since I could post new photos thanks to shifts in technology and a lack to time to keep up. So, you’ll find a lot of new photos that you likely haven’t seen before. There will be more about that in future posts.

As you browse the site, please feel free to contact me (michaelgatti.com/contact) with any suggestions you may have. It’s a work in progress and always will be. Lastly, feel free to sign up to receive updates via e-mail via the boxes on the homepage or blog.

Enjoy!

Posted by Michael in Site Updates

Twenty Years Already?

Everyone likes milestones that end in zero. Whether it’s a birthday or anniversary counted in years, months or days, if it ends in a zero, people like to celebrate it. So, I feel only right to mention that this website has been hanging around on the web for 20 years now. What started out as a free set of webpages on AOL when I was in high school has slowly grown over the years. I don’t pay as much attention to it as I did years ago; haven’t revamped in quite a while and I still maintain it using mostly static HTML pages (except this blog section which runs on WordPress), which no one really does anymore. I keep saying that I’m going to redo the entire site using a content management system, but I don’t know when I’ll get around to that for real. It certainly will make managing the huge photos section easier.

Speaking of the photos on the site, they’re the main reason it still exists. They’re what most people come here to see. At last count, there were about 7500 photos spanning 18 years of travel, family events and any of photos that I felt were worth sharing at the time. Why aren’t there 20 years of photos? Well, prior to that no one was using a digital camera! Hell, when I started posting photos I was actually using a camera that took floppy disks! Read more about that here.

Anyway, if you want to feel nostalgic about how old this site is and how far it’s come along, take a look a page that’s having its own 10th anniversary. I created it commemoration of another round number anniversary, 10 years. It shows what the site originally looked like and how it progressed during its first decade. If you think the site seems dated now, take a look at what it used to look like! I would make another retrospective for 20 years, but honestly, it hasn’t changed much since then. It’s just grown some.

As always, thanks for checking out the site. As long as I continue to hear from enough people who enjoy it, I’ll keep maintaining it and will try to continue to keep it going for another 20 years.

Posted by Michael in Life, Site Updates