Someone Stole My Old Website

So earlier today, I was playing around with Google Search Console to see how the indexing of my new blog was doing. I stumbled upon Search Console Insights because of this alert from Google:

So I clicked, curious about what the most popular content is, even though I'm quite sure no one even bothered to read my posts 😞 But I do hope you find the articles helpful. 😉

I got confused as to why there were items on the list that was out of place and seemed to have come out of nowhere. I thought to myself: "Even Google really does make mistakes huh?". So I clicked...

I was stunned.

To my surprise, I was looking at the old portfolio site I designed and developed in 2016, stolen by another developer who seems to brand himself a turtle and a ninja at the same time! 🐢🥷

It was the same exact thing, except everything was blue and the name was different. The animations were the same. The layout was all the same. Heck, even the contents and images in there like my dear old Macbook Pro (how I miss it) were there.

What's worse is even my previous clients from way back were listed on his site and he didn't even bother to change these. The. Same. Exact. Thing.

It led me to believe that the reason it showed on Search Console Insights was that my GA (Google Analytics) tags were also copied over.

It was something very dear to me and reminded me that it has been a long journey. I've put in time and effort back in the day when jQuery, parallax scrolling, and a bunch of animations and transitions were the trend. It felt great to have it deployed.

ewww. a GIF 🤮 BTW if you're a Mac user, check out Gifski by Sindre Sorhus to generate GIFs from videos!

It's quite saddening to see other people steal your work when all they had to do was reach out and ask. Oh, and I also found out that he had blocked me on social media as well. sigh. He must have been really amazed and obsessed at the same time. Still, part of me was proud. Why? Someone took interest and did something this crazy!

To other developers out there, don't ever do this. It only proves incompetence and lack of skills. It will only get you so far and not to your full potential.

I know this is something very trivial in the totality of issues in this world but I guess I just want to put it out there: The war in Ukraine, US-China tensions, inflation, tech layoffs, and school shootings. I guess humans really are weird creatures. I'm still rooting for all of us. ❤️