When you are interested in the webdesign history, you are at the right place.
I made this webdesign at version 2.5 btw.

Legend
Proud changes/ upgrades/ modifications and adds are bold
Upgrades regular visitors do not ‘really’ care about are italic

Version 3.3 ; A Community

In May we passed the 1000 visits a day and is increasing. A full set of mails, complains, bug reports, upload requests and even friend requests were send during these months. I concludes a need of a community. Now you can discuss the matters over at the forum.

The forum would be a Hirvine forum, however using plugins and styles I found phpbb a great forum. So after 2 months of development I choosed phpbb.

Features

• Hirvine official forum
• F.A.Q. A Frequently Asked Questions page is added for troubleshooting
• Wordpress 2.5 feature Gravatar is now supported within the Hirvine.com theme
  Also re-done comments section, now supporting Opera 9.25.
• Blogroll and Store Links
  Since Webdesign 3.0 I seemed to have lost the blogroll. Just when I wanted to add the store links I noticed the gap. So the return of the blogroll and new store links, which was never meant to cease.

Bug fixes

• Download system
  Failed download tickets were not removed when the were reseted causing a problem of never re-leasing slots, even after the 24h hard reset. Tweaking a bit, but please send bug reports (forum/ contact me) when it troubles you. The forum is preferred to discuss the matter.
• Smiley’s having borders at the blog
• AnimeOst page no search or sort bug
  Support for sort and search at first character had been using the same cache files as the show ‘ALL’ albums pages. Eg. If you sorted at Name for Page 1, you get the cache page of ALL albums sorted at default Date for page 1.
  The cache file handler is adjusted and status of selected options is more clearly.
• Animeostsearch no album covers
  fixed the problem were the album covers used not existed cache files. I also got rid of an annoying notice error, which php warns. If people do see somewhere a php error, please note me, I fix it.

Version 3.2 ; Seperating Anime and Toons clearly

The most important change of this update is the division of Anime and Toon!

Anime District || Toon District
(An url for the toon district will appear in the menu as soon as possible, till the moment, use the url’s located above)

First we talk about the update, then about the new archived series.

All ID permalinks changed. It won’t appear as a “404 Not Found” page, read the features part below.
Text Permalinks like http://hirvine.com/anime/?mokke aren’t changed, because it’s an anime.
The toons on the other hand did changed! Like http://hirvine.com/toon/?avatar-the-last-airbender .
Instead anime, it’s toon. Just prettier and clearer ’cause I got a lot of mails complaining about the fact.

Features

• Anime and Toon District are finally divided!
  At Monday, September 17th, 2007 I announced Webdesign 3.0. I welcomed Toons at the small anime archive site back then. Webdesign 3.2 will divide these sections more clearly. Now we have a Anime District AND Toon District. Which is better than just putting the toons in the Anime District.
  The url’s are Anime District || Toon District .
  
• The page animeinf.php for anime information does NOT exist anymore. I’ve changed the page into info.php. We know have a url’s looking like /toon/info.php and /anime/info.php . Which is , again, more clearly.
  The animeinf.php page is banished, though it remain to exist as a forward page. So the old url’s will still work, but highly recommend to update. You can try yourselves using http://hirvine.com/anime/animeinf.php?aid=7 .
• More recent updates
  Though Hirvine.com always did, and will do older and rare series (with some exceptions) a problem of licensed material remains. We always tried to choose no risk series, but the new update gave us a flexible way to single click disable downloads. So we can take now more risky series, which is good. We remain to list unlicensed material though!
• Page layout and clearly descriptions
• Not public, but probarly soon public, country statics of downloads
  Today Top 3 countries: Australia, UK and Germany.
  Today Top 3 series: Avatar the last Airbender, Winx Club, Ragnarok the Animation (just ahead of W.I.T.C.H.)

Version 3.1 ; Secured files easier upload

The massive CMS update and thus the downtime is kindly sponsered by several bandwidth stealers. Though we really written all over the place, not to steal our files, people just ignore. You CAN NOT copy the download url, we are NOT a file service! We still find people copying the urls to their homepage and rolling down THEIR newspage they have new downloads. That’s no fun. If you really are in need for file service, try and look for them. DO NOT link to other sites (wihout permission that is). Interested my like my old CMS behind the screens streaming video in the read more link.

