I used to use a robot to protect my privacy.

A robot.txt file, that is.

I included the little file in my web site so that Archive.org wouldn’t keep a record of my early web site versions. These early versions are, frankly, embarrassing. You can see, when you look at the listing, which years I had the robot file in place (big, glaring gaps in the record).

Though I’m not a politician wishing to hide previous writing (admittedly, there are many things I’ve written that make me cringe both because of the style and content which I hate to hold up as mine or even still agree with at this point in life), I somehow hated to commit to having my site and content and layouts preserved.

It’s mine! I decide who sees it! I might think, having a backup copy of most of my previous web site versions on my external hard drive of Massive Library of All Things Stored.

Case in point: when I briefly removed the robot.txt file a few years back, a reader got in the archives to read some of my old writing and emailed me wondering if I’d had an abusive upbringing of sorts.

“It’s amazing you grew up OK!” the reader said.

This was due to a story I’d written detailing one of the many fisticuffs and roughhousings between my older sister Janet and I. In this story, she sat on my head. I was surprised by that reaction; I had no idea my writing would lead anyone to think Charles Dickens might be able to write about my childhood.

So, with the context being questionable and me liking more control, the robot.txt file was in place. I may put it back in place, but for now, the archives are open.

A very real benefit is for some of the classes that I am teaching in the next few months. If anyone could provide examples of bad web design, poor design choices, or the changes in how web sites have gone from HTML and tables to CSS to database-driven, the old Lone Prairie sites are a choice look. You can see how I experimented with layouts, tables, and how my design skills shifted. Once I started shifting to CSS, the site archives really crumble, since those style sheets no longer exist and the definitions are all lost.

Regardless, I had some fun looking at the old sites and seeing how my “mascot” has changed. For example, it used to be a set of birds. I used to have a dedicated Lord of the Rings site, complete with lots of graphics to download.

Wow.

Now I have crabby cartoons. The improvement is vast, indeed.