In this episode we take a walk down memory lane. From the first desktop until today, there’s been a curiosity for tech. Creating and teaching are what drive me today!
Keegan 0:17
What’s up Divi addicts, we’ve got a very monumental episode number 75. This is, it’s the 75th episode. That’s crazy to think, you know, year and a half, we’re 75 episodes in. And in this episode, what we wanted to talk about was kind of the journey to get here for us. You know, this is a 23 year journey to get to today, at least in web design, and more specifically in tech. What we did is, you know, taking it all the way back in the years 1996. And my great grandmother sends me my very first computer, it was a Packard Bell. I mean, it was probably really expensive. Actually, I know it was really expensive. I think it was like almost $2,000 back in the day had the printer, the the big CRT monitor, we had a Packard Bell 486. And it was 14 four modem and I believe it had either two or four megabytes of RAM. Yeah, that you heard that right megabytes.
Keegan 1:21
Crazy part is, I’m not really that old. I’m only 35. But I’m one of those really old millennials. And, you know, I’ve had a, I’ve had such an infatuation with technology since I was a little kid. And it really supercharged when my great grandmother sent me that computer that allowed me access to a whole world that had never seen before. Yeah, I got internet access for the very first time and the internet was a much different place then than it is now.
Keegan 1:55
But it was the it was the concept of, you know, encyclopedias will not be the only thing where you are the only place where you can go and get information anymore. There’s a world of information, literally the World Wide Web, it’s out there, and it’s gonna continue to build and you could see it like I had the ability to go out and create websites, which I did, that are custom coded HTML sites. And, you know, years down the road, learn CSS, when that became a thing. And really learned it in a backwards kind of way. Because I learned it, breaking the layouts inside of my space, and custom coding those things myself.
Keegan 2:33
Those were a big thing, if any of you out there are old enough to remember, those were really huge custom coding custom designs for for my space pages, especially on banned pages, you can do a whole lot with them. It’s really cool. And then now Facebook kind of took that and did away with it. They wanted everything to look their way and no more custom code. But you know, hey, it is what it is. You know, fast forward, fast forward just a handful of years. And I was building sites and Microsoft front page, and then eventually Dreamweaver played around with all of that. And finally came to WordPress, and tried to you know, like a lot of people who come to WordPress, I couldn’t figure out the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org. And it was just also confusing.
Keegan 3:19
And really, I felt like they overcomplicated things. And I was a pretty smart guy. So it really bums me out not to be able to figure that out at first took a little bit of research. And you know, I signed up for wordpress.com account, and quickly realized that I couldn’t upload custom themes or do a whole lot with it. So I started to research in wordpress.org and saw that it was definitely more in line with what I was trying to accomplish. So I started looking for hosting and realize that I’m gonna have to pay for it. And so yeah, the very first company that ever had our site hosted with was hostgator. And they were really good to get things going. It was a shared hosting plan. I think I installed the x theme. And that was really cool. It was the first real exposure I had to a builder with you know, I think they they did not have Cornerstone at that time. But they were they were quickly introduced Cornerstone Not long after I was using it.
Keegan 4:20
And it really just it opened my eyes to the fact that content blocks could be used to build websites and that this was going to be kind of a modular thing. And then I jumped into Jupiter, which had WP bakery now, which it’s called WP bakery now but it was visual composer then, and that was a step up. It definitely was much, much more user friendly than what I had before. But it also came with its limitations and it wasn’t it wasn’t simple. And then eventually, you know, I tried a few different themes Avada and a ton of other ones that I tried And ultimately what I landed on was Divi, and it was Divi 2.4, I think sometime in like 2014 or 15.
Keegan 5:09
And I saw this, this concept of sections and rows and modules. And that resonated with me because it reminded me a lot of Photoshop, like just playing around in layers and then building things in a grid and dropping stuff on top of one another and managing different layers. I just I fell in love with Divi and what it could be, and it continued to evolve with Divi 3.0, we got the visual builder with Divi 4.0. Now we’ve got the theme builder. The journey has been a very long one, a very winding road. But it’s led us to today where I get to create layouts with our Divi layout memberships, I’m in 2020, we’re going to launch a course, that’s going to show people how to get their website completely off the ground.
Keegan 6:01
There’s so many different things that have that I’ve learned and that I’ve been exposed to and so many awesome people that I’ve met in this community, just because randomly 23 years ago, my great grandmother decided to send me my very first computer. And then the natural curiosity took in or took over. And the rest is history. Today, with Keegan Lanier Media, I’ve got this awesome opportunity and privilege to work with some really, really cool people, some very amazing clients, people that I admire, who are just hard working people who are in different industries that I get a little bit of exposure to, from doing this and helping be a part of creating something that’s going to help drive their business. There’s a lot, a whole lot of ugly websites out there. And my goal is to kind of clean all that mess up because there’s, you know, doesn’t have to be overly complicated to be pretty. And a lot of times, minimalism and simplicity goes a whole lot longer than trying to make something really, really over the top.
Keegan 7:12
So we focus on function, we focus on speed, we focus on user experience, and there’s always a lot more to learn. But that’s what we’re focused on. We’re focused on helping up and coming web developers, anybody who wants to freelance in the WordPress space. That’s why we do weekly releases on YouTube with new tutorials and videos showing you how to expand Divi, or how to learn the functions of the basics of WordPress. It’s just a, it’s another passion that we’ve learned. So the creative outlet to build sites is awesome. But teaching someone how to earn an income, possibly, you know, from this side hustle that can be built out of web development is is awesome. So if any, if you have picked up any bit of motivation, or any new skills from our YouTube channel or from this podcast, we would love to connect we’d love to meet and and just hear your story.
Keegan 8:13
So feel free to connect with us anywhere that at Keegan Lanier media on all the socials except for Twitter where it’s Keegan elmedia. But we would love to hear that story. We’d love just to understand a little bit about what makes you tick and what brought you to the podcast to begin with them. We appreciate you for being here for sticking with us through 75 episodes. It’s been a long journey. But it’s been a really fun one. And there’s a whole lot more to come. So make sure you smash the subscribe button. Stay in touch with us. Come back again next Tuesday for another episode of Divi addicts. But until then, connect with us on any one of the socials come and say hi, and let us know your story. We appreciate you and we will see you in the next episode.
Keegan 9:03
So don’t miss out on more great content from us over on our YouTube channel at Keegan Lanier media.com slash YouTube. You find a lot of things that we talked about here on the podcast but in video form where we take you deep way in depth on some of these topics and show you how to create the end result in Divi and really take it to the next level. So jump over to the YouTube channel. Make sure you watch a few videos and give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel.