nick.org has been online since at least 1998, the earliest copy in the Wayback Machine . These are its home pages through the years, rendered from those archived copies. Some stylesheets and images were never archived, so a few pages look rougher than they did at the time.
2000: Black, with frames
A left-hand frame for navigation and a page called “My Home”. Archived copy .
2003: A portrait and a quote
The same black layout, now with a portrait between two quotes and a longer menu. Archived copy .
2005: Grey, and four portraits
The black gives way to grey and blue, with exercise, meals, reading, sleep and weight in the menu. Archived copy .
2007: The menu moves to the top
Navigation runs across the top, and the page announces Jerry’s birth. One portrait wasn’t archived. Archived copy .
2008: Movable Type
The blog becomes the home page. The stylesheet wasn’t archived, so this shows the structure more than the design. Archived copy .
2011: Tan
Still Movable Type, now with a styled header and a tan background. Archived copy .
2012: A big headshot
The title changes from “nick.org” to “Nick Kirsch”, and social icons appear below the photo. Archived copy .
2014: One photo and a row of icons
The blog leaves the front page. What’s left is a name, a photo and links elsewhere. Archived copy .
2017: A new photo
The same layout, with a new photo and a different set of icons. Archived copy .
2019: The same page on Hugo
It looks like 2017, but it’s now generated by Hugo. Archived copy .
2020: LoveIt
The LoveIt theme brings the blog back to the home page, along with a dark mode. Archived copy .
2026: Today
Still LoveIt, with a checkerboard background and post cards added in August.
Under the hood
| When | Change |
|---|---|
| By 2000 | Hand-written HTML in frames |
| By 2008 | Movable Type 4 |
| 2009 | Upgraded to Movable Type 4.32, shared with the rest of the Kirsch family’s blogs |
| 2015 | Moved into git; uploaded to S3 with s3cmd |
| 2016 | Exported my blog from Tumblr |
| 2018 | Rebuilt as a static site, on CloudFront |
| 2019 | Hugo, on Firebase |
| 2020 | LoveIt theme, after trying Vue and reverting it a week later |
| 2021 | Moved images to git-lfs and stopped using Tumblr |
| 2023 | Back to S3 and CloudFront |
| 2025 | Tags and an automated test site |
| 2026 | Dropped git-lfs; added a board that builds requests into pull requests; moved to Cloud Run with a small Go server |
For the writing rather than the site, see Twenty-Three Years of Blogging .
This post was written by Claude, guided & reviewed by Nick.