New features for regular visitors
It’s a tiny update for regular visitors. It’s at most a CMS update, but there are minor changes.
Mind this is for the update, so if the status is ‘done succesfully’.

• Permalink #2 works in the Anime District.
  Instead using an ?aid=3 in permalink #1, you can just write ?W.I.T.C.H.
  We hope, with the introduction of these two permalinks, less linking people from their own websites.
• Fansubs
  Each episode I list is probarly from a fansubber. They made it possible for me to get you your episodes. So to thanks the fansubber, they probarly have more anime’s you want .. so visit them.
• A chaching system for the Anime District, including the Fansub pages is introduced. It will allow you for more speed. In addition, the Anime District info page is fully rewritten. It’s faster and above all improved.
• Anime District Gallery is now optimized for 1024Xxxx resolution instead of 800Xxxx.
• (Bug Fix) Download files are fixed, they should be faster.

Version 3.0 ; Anime Toon release

Webdesign 3.0 is again a ‘*.0′ version, which means a total different look. We present you a different based on blank papers. From scratch/ blank papers using the wordpress api. The design doesn’t only cover the wordpress layout, but the entire (www.)hirvine.com domain! How neat is that.

We introduce a lot of changes and some new features. Just as these features are set, we go on went developming this site. Toon should have it’s own Toon District like Anime District has. Also we should NOT forget about the stream beam, still in beta fase. (Why beta so long? It just doesn’t go well, too huge).

The changelog is available underneath as well in the webdesign history page.

Some Major changes (and reasons)

• Resolution change
  One of the huge changes is the change in resolution. After finding too much website’s having 1024xXXXX and big sites like msn I decided to go with them. The 800xXXX website (version <3.0) was always to small in width, however I never changed it since a lot of users used 800×600. Even for the year 2006, 1024×768 is the most used resolution I took 800×600 to support the small community. Now I stop supporting them and went to 1024×768.
• MSIE 6.0+ fixes
  The from-scratch-development solved all MSIE issues for the blog, except one. As MSIE <7.0 user you’ll still find a too small box at forum menu. Well, no point in fixing that. It just say, I haven’t a forum yet. Want a forum? Just reply to a few Hirvine categorized post’s and I might put it up.MSIE 6.0? Yes, I’m still supporting 6.0, but I prefer you find your way to MSIE 7.x if you want to stick with Microsoft Internet Explorer that is. Mind to consider Opera or Mozilla Firefox in the future though, those are really the best. (Caught Safari is fine too)
• Blog website as root
  I finally decided to take the blog up the the root’s level of hirvine.com . It meant some tweaking espacially for the loosy pages in the root, but it should be alright now.
• Hirvine’s moments goes too Toon
  Considering unlicensed Toon for a few moths I decided to give it a shot. It seems W.I.T.C.H. and Winx Club did their job fine. Blogging them is a convienent way to endure the tiny boredome I have. So after some experimental months I finaly and officialy decide, toons at hirvine.com. DON’t worry, anime will still be at the first place.
• Fully custom theme
  NOT based on any theme (but inspiration by all anime sites over the net XD)

Some ‘real’ changes

• Archived entries
  Older entries/ post’s aren not displayed at the sidemenu anymore
  these are moved to the archives page (under popular pages).
  It covers as much as the same overview with 2 brand new surveys!
  You have Archives by Month, by Subject and a top 10 posts by Category.
• About/ newbies / version history pages moved
  The about page is moved to the blog pages.
• Meta/ Login
  Re-did position, lay-out and functionality.
• CMS fixes
  Check the changelog folks! (for regular/ the most visitors NOT interested)
  The new CMS patch fixes the upload and automated patch issues. Therefore you can’t use the functionality. Read the readme text for more information.

More changes …?
The menu switched from left to right and bla bla… Those are just lay-out/ theme based changes. That’s why I wrote ‘real’ changes. Information about the header and menu image(s) can be found at the version history page, which is finally honorfull modified.

