floor9.com has been blogging live from downtown Harrisburg, Pennsylvania since the summer of 2002. Long before social media became what it is today, the site told the stories of floor9 and his coworkers as they made their way through the then-brand-new assortment of downtown nightlife venues.  Looking back on those posts from so many years ago, it becomes clear that the photos and the commentary helped paint a bigger picture — that of downtown Harrisburg’s renaissance.  What was once regarded as “too dangerous” to traverse after nightfall is now bustling with shoulder-to-shoulder energy until well past 2am.

And I was there.

Now, as the first decade of the millennium draws to a close, floor9.com stands tall, handing out commentary on area developments, consumerism, local news, and all the bizarre, uncharted finds that reside here in Pennsylvania.  What once pulled a few dozen visitors per week now averages well over 12,000 unique visitors every month.  The nightlife pictures that once adorned the site now rest comfortably tucked away on DVD, ready to be dusted off and brought back when they’re sufficiently retro.

Put simply, the site has entered its 30s.

floor9.com was originally powered by a custom Gentoo Linux server stuffed into a closet in Executive House apartments.  At launch, all of the HTML was static and hand-coded.  Over the years, the site has fiddled with Drupal and xOOPS before ultimately settling on WordPress.  If you’re wondering why there are no posts prior to 2005, it’s because xOOPS is a terrible, terrible CMS that wiped everything out.  Since January 2008, floor9.com has been hosted on a server at Steadcom’s primary datacenter in Los Angeles, California.  If you’re looking for VPS or dedicated hosting, these guys can’t be beat.

Although no one keeps any real history or archive of the evolution of social media in the midstate, floor9.com is one of the longest-running, still-updated blogs in Central PA.  With no end in sight, floor9.com may very well become a lifelong journal of one guy’s venture through life.  Check back in 50 years and see if I’m still here.