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HardwareZone's 10th Anniversary Special

The HardwareZone.com Evolution

The HardwareZone.com Evolution

Ever wondered what www.hardwarezone.com was like in the old days? Using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine , we attempted to give you a glimpse of just that. We could have dug up our own archives, but since most of the website was dynamic in the latter years with parts being pulled in from various content segments, we didn't have a single snapshot like the Internet Archive Wayback Machine does. To save time on rummaging thru the deeply archived materials, we went with the modern web equivalent, so please pardon some of the broken links/images. Apart from that, it should give you a decent idea how the www.hardwarezone.com site has evolved over the years.

While there have been several improvements and service add-ons each year to the HardwareZone website, the site has only seen four major layout and design revamps in its 10 years of operation. This is a good sign because we constantly improve the layout and usability by tracking member feedback as well as mining usage patterns to reorganize and refocus what readers require most. Yet, we don't go to the extent of changing the layout often as it would be counter-productive to the regular followers of the website. Without further ado, we present you the www.hardwarezone.com website evolution in chronological order (click on them for a close-up):-

- Ah, the old black themed HTML page layout; this first generation design kept us good during the first 1.5 years of operation. Unfortunately, we couldn't get a good site layout copy for a snapshot from this era, so we've only got the landing page to show.

- Soon after Hardware Zone Pte Ltd was formed to transform the hobbyist site to that of a publication business, this purple-based motif took hold of the site, reflecting the corporate color. News and features took center-stage, while other often used segments line the sides. Layout has lots of unused space, but that's because the snapshot wasn't taken with the native resolution it was designed for.

- In the fifth year of operation, we had a major site overhaul which took on a blue-based motif. But more importantly, there was a reorganization of how everything was presented on the site and it became the base footprint to what www.hardwarezone.com looks like today.

- Two more years passed and in 2004 (our seventh year of operation), www.hardwarezone.com took on yet another design revamp, which closely resembles our present day layout. Article/Reviews took center-stage then.

- A minor update to the 2004 design and some content placement changes in 2005 has pretty much remained the same till present day as this design/layout faithfully served our needs well.

That's not to say we've stopped evolving since 2005, but rather we had focused our efforts into other areas such as improving our service offerings and reaching out beyond Singapore to establish a regional foothold. With a well functioning main global website, www.hardwarezone.com, it was now the right time to lay the infrastructure and resources to expand into other neighboring territories and establish our presence. And that's what we did with Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Australia by offering further localized content via news, blogs, forums and price lists.

In fact for the Australia portal, our Creative department came up with a unique layout after studying that region's usage patterns and needs. We'll share on the various services that were introduced in various time frames and more later, but here's a shot of our Australian portal:-

This is our HardwareZone Australia portal that was launched late in 2005.

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