If you’re reading this you’ve found the new dansauve.com (which I refer to as DSDC because it sounds cool), and holy hell, does it ever feel good to be back. I’ve had this domain name since 2003 and have used it primarily for email hosting, with a few simple resume/portfolio sites coming and going over the years, but it’s been over 20 years since I’ve had a proper blog. Twenty years! I had honestly forgotten how the hours melt away while setting up a site, designing a thing for fun, tweaking CSS, and bringing it to life in a web browser. Relaunching DSDC this past holiday season has been like catching up with an old friend I didn’t realize I’d missed so much.
I owe the inspiration for this to my job. I started working at WHC last year, and for the first time in too long I’m doing something I genuinely enjoy. It’s web hosting—something I’ve always been passionate about (anyone remember the VC200?). It’s funny how life works; you find yourself in a job you don’t hate, surrounded by people who care about the same stuff you do, and suddenly you’re itching to create again. This blog is part of that. It’s my way of getting back to my roots.
The design? It’s a relic from 2007—a never-launched design for a tumblelog I had at the time called Bleached Blue. I dug it out of the archives, dusted it off, and brought it back to life. Most of the HTML and CSS is exactly as it was 15 years ago. Isn’t that wild? It all still works, no problem. Back then, I was a big fan of ExpressionEngine; I even had the integration ready to go. But for some reason, it never got finished. I’m glad it didn’t because now it gets to live here.
What I love about this design is that it’s clean but gritty, with just enough rough edges to keep it interesting. It’s got a bit of that old school charm I miss so much from the late 90s and early 2000s—the era when when David Carson‘s designs in Ray Gun made typography exciting and getting my hands on an issue of Emigre was like a wet dream. When you just had to see what 2Advanced had put online (I didn’t even realize they were still around!). When flipping through the skate mags I read at the time like Daily Bread (yeah, yeah… I was an aggressive inline skater because at 18 I already felt “too old” to learn how to skateboard) was as much about soaking in the gritty, rebellious layouts and bold typography as it was marveling at the perfectly captured tricks. When I got accepted into the Swankarmy and met strangers online who thought I had potential, one of them even sent me a CD in the mail with Adobe PhotoShop (which led to me going to design school). Back then, design and the Web were exciting. Experimental. Weird. Now everything looks and feels the same. Every website is polished and sterile, like they’re all scared to have a personality. Screw that.
Nick Hamze nailed it in his recent post on the WordPress blog: “WordPress themes need more weird.” Fuck yeah, Nick. A huge chunk of the Web runs on WordPress and web design needs more weird. It needs more risk. We’ve spent too long designing for approval—making everything mobile-first, app-like, and “on brand.” What happened to making something because it’s cool? Because it’s fun? I miss the days when you’d stumble across a random person’s site—Paul’s Website About Sea Turtles or whatever—and it was exactly what it claimed to be. Pure passion, informative and entertaining, no bullshit.
The Internet used to feel like a sprawling labyrinth of people’s creativity. Now it feels like walking through a mall where every store is trying to sell you the same beige sweater. Google is a mess, Wikipedia is great but clinical, and social media? It’s just people shouting into the void for likes. Even most mobile apps these days seem to be designed as soulless utilities that are functional but utterly forgettable. Everything feels like the same flat, sterile interface, optimized for metrics instead of delight—like we traded creativity for conformity somewhere along the way. Where’s the heart? Where’s the weird shit?
I don’t want this blog to play it safe or be predictable. I want it to feel like the Web used to: messy, human, and unapologetically personal. This is my corner of the Internet, and I’m going to make it mine. If it doesn’t fit into someone else’s idea of what a blog should be, good. I’d rather be weird and interesting than boring and polished.
So here’s to 2025. Here’s to ditching the algorithm and shouting into the void on your own terms. Post on your blog, not on Twitter or Instagram. Make something wild and put it online, even if it’s just for you. Break the rules. Take a risk. Channel your inner AngelFire. Redesign it when you’re bored. Let’s bring back that early Web energy—the one where you didn’t need permission to create, and the only limit was your imagination.
If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog, do it. The Web needs you. It needs your weird. And who knows? Maybe 20 years from now someone will stumble across your site and fall in love with the Internet all over again.