As of this year, I’ve owned the domain name leckybang.com for 10 years. I bought it in 2005, when I was a junior in high school. I wish I had screenshots so I could show you all the crazy website concepts this domain name has been through.
First, I want to explain what Lecky Bang means. It’s just Becky Lang with the B and L switched. I got this nickname because in high school I was a fan of doing this to other people’s names. (Sorry for people who think it’s for a more salacious reason …) As a bored teenager, I bought the domain and the tradition of leckybang.com began.
Incarnation One: High School (Yahoo! SiteBuilder)
The first version of leckybang.com was a hacked together website I made using Yahoo! SiteBuilder. It was mostly a series of columns by me and my friends, and a bunch of weird videos I made with my parents’ digital camera. I recall a set of comics drawn by my friend Aaron, a story about the designer dog breed “puggles” by my friend Annie and my own review of Ashlee Simpson’s album, “I Am Me.” The headline was, “Ashlee Simpson: She is Her,” and that one clip got me a gig as a staff writer at my college’s alt-weekly. So start your own jank websites, kids!
Incarnation Two: College (I think my own hacked HTML?)
At some point in college I revamped the site using my paltry skills in HTML and Illustrator. It was mostly a series of awkwardly placed columns that portrayed my non-sensical graphic artwork. I remember getting my friends Kara and John to do a series on my site called “Virgin Talk,” where they talked about sex.
It was mostly full of stuff like this:
Incarnation Three: Career (Squarespace)
Post-college, the domain became my portfolio site. I tried to make this work on Squarespace, but it’s not yet an awesome platform for writers. I tried to make my site seem like a cool restaurant or maybe a hip jeans company but it didn’t work.
Incarnation Four: WordPress
Voila. I hope that I continue to carry on some of the traditions of my original site in high school. I want to always have a site that’s a weird, collaborative dumping ground of interesting thoughts, writing, opinion and artwork. Kinda like a high-school paper that isn’t about the Sno Dance.
Leckybang.com, just like Jack in Titanic, I’ll never let you go.