Blog

My time online actually started even before the launch of my website, back in 2003, when I was active in various German-speaking Austrian chatrooms. Most of them unfortunately no longer exist today. In some of these chatrooms, you had the option to customize your profile and even had something like a blog feature. That's exactly where I discovered that writing comes naturally to me and that I genuinely enjoy it. I used several of these platforms and kept blogging regularly over the years. Back then, it was much more about quantity than quality, but I was still a teenager (more like a kid, to be honest).

The official start of my own website came in 2006, so exactly 20 years ago. It was a simple website hoster where content could be formatted and pages could be built with basic commands. The possibilities were very limited back then. A few elements were available for free, the domain was predefined by the provider and additional features required payment. I think it was only two images for free, maybe around 20 in total with a subscription, which wasn't much either. And of course, I wanted that upgrade. I was 15 years old at the time and still remember going to the bank with my mother to fill out a payment slip so I could unlock more features for my website.

Originally, my website was simply meant to be a kind of improved blog. I wanted to write about topics that interested me. At the same time, I was active in many international forums, so I made a conscious decision to write my content directly in English instead of just German.

My English back then (and partly even today) was rather average. Translators already existed, but they weren't nearly as advanced as they are today. I often kept revising my texts over the course of weeks. The big advantage was that around 2007 and 2008, through many international online connections, I had a few people helping me proofread my texts and improve them.

The topics I wrote about were very different. My interests have always been broad and when something really grabs me, I want to understand it and feel the need to write about it. Especially topics with contradictions, opposing viewpoints or even conspiracy theories always caught my attention. I simply wanted to know what's really behind it.

One area started to stand out in 2009 and that was health related topics. I signed up at a gym with a few friends and discovered my passion for training and physical development. From that point on, my focus shifted more and more in that direction. Everything around the immune system, nutrition and fitness became increasingly important to me. Especially in these areas, I quickly realized how much misinformation and how many myths exist. And that's exactly what motivated me to dig deeper.

When you're new to the fitness world, it's extremely hard not to fall for misinformation. Back then, a lot of it was classic bro science, just like you still see today. Of course, there was also genuinely helpful content here and there, depending on which forum or website you were on. As a beginner, you simply have no real overview. It also took me quite some time before I started using scientific studies as sources and actually understood how to interpret and evaluate them.

After countless blog posts on these topics, I decided to completely rebuild my website in 2010. On one hand, because science is a dynamic field and knowledge evolves over time. On the other hand, I wanted to give new beginners an easier and correct starting point without having to dig through multiple older blog posts.

I revised many of my blog posts, restructured them and turned them into dedicated core articles covering different fitness topics. They were meant to be as timeless as possible and always stay aligned with the current state of scientific evidence. By the way, the infographics back then were made using Paint and screenshots from Excel. I actually still have them saved in my archive today.

Even though I didn't actively use any website analytics back then, I had the feeling that traffic during that time was quite high. Smaller websites like mine seemed to get more attention back then. The communication with visitors also felt much more direct and personal. For me, that was the peak period between 2008 and 2010.

In the years that followed, things slowed down a bit, mainly due to the rise of social media. Many smaller websites were pushed further into the background, and discussions increasingly shifted to Facebook groups and similar platforms. Around 2013 and 2014, I was also very active on social media and was able to generate some additional traffic through Instagram, for example. Still, I probably could have increased my reach significantly if I had focused more on platforms like that or on YouTube. But back then (just like today), that was simply never really my thing.

Social media is still one of the most effective ways to build reach. But since new platforms keep popping up and attention is now spread across many different channels, things have calmed down a bit. That actually brought a bit more activity back to my website on its own, even though everything was still running on a smaller scale around 2016.

During that time, I also experimented a lot with different website hosters and moved my site several times. There were always new free services offering more advanced features. Most of the time, I only had to pay a small fee to remove ads. That was always important to me, because from the very beginning I wanted to offer my content for free and without annoying banners.

At the same time, I started learning some basic programming skills. It was mostly fundamentals, with a lot of help from the community. This allowed me to gradually integrate my own tools into the website. In the beginning, they were fitness specific tools like Calorie Calculators, an Deload Calculator or a Body Fat Calculator. And over time, more and more were added.

Everything that helped me in everyday life and could also provide value to others, I integrated into the site. That included tools outside of fitness as well, like a Tolerance Calculator that was useful for my work, or a Power Consumption Calculator and a Wealth Calculator to analyze personal finances. The idea behind it was simple. If it helps me in daily life, it can help others too, so I made it public.

