Look of wcnews

[ck9791]

Has wcnews ever looked different? I have been visiting since the mid-2000s and it has always had this look. But I was curious as to if it ever had a different look, such as in its early days.

 

[FekLeyrTarg]

In this case, the Wayback Machine of archive.org is your best friend.
The earliest capture was made on December 3rd 1998:
https://web.archive.org/web/19981203121041/http://www.wcnews.com:80/

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I think there have been four or five looks, depending on how you count.

- The original "Wing Commander Combat Information Center" which I set up at loaf.pi.se to house a Wing Commander encyclopedia-type site (... still working on it...); this one was totally different, with a grid of icons from the games representing different sections. It would've been totally rough.

- The first look for wcnews.com which we launched with. It's very similar to the December version you linked above, except the right menu was graphical, with these beautiful mouseover buttons for each category. Sadly it was too big for dialup and a huge pain to add material to.

- The one linked above.

- The version from 2000 or so until 2012 which was like the one linked but with menus on both sides of the page.

- The current version, which we moved to in 2012.

 

[KrisV]

Some older pages still have the 2000-2012 layout: https://www.wcnews.com/controls.shtml
Sadly, the very first look (with graphical menu) was lost forever.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Some older pages still have the 2000-2012 layout: https://www.wcnews.com/controls.shtml
Sadly, the very first look (with graphical menu) was lost forever.

Forever isn't long enough.

 

[ck9791]

I never noticed the change with the menus between the previous version and the current version.

The never launched and the original launch versions of the site sound interesting. Thanks for a little bit of info on the early days of the website.