The Site Through Time

Before I started this blog, I started "Dave PC Guy" with my brother. I was the main writer on the site and learned a lot about what people like and how tough blogging can be. I hit my first 1K day with an article on the color scheme designer. This was before my knowledge of SEO and other concepts. The first theme was just a free theme I modified to have certain different colors. It looked like crap but boy was it fun!

"It looks like crap but boy was it fun!"

My brother and I wanted to launch a Web Development company with a great fresh new image. The term "Lonebench" stemmed from walking around a local park for about 3 hours brainstorming the most creative and stupid names. I basically ran the website alone while he focused on DavePCGuy. Blogging seemed to be my thing.

"The term "Lonebench" stemmed from walking around a local park for about 3 hours brainstorming the most creative and stupid names."

I decided to launch a site with my name — or rather, the username I use everywhere on the internet. I was tired of reading crappy blogs that offered no real information, no insight, no tutorials. I went on a mission to create a blog free of ads, with great tutorials and great articles, untethered by the hunger for money.

"I was so fed up that I went on a mission to create a blog free of ads, with great tutorials and great articles."

After some perilous work, spending a ton of time designing and redesigning, getting feedback, and restructuring my site to be actually usable — we arrived at something I was proud of. I made decisions based on conversions. My services pages were not frequented so I never took that extra step to make them nicer. I focused on writing, spending my time typing rather than coding.

The final product of that design era — the site I was actually running. It went through several iterations as I learned more about what worked and what didn't.

I switched to WordPress with Genesis, completely redesigned the site, and centered everything around my blog. No more services or business plans. Branding was redone but the logo concept remained.

A mid-year update with some visual tweaks and layout adjustments.

In October, I ran a few A/B tests and decided to change some things around. There were several smaller updates that changed the background but nothing major.

After a long time, I finally completed v3.0 of Tseczka and the Tseczka CSS Framework, both of which made making this new theme possible. This was a complete redesign built on my own open-source framework.

"Built on my own open-source CSS framework."

In 2022, I decided to completely let go of my old blog. The only post that survived the reboot is the Throwback Thursday post — the one post I've been dragging along across multiple blogs. I switched from WordPress to Remix and started fresh.

"The only post that survived the reboot is this one — the one post I've been dragging along across multiple blogs."

I struggled with Remix for a bit because updates broke some early libraries and conventions. For my latest update, I really wanted to emphasize using my website as a "business card" with sparse but important data. I'd never used SvelteKit before so I figured it'd be fun to venture into that world.

"I really wanted to emphasize using my website as a "business card.""

In 2025, I upgraded all of the major pages and the full design to be a bit more "modern" — which is something I've said every time I upgraded my blog design. Still running SvelteKit.

"A bit more "modern" — which is something I've said every time I upgraded my blog design."

Still running on SvelteKit with some design refinements. The current era.