Two backups, four years apart.
A small portfolio reconstructed from its launch-day files and its last surviving complete backup.
ARCHIVE ASLEEP
Built from the launch archive and the earliest surviving content. The original launch database did not survive.
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Two backups, four years apart
A small portfolio site appeared at 4re.st in June 2011. It ran on WordPress and a theme called Delight, from the period when full-screen backgrounds, fixed navigation and a generous amount of JavaScript were considered a perfectly reasonable welcome to the internet.
Two archives survived.
The first is dated 27 June 2011. It is almost an empty installation: WordPress 3.1.3, Delight 1.5.0, one screenshot from the theme controls and the unmistakable evidence of a website still being assembled.
The second was made in May 2015. It contains the lived-in site: portfolio pieces, posts, galleries, custom backgrounds and the usual geological layers produced by several years of WordPress quietly making additional copies of every image it sees.
This restoration keeps both states. The 2011 version is a reconstruction made from the early theme and the earliest surviving content. The 2015 version is the last complete snapshot that remained. No missing biography has been invented and no private history has been added. The site is allowed to explain itself, an unusual privilege for an old website.
Reconstruction, then snapshot
The early backup had the original visual machinery but no database and almost no uploads. Its public state is therefore labelled 2011 reconstruction. The Delight 1.5.0 layout is rebuilt around the earliest content that can be grounded in the later database and media archive.
The later backup retained the complete public content and Delight 3.2.0. Its 2015 surviving snapshot keeps all five portfolio entries and ten published posts, while redundant image sizes are collapsed back to the surviving originals.
The computer around both versions is a generic 2011-era all-in-one: black glass, a light aluminium chin and a simple stand. It is not product photography, carries no borrowed logo and makes no claim to be the machine on which the site was built. Apparently old websites require furniture before humans agree that they have become history.
Static by design
The original PHP stays offline. The public versions contain reviewed HTML, CSS, browser-side JavaScript and local images only. The old administration, login, registration, contact form, comments, search, tracking, server configuration and database do not travel with them.
The archived MP3 is not republished. External video embeds remain inert omissions rather than being silently replayed under uncertain permissions. Selecting a version does not load it; the first archive request happens only after LOAD THE OLD SITE is pressed.
The result is not a biography. It is a small piece of web history: one site, two surviving states, and four years of distance between them.