Four Years of Armchair General

It’s hard to know where to begin with a piece dedicated to the history of the Armchair General website.  I’ve been personally involved with every aspect of creation, updating, maintenance, design, troubleshooting, marketing, advertising, and community building since the day I stepped into the Armchair General headquarters in the spring of 2003.  I’ve put considerable sweat and tears into the growth and evolution of the site, and I can say without hyperbole that I’ve enjoyed and thrived on the challenges every day I’ve been here.  Now it is time to share the load…

At the four year mark I have the pleasure of handing off the editing and author management portion of my duties to our new full time Senior Online Editor, Gerald D. Swick.  As you can see, he now has a nice fresh new website to carry us into the next four years.  I would also like to thank Andrew Summersgill for his contributions over the past several years as the de facto Senior Editor, helping me in more ways than I can list here. For my part, my role has expanded to include work for all the rest of the Weider History Group magazines, which will start with redesigning and creating new web homes for each title, and for HistoryNet.com.  I’ll still be around however, keeping an eye on things from my remote mountain village.

I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at the past four years, and the home page designs you might remember if you’ve been a long time reader and community member.  Please take a moment to pop into the forum discussion and let us know if you remember these!

Summer 2003 (our first placeholder)

Fall 2003 (our second placeholder)

Spring 2004 (our first working site)

Spring 2005 (Design #2)

Spring 2006 (Design #3)

Spring 2007 (Design #4)