Work in progress
Saving a 25-year-old English website
He taught himself to code — no team, no funding — and built it alone. One man. One computer.
englishdaily626.com — as it looks today, unchanged for over a decade.
By the numbers
25 yrs
Hand-built, alone
30
Countries served
500+
Grammar exercises
297
Essays published
~1,000
Hand-coded pages
Always
Free to use
2012
Blocked by China
#37,000
Peak global rank
Top 0.01%
Of all websites
#687,000
Rank today
95%
Traffic decline
1 man
The whole team
The story
Before Google was the biggest search engine, my uncle saw a problem. Malaysian students had nowhere to learn English online. So he taught himself to code — no team, no funding, no background in development — and built it alone. One man. One computer.
For 25 years, his website englishdaily626.com served students from 30 countries. 500+ grammar exercises. 297 essays. Always free. In 2012, China blocked it — because too many Chinese students were using it to learn English.
At its peak, the site ranked #37,000 globally. That's the top 0.01% of all websites on the internet. Today it sits at #687,000. A 95% decline. And he knows it needs to change — but he's afraid. Nearly 1,000 hand-coded pages, built alone over 25 years. He's afraid that if he changes it, he'll break everything he built.
Follow along
Watch it get rebuilt, live.
I'm documenting every decision — what to preserve, what to modernise, how AI agents handle 25 years of hand-coded legacy HTML. Subscribe to catch every episode.