Welcome to Boat Rudder

A retro-compatible site that serves the right HTML for every browser, from WAP phones to modern Chrome.

Five epochs, one codebase

Every page is assembled from epoch-specific templates: WML, plain text, HTML 3.2, HTML4+CSS and HTML5+CSS3.

New sections will be added soon, all following the same retro-compatible approach.

Latest Blog Posts

Boat Rudder is here: one website, every browser

A new content manager serves the same site to a text browser from 1994 and to the browser you are using today - no plugins, no cut-down mobile copy, and no "please upgrade your browser".


TJR Admin	News	2026-08-23

I am building a retro-compatible CMS

I keep a collection of computers from the 1980s that can no longer reach the web. After 25 years building websites, I decided to build the system that brings them back into the conversation - starting with three epochs and a spreadsheet.


TJR Admin	News	2023-08-23