Today is the fifth birthday of andrewphelps.com!

On October 1, 2000, when this whole thing began, Bill Clinton was president, I was in high school, September 11 was an ordinary day, and “blogging” was not yet a word. The fact that this Web site is still around — created as an experiment out of teenage boredom — is a milestone. Weblogs simply don’t last long.

In five years, this Web site has traveled across and outside the 48 States, has undergone nine face-lifts, and has seen numerous girlfriends and one great love. Who knows what’s next?

Some fun statistics:

• Entries: More than 875
• Comments: More than 2,400
• Words: More than 330,000
• Photos: More than 2,000
• Visitors in September 2005: 40,000
• Most viewed photojournal: Straight for One Night
• Most commented entry: Made in Heaven (58 comments)
• Top commenter: Sam Reed (293 comments)
• Number of uses of “love”: 334
• Number of em-dashes: 660
• Milestones and eras:
• chameleon, the eighth version of andrewphelps.com (2003)
• One Year of Photos (2003)
• My trip to Hawaii (2003)
• My writings and photos of Jason Mraz (2003-4)
• My adventures as a KPBS intern (2004)
• The death of my father (2004)
• My solo trek across Europe (2005)

Many of the statistics above are “at least” numbers, because old content from andrewphelps.com still remains missing. In the good ol’ days, backing up was not something I thought to do. And a lot of content was lost with server changes and redesign blunders. However, in anticipation of this fifth birthday, I have spent months scouring archived data to help complete the puzzle. I owe thanks in part to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and Google. I have added dozens of old entries and comments, and I’m still working hard on it.

Sadly, the site’s earliest layouts and articles may be missing forever. If, for some reason, you have any remnants of andrewphelps.com classic (screen shots, saved articles, etc.), I would be delighted to hear from you.

In the month ahead, as part of the birthday observance, I will be doing some graphical tinkering and pointing to newly restored archives.

Here’s to another five!