About the Site

I first heard about websites in 1998, but we had a very spotty dial-up connection, so for the first few years I only accessed websites on very rare occasions. It wasn't until 2000 that we had a stable enough connection that I began browsing the web on a regular basis, where I came across Anipike, the Anime Web Turnpike, a site directory for anime and manga websites.

Through Anipike, I came across various sites which were hosted by Anime Web Host - An anime themed web host with various themed subdomains. They also had site help and free layouts. My very first website was hosted by them, which had pre-made page templates. Here I showcased my ms paint fanart of Pokemon, Neopets, Dragonball, Gundam, and other anime and manga series, as well as various gifs and images I had found from websites listed on Anipike.

After a few months, I wanted to try making web pages from scratch myself, so I moved to Geocities after I learned some HTML from the Neopets HTML guide, and Lissa Explains it All. I started to branch out, and tried my hand at pixel art and spriting for video game hacks, such as Pokemon Gold and Silver. As well as this, I had 'mini-shrines' for my favourite anime characters, had a web forum and chatroom for fellow fans to talk about the series they were watching, and created graphics for others to use in their websites.

My Geocities site was updated til 2005, when high school homework and college preparations took up too much of my time, and it was put on an indefinite hiatus. When Geocities shut down in 2009, I saved only one or two pages, and it was never archived on internet archive (and only the hiatus page was archived at oocities.org) so everything else has been lost to time. I started to notice around this time that a lot of personal sites were disappearing, and people were simply having their social media site profiles as their "personal sites". I feel like a lot of the creativity from the early web had been forgotten. I had my facebook and tumblr and livejournal and myspace profiles, but it just wasn't the same as a personal website.

Almost 10 years after Geocities was shut down, I came across Neocities, and felt a revival of the feelings I had back in 2000. I wanted to make a website again, just like I had when I was a kid. However, a lot has changed, and I had to relearn HTML, as all my knowledge was from over a decade ago and completely outdated. The idea behind my new site was that while it would have a nostalgic feel to it, it would still have relatively up-to-date code.

This site is, essentially, a reimagining of what my site may have looked like if I kept it online from all those years ago.