Reviving Wisteria

Sometimes I look around and I hate what the web has become.

Years and years ago when I first came to the web, back in the mid nineties, my favorite website was called “Wisteria”. It was a whimsical, beautiful, personal website that explored mythology, fairytales, kitchen magic (homemade cosmetics and organic cleaning supplies, etc.) gardening, and things that go bump in the night. It was disastrously organized, if it was organized at all. If you were lucky enough to find a useful piece of information during one visit, you had to memorize it or write it down because chances were good you’d never find that information again. Clicking a wrong link during a mosey down one of her recipes for herbal lip balms would land you on a page about her chickens (complete with pictures and a haiku, of course), which would in turn take you to a page about roaming chicken coops and a recipe for a three egg omelet. I could rarely remember where my journey had begun, and it was a hopeless task to go to her site to look for anything in particular, but every visit was such a wonder that I came back eagerly and often to see what she was up to.

She updated her site frequently, though in unexpected places. Some days I was sure the third link in her “Ode to a Lavender Fairy” used to take me to a tutorial on watercolor, only to discover it now took me to her webcam. But every update added a new dimension of whimsy and beauty to the site. The art was carefully chosen, the language delightfully sweet. The photography, while not professional, was worthy of the words that surrounded it—the pictures told as much of a story as anything else.

I didn’t just visit her website. I explored it. I relished its quirks. I looked forward to old paths leading me to new places, and just accepting it when old favorites disappeared to be replaced by her new fancy-of-the-moment.

Wisteria’s site was a treasure hunt, and I miss that about the web. I miss how personal it used to be before it was taken over by bizpeak and advertisers. I miss how free it was, how open to exploration and unfolding. Webapps are great and everything, but as a publishing platform the web used to be—and could be again—so much more. Don’t get me wrong, I recognize the value of a strong architecture, of solid navigation, and of good usability and predictability. But I also understand the value of a website as art, and of art as experience, and what it means to get lost in one’s journey into images, words, ideas. The value of these things might be harder to quantify, and certainly harder to justify to a client or a company, and truthfully, these things that I hold so dear won’t be of value to many people. It will depend on the right situation, the right website, the right visitor. But these people, these instances, should be catered to as well. There’s no reason the web has to be sterile, blue-gray, and plastic.

Damn it all. I’m going to bring Wisteria back.