When I was a freshman in high school, I had my own website. Don’t laugh. It was hosted by Chickpages.com. AOL, Geocities and Angelfire seemed much too complicated for my 14-year-old self.

So you after you registered on the site, you would pick a subgroup that best represented your style and personality. I originally wanted http://www.chickpages.com/girlbands, but after messing up and restarting I had to go with http://www.chickpages.com/thriftstoredivas. Again, don’t laugh…. My screen name was Cloudgirl827 for a very long time.

After setting up, you could post dolls (seen on the left), post photos or blog TMI about what happened in yearbook club. I even had subpages for each city I lived in to keep in touch with my friends. Since we didn’t all have email, I’d spread the word about my page on my AIM profile.

As cheesy and girly as it was, Chickpages was also the only site I can remember that encouraged girls to be tech-y. Sure, most girls would be posting photos (scanned from an actual camera) or writing about the group politics of high school, but they’d also be in front of a computer, building a web page, learning HTML and experimenting with web design.

That was in 2000, and sorry, my chickpage has since shut down. I’ve had a Xanga/LiveJournal and a couple of Blogspots since (sorry no MySpace), but it’s definitely weird to know that I’ve been openly sharing online for the past 15 years. There are some regretful posts that have thankfully disappeared, and I’m pretty sure there are a couple that thankfully never made their way to the person they were intended for. You’ll never know what mood I was in or what song I was listening to at some random date in 2003, but all of those posts and sites did provide a lesson.

Technology was never that intimidating to me, and after taking time to understand it, it’s pretty easy to get the hang of. I am a girl who knows HTML. I can build a site. I want to learn how to code and get into web design. From little girly beginnings, grow some pretty substantial things.

#LeanIn #GirlsWhoCode