Version 2.7

This version is at most a bug fix version, with just a small number of features. However, those two features are the needs for a basic anime site like me. So those are important

Features

• Screenshots gallery
• Screenshots image viewer

Bug fixes

• Webdesign fixes, file service down
• Anime Information Pages had broken join episode downloads
• Fix for download acceleration
• Main menu fix for MSIE, Opera

Version 2.6

The design is at most an maintain version. However we have some other public updates…

Features

• Anime OST layout
  Instead heaving one single page for all anime’s and a slobby (not sorted) index I re-designed it to a page system. Having the option to sort in alphabetical order or at newest date. The 3d looky CSS skin should work with both MSIE and Firefox. (Firefox works like Opera and Safari … so I hope). The text ‘details’ should give you a bit more info about it’s subfolders, so you don’t need to search for yourself.
• Anime District
  • Re-design of lay-out
  • Support for joined eps
  • Episode numbers and names are now divided because of the joined episodes and looks way better than before in the filelist tab
  • Download system lay-out and new functions
    • 3 queue slots
    • ~25 seconds wait time
    • At problems, wait 2 hours!

Devlopping the CMS

The next issue is only interested for fellow webdesigners, webmasters or company’s realted to web / CMS.

CMS stands for Content Management System. Becuase of this system we, the webdesigners and webmasters are able to frequently update and maintain the homepages. There is always need for a customized CMS, otherwise you are serving exactly the same services as company B. So, a CMS starts from the bottom or modifying an a-like system. A CMS is born in the neccesary of frequently updates and maintainment on the web.

The article I’m about the write in the next couple of weeks is about content management systems, the need and simplicity. Underneath the screen of the old database CMS system of this homepage and the new version of the CMS.

The old CMS The new CMS

Version 2.5

The navigation bar was good, but it could be better. The navigation bar was too small to fit all my new sections, so I made a new one. I also realized when all these OST’s up, you want to search a OST. I also realized, more lay-out and images might nock off 56K modem users. So I made an option to hide the covers as well and memorize it using cookies. Further, pages optimizing. (At black stage, made an update system for my database manager and perform an database speed update)

At last, we are proud to announce file upload form

• New navigation bar, easier and more synoptic finding your sections in Hirvine.com
• Hirvine file service , come and see the file service of Hirvine and help each other today
• Hirvine’s own db cms system has gained upgrade possibility, since renewing all items was absolutely nonsense
  
• Anime OST Search page added
• Anime series pages a lot, lot faster
• Sitemap page added
• Anime OST files pages shows the album cover and you may click the row instead of the table
  Clicking the album cover in the Anime OST file pages will open the original images without server scaling
• Anime’s at Anime info pages at Anime Series section can be downloaded to click on their row instead the hyperlink only
• About page added
• Added another email address in contact handle, when one fails fell back at the other
• CSS stylesheet adjusted and modified, now it seems to be totally valid
• Some small fixes and changes which will use less CPU and Database access
• Webdesign history page added

Version 2.0 (Thursday, July 20th, 2006)

Version 2.0, as the vacation draws nearer, more time and ideas sprouted out. I aimed at one single Hirvine.com theme for all pages. So I started learning creating wordpress themes, played with it and succeeded. After all this works I realised people doesn’t only wants to read, they need images, lay-out. There wasn’t much visitors at the Anime OST page, so I made it more attractive with anime ost covers instead of one bully list.

Also a good update was more compatible with Internet Explorer.

• No frames (YEAH!)
• Better browsing for IE (site is still optimized for Mozilla Firefox)
  (!Better download support for IE users!)
• Custom wordpress theme based on the famous kubrick (default theme wordpress 1.5)
• All sites under one theme
• Usage of CSS (easier to maintain)
• Only some NONE websites shows warnings or errors at validator.w3.org
• Anime District complete
• Anime OST shows album covers
• Main navigation bar included
• Using the power of CSS
  
• Updated wordpress

Version 1.1 (Thursday, July 6th, 2006)

• Contact page added
• Database management system added
• Beta version anime section

Version 1.0 (Thursday, April 6th, 2006)

Version 1.0 is a quick setup webpage with a database behind it. As you can see the page worked with frames and left the left sidebar almost totally blank. Also the news page was a standard wordpess theme in a frame. The lay-out was totally different than the pages not wordpress. So that had to be fixed. I have no screenshot about wordpress, since I made this version at 2.5 I haven’t made a screenshot of that since that uses an old version database. I cannot go backward and I don’t even want to. So to sum it all up:

• Frames
• Theme for website, theme for news page using default wordpress theme
• Anime Ost files and albums used the bullet list
• Almost no images in wordpress and nu use of the ‘continue reading’ option of wordpress, making large news pages
• Just a quick setup, only index (welcome page), news and anime ost works
• Wordpress as newspage! Wow that’s my blogger utility, how handy.