Adam Symons, webmaster at the time of 'All about Home and Away', was getting fed up of seeing the lack of good Home and Away sites on the net that were actually up often. Sure, there were a few that were updated regularly with good info, but there didn't seem to be quite enough. Also getting sick of working on the one website constantly, Adam wanted to open another. He wanted it to be totally original, and something that people would benefit from visitng. He came up with an idea of designing for other people's Home and Away website, to encourage them to update more. On the 4th of August, 2001, he began work on 'Home and Away Fonts & Designs' - a website that would help expand the amount of H&A sites on the net. On it was information about the different fonts that had been used in the opening credits throughout the years of the show, examples of them, and a chance for the visitors to appear in a set of H&A credits! Aswell as this, the site would design, in whatever way the visitor wanted, banners, affiliate buttons and more for their websites. Adam received many orders from many people. He began to get help from some friends, in designing which was much appreciated. He began a new offer for visitors, 'sites for grabs', for which a lot of interest was taken.
On the 29th of October 2001, Adam reviewed his website and was fairly unhappy with it. The numbers in people ordering had gone down, and the design and layout wasn't very appealing. He re-designed the entire site with a more modern look, in a silvery colour. But once he had re-designed it, he almost immediately regreted it. There wasn't navigation bars on every page, and it lacked colour. 18 days later, on the 16th of November, Adam redesigned the site in a colourful, more appealing look. he was very satisfied with it. There was no actual banner for the site - it's title was built into the background, as was the indication of the navigation bar. The only trouble with this was that if the background didn't load, the name of the website, nav bar and bright colours, wouldn't be seen! And unfortunately this is what happened. Although the amount of people ordering had now shot back up, there were questions by visitors into the tres plain design - obviously, the background wasn't loading. Because the image was so large, it was almost definite that whenever a visitor would view the website, the background wouldn't be seen.
On the 10th of January 2002, Adam decided that aswell as the problem of the site taking too long to load, it needed a new look to take it into the New Year. He designed a new blue coloured design to the site which was opened on the last day of January 2002. It was easy loading, and had an even better look than before! This layout would remain for the next three months. Version 5 was seen on February 16th 2002. It was basically the exact same layout as the last version except the colours had been changed to lilac. The banner had been completely updated, with a twirly cross faded into the background - a possible "logo" for future versions? ... maybe!
St Patricks Day 2002 say a special look to H&A Web Design, as it was given a green makeover for the occasion!
Version 6 saw a green/blue background with a matching banner featuring Rebecca Cartwright on it. Again, the site had the same layout, with a bar on the top of the page, with links to various features on the site, and then the content underneath. There were, however, some minor changes - there were now banners on each page, with the title of the page and a brief note on what was on the page. Soon after the new version was opened, on the 22/03/02, the site got a new affiliate - Home and Away United Kingdom.
Finally, a new layout to the website, came on the 1st April 2002 - "A new look for a new month". The design was simple, it loaded easy enough, and looked well. The banner was yellow, with Christie Hayes (Kirsty) featured on it. Underneath the banner, was a frame with different headings in black and yellow linking to the different pages. A faded black and white image of Christie Hayes featured at the left side of the page on every page. This banner was later updated with Leah on it. Another new affiliate came in the form of 'Tam Bec'.
At the very end of May 2002, almost two months after the last version had been put up, Adam decided the site needed a new look, which would be opened on the 1st of June. He designed a new layout and design - black and pink, which initially seemed good. But no sooner had he tested it out on te net, had it disliked it. He felt it would be "a step down rather than an improvement". This design never made it as a version of the website. Instead, version 7 remained. Were Adam's idea's running out? |
