Oh gosh, just recently I realized that 2003's bluephantom v1 actally wasn't the first one. Turns out I had created a small pseudo website with the freewebz service as early as 2002. That black image is all that's left of it on the Wayback machine.
Didn't miss much I guess :D
I created the first website some 2 years after joining the XWA community and just about half a year into my studies. The site consisted of a set of frames and its look was supposed to represent a computer screen lik it was found inside a Victory Mk2's cockpit.
I kept this design for about a year, but in spring 2004 I went for something different.
About a year after the initial launch I decided the current design was quite impractical and therefore redesigned the page into what would remain the the foundation for VXHQ for several years.
I basically split the BPC contend from the regular Star Wars content and also created a new section called "Shicon Dynamics R&D Facility" for all the non-TBP-related WIPs.
Unfortunately most of the original website files are lost so this is a kitbash using the wayback machine, some leftover images and my memory.
In March 2004 I grew tired of the old console-type design of the project website and, with all the background Info I had, not only the ships but also info locations, characters, history etc., I've decided to relaunch the site and give each their own section.
With the project itself taking shape as well, I added FAQs, a Progress page and other general info.
This version was the last to use frames.
Eventually I came to find the entire site somewhat convoluted and unstructured, so I had another go at the layout, reducing the height of the header image and made the main menu less space consuming.
Also, with the Episode III shipset and its models coming in, I wanted a dedicated secton for those, too.
I shutdown the ShiconDynamics section and instead relocated all content, which was not BPC or EP3, under the VXHQ label.
For version 3 I actually had a design made by a professional webdesigner. Being quite CSS-heavy the things I learned from working with it would be instrumental for the evolution of all future versions of both VXHQ and Bluephantom (until 2019 at least)
V3 is basically a continuation of the trend from v1 to v2, cleaning up the cluttered layout, using text links instead of images, making better use of the available space.
As a new feature I added a preview gallery to for my deviant art postings to the front page, as well as new overviews of current WIPs and latest downlaods.
This website wasn't actually an iteration of either the bluephantom or vxhq website, but completely separate. ESS Central was an OOC for the authors participating in the Battlethreads over at the XWAU Forum.
It contained OOC and background information on various characters, factions, locations, ships, etc.
One benefit was that I could actually re-use the design idea of the very first Bluephantom website - with a more modern approach, using DIVs to overlay the images rather than splitting up the page with frames.
After 8 years V4 was the first true deviation from the path so far. I modernized the man menu, moving it from a side column to the horizontal space between header and content, allowing for a much more efficient use of the space available.
The website that never was.
While the VXHQ website had been doing well in its recent iterations from both 2012 and 2014, the Bluephantom homepage was in desperate need of an update. Since I had started to move the BPC downloads back over to VXHQ and had the idea of overhauling various aspects of BPC lore
I wanted to put the lore front center while making the XWA project only one aspect of many. The website was supposed to be relaunched with the BPC lore overhaul completed or at least halfway through.
It soon turned out that this type of site was not suited for the massive ammounts of content I was about to pour into the site. Using a solely html-based website as a database just won't do.
This next iteration once again took the strengths of the previous version and built upon it. The structure remained pretty much the same, but I got to make use of HTML5 functions to make everything a bit prettier.
I now went for a symetric content layout, putting the big info blocks into a large central column with two additional smaller columns on either side for additional content.
Also, for the first time, I actually changed the name. Since at that time, XWA had taken a backseat with my general design and modelling activities playing a major part.
With the last iteration of the website turning out a total bust, I turned my attention to creating an actual wiki, using the fandom wiki service.
Little did I realize that it was merely my potent adblocker that kept my screen from being flooded with ads and I found no option to remove those ads, e.g. via paid subscription or something.
Sorry, fandom, no good!
The first iteration using website toolbox rather than writing the code myself was a choice I made for the sake of efficiency and accessibility.
The website focused on the two main moding activities I was pursuing at that time: XWA and Space Engineers, each having a section for itself plus corresponding WIP sections on the workbench.
The toolbox did have its shortcomings though as I realized after a while, for example the number of elements I could put on a page had a hardcoded max limit so using it for the BPC lore content wasn't an option - one more reason I tried to work with an external wiki.
While slightly more complicated to use this new toolkit offered a lot more function and customizability, allowing me to customize the various sections more freely and without the hardcoded limitations that the previous version suffered from. Further functions like a blog allowed me to easily post news without having to touch the content pages themselves.
Could this be the final iteration? Probably not, but you never know. For this version, using the same tooking as v7, I relocated all the content into a database - a thing which have been wanting to do for many years. I also doubled down on the design and went for a less noisy and cleaner look. Also for the time being I removed the BPC lore content (don't worry it's still there, just not showing) and put the focus back on what this site has always been about: My creations for XWA.