Patrick McHale on oldsidelinghill.com

Where did you make oldsidelinghill.com?

The site has been around since 2006... so I've moved around a bunch since I started the site. It was created when I was living in Burbank, California. The newest incarnation of the site was designed while living in Massachusetts (where I live now). I'll attach a photo of how my workspace is set up today.

What tools/technology did you use to make oldsidelinghill.com? What’s your process when it comes to updating your site?

I used to use Dreamweaver, but these days I've just been editing the page using cPanel. It should be said that I know next to nothing about websites. In regards to updating my site, if there's something important i need to add or change I'll just sign into cpanel and edit things directly.

Could you tell us about how how you came up with oldsidelinghill.com/11-20-06.html?

I've always wanted to design games, but I really don't have the brain for programming. Then years ago I found this site that had html games called Stickman Murder Mysteries. The games were done all in HTML, and I realized that I could make my own game like that using my limited web design knowledge. I was pretty proud of myself! It was really just a test, and I was hoping to make something a lot more elaborate, but life got in the way. It seems like those Stickman Murder Mysteries are no longer on their original website, but they're on the Wayback Machine on archive.org. And here's a video of someone playing those games.

I like how you say that you’ve left your site “bare-bones now because you are not good at updating it." What was the site like before?

I guess the site was always pretty bare-bones, haha. Back in 2006-2007 I used to update it almost daily, with each day having its own html file, so that if you changed the date in the web address you could jump to whatever day you wanted. It was basically a simple, hand-made blog. It also had a "chat room" called Pat Chat that only a few friends knew about, where we'd go to chat sometimes. I always thought that one day I'd sit down and really design a big elaborate website full of animated graphics and music and all sorts of stuff, but I recently finally decided that I'm never going to do that, haha. I really like the site being simple and to the point. I may update it once in a while and add or subtract things, but I'm happy with it being bare-bones.

Some people say that HTML is more direct. Would you agree with this?

Yes, I agree that there's something really fun and direct about just using HTML. I used to really enjoy browsing the internet, and I guess I just don't really like doing that anymore. But simple HTML sites make me like the internet again.

Are there any hidden pages on your site that you’d like to share here?

Yeah! Here's an interactive cat that you can click on. And here's another little "game" that I made. There are a few other secrets, but they're mixed with old embarrassing stuff that I probably don't want to share publicly.

Are there any handmade websites that you check daily?

One of my favorite handmade sites is snackdata.com. Beau Johnson is pretty brilliant. You can check out his other work here.