By the way, this whole calculator idea actually started much earlier. Back then, I built many of these tools as Excel sheets with formulas. And yeah, they already worked really well.

In the years that followed, I continuously improved the visual design of my website and focused heavily on writing articles. And then in 2020, COVID-19 brought everything more or less to a halt and continued to have a strong impact on daily life in the years that followed. Since I spent a lot of time at home in front of my PC during those months and years, I was able to use that time to completely redesign my website once again. I also decided to switch providers, because the possibilities of my previous hoster were simply too limited.

My main options were services like WordPress or Wix, but then I came across Google Sites, which I had heard of a few times before but never really paid attention to. Since I already use a lot of Google services in my daily life, I was really interested in giving it a try.

So I took a close look at all the pros and cons of Google Sites. From an SEO perspective, the platform has some limitations. And many things like blog layout or embedding code require a lot of creativity. Since it's more challenging but not impossible, I decided to take that step in 2021 and, as always, try to get the absolute most out of the available possibilities and build one of the best Google Sites out there.

As part of this step, I finally secured my own domain www.manuelfally.com, which was long overdue. During the pandemic, I simply had the time to really dive deep into these things. It was also during this time that I created the M.F. logo for my website.

Another necessary step was reworking my old infographics and moving away from Paint images and Excel charts toward more modern designs that I created in Canva. And that was definitely needed.

At the end of 2022, the first major LLM systems entered the market. It was immediately clear to me that this could once again have an impact on smaller websites, similar to what happened during the rise of social media. For me personally, though, it was never a big issue, since I don't make money with my website and I'm not dependent on it.

I wanted to give it a chance, because I've always been open to new technologies. You either move with the times or you get left behind. What matters is using it in a smart and balanced way. So in the beginning, I mainly used AI for brainstorming, phrasing and translations, especially when it comes to expressions that can't be translated one to one. After all, my English isn't exactly "the yellow from the egg" (a German saying that basically means "not very good").

Many people initially worried that personal blogs would become obsolete because of AI systems. I see it differently. Your personal writing style, your own thoughts and the way you present a topic remain unique. And I think that's exactly what people want to read. The traffic on my website hasn't gone down, quite the opposite. Probably exactly because an old school writing style stands out more today and feels more authentic compared to AI generated texts.

In a very short time, AI systems evolved rapidly and I mainly used them in two areas: Coding optimization and image generation. Both are topics that are still discussed very emotionally, since what used to require a lot of money and know-how can now be done by beginners with just a few prompts. And I understand that, but that's just how things evolve. At least for now, AI can't replace real work.

For me, image generation quickly became the most interesting part, especially when it came to making my website feel more personal. That's why I created an anime character in 2025, based on a rough sketch and various reference photos that represents me.

As you can already see in this blog post, I created multiple age variations of this anime character. I did this to better integrate older blog posts into the overall design.

AI has also been a huge support when it comes to debugging and further developing my tools. In this area, I implemented a larger update in 2026. I switched to a more modern design and made everything more consistent overall.

So those are basically the only AI applications I occasionally use for my website and I'm really glad and grateful that this has been received very positively by my visitors, possibly also because of the transparency from the very beginning.

After the calculator updates, I made another round of revisions to my infographics. Some design optimization was needed again, but what had really been bothering me for a while was mainly the inconsistent formatting. Some graphics were, for example, 800 px by 1150 px, others 1450 px by 1223 px. Back then, I simply used whatever size fit best into each article. However, that made them less suitable for sharing or embedding on other websites. So I converted all of them into a consistent square format.

And yeah, here we are now. Over the last 20 years, as you can see, I've reworked and continuously developed my website countless times, and that's not going to change anytime soon. And I love it. I'm genuinely passionate about constantly improving it, and I think you can tell.

Of course, many things could have started off better from the beginning. But I believe the way the journey unfolded was the right one. If I had tried to over optimize everything to death before publishing, maybe nothing would have ever been created.

And now… it continues. Here's to the next 20 years. I'll keep doing exactly what I feel like doing. Sometimes it's a new blog topic, sometimes a core article, a new tool or expanding something that already exists.

If you have any requests, feel free to reach out to me anytime. No matter how unnecessary some features might seem (for example, the imperial system in my tools), if they provide value to some of you, I'll implement them.

Closing Words

In the end, there's only one thing left to say: Thank you

Thank you for all the feedback over the last 20 years. A special thank you also to everyone who has been here from the very beginning. Thank you for your support, thank you for your time and thank you for your trust.