This was written by me in ~2003! It's a little embarrassing in some parts, but I was 19.
This is just sort of a background on the Internet, my websites and webpage-making, why I started, etc, in case you're curious, bored, or just really interested.
Up until December of 1998, I would use the Internet through my mom's work, or through her "work Internet connection" at home. Though because this costed a lot of money, I wasn't allowed to use it often. The first website I ever saw was called The Silverchair Addiction, which by now has been erased or moved. Since I was so interested in how she did all that cool stuff, and I just wanted to email my friends, I talked my mom into getting the Internet at home, and she did....Except we got Juno WebMail, which means we couldn't actually view websites.
I had a few mistakes with that, like keeping my sent emails. My mom went through them and found me giving my address to some guy in Kentucky, then she found the letter I was going to send to him, and she took the WebMail away from us. It wasn't until February of the next year that I talked her into letting me back on, but letting me on the actual Internet...Which would prevent that because I could talk to friends more and not be so lonely, etc.
So we set up with some almost free service, though I don't really remember what it was now. It was then I started visiting more sites and wondering how thy did the scrolling text and such. I really wanted to do it myself. Conveniently, around that time, I had a band. So I decided, hey! I'll just make my band's site! So I did. Thus came the Misspent Youth site.
But one site just wasn't enough for me...I searched around the Internet for cow sites, because I was really into cows then. I couldn't find any that gave me exactly what I needed, so I decided to create my own. Unsatisfied with Cowpages, I then created Kow Kult. Those really weren't moving it for me, so I decided to create Cows Can Skateboard Too. See, I was engaged in this Internet chat called OnChat, and the skating rooms were the place to be then, so I made it kind of in honour for that. This is when I made my first few graphics, such as the cow animation of the cow skateboarding (so I could prove cows could skateboard). This site had a lot of personal stuff on it like pictures of my friends and I thought, hey, I want to make a personal webpage like those ones out on the web.
And so I tried to. I made Duck Tape Punk and Punky Cheese as attempts, but still with content about something else. Those were very poorly made and I was not satisfied. It was around this time my cousin asked me to make a page for her band's site, after seeing the page for my band's site. So I did and this was my first experience in really making graphics for people, no matter how much they sucked.
I made Something Smellz, my Nirvana site, around this time. I only made it because I kind of had a crush on this guy who like REALLY liked Nirvana (shh..You know who you are) and I wanted him to contribute so we were working together. He never did.
My first personal website was called Emotion Sickness, I believe, from the silverchair song. It was then I discovered envy.nu and Bluewater. So I got the HTML from a layout from Bluewater, but used my own ideas in it along with my own Care Bears picture, and made the first version of my personal site. Of course, since I wanted it to be like the other personal sites, it had all the candy raver content, even though I was not a candy raver. I thought it was really cute. This is also where I started the Question of the Day, which still lives today in the Visitor section of Tintalle. I deleted it after finding my idea being stolen by many other webmasters out there. Believe me, I searched for sites with a question of the day, and none had any until my site was popular enough to have visitors.
I wasn't really happy with that, because it wasn't really a personal site. It had a survey and a few other fun facts, a bunch of stuff about ravers, then a visitor section with a survey and question, then links. So I gave the site a makeover, which I believe was a nice flower layout next, and renamed it Blue Midnight. The problem with this one, though I loved it very much, was that while all the personal content was about me, there was much more visitor content than anything, and what's a personal site for the visitor? Well anyway, that went through a lot of versions and names on envy.nu that I really don't remember.
Also around now, I discovered digitalrice and snagged a few usernames for that. Of course, none of them work now. I made a silverchair fansite called Good Things Will Pass on here, which was my first really really big complete site, with a layout coded completely by me. So I was really proud of it. It would never be anything like the silverchair sites I used to visit, I knew, but I was still extremely happy with it, because it was a creation of my own. I also used an account to create a website for my Earth Science class on planet Saturn which I truly wish I could show you today.
After playing around a lot with my personal site, I realised that I had a TON of sites! So I decided to make a collective, which I called Blue Moose and put on envy.nu. Also around this time I created my antisheep website, which I dearly miss now and may recreate some day, which I've unsuccessfully tried to recreate. It's just not as funny! The code for Blue Moose also came from Bluewater, but I also customized that, even more than with Emotion Sickness. It was with that site that I really got into designing pretty things and making pictures, though none of my ideas were never put online.
Envy.nu's service started sucking, so I was looking around for another adfree, free webpage service to station my sites on, but unfortunately couldn't find one. But I was really getting interested in domain owners, some of them I remember were gleeb.com, un-done.net, girlracer.org, and pinkjunk.com so I decided I wanted to be cool like them and own a domain. I also really wanted to host people; not just anyone, but the people who least expected to get hosted. A lot of my hostees on fadedmoo were asked to be hosted by me because I came across their sites and loved them.
So in July 2001 I talked my mom into buying me a domain as my birthdy present (my birthday is in August so it works out). I moved my personal site to /sweep and renamed it Enceladus, moved Blue Moose to /moose and kept that the same until it moved. I wasn't sure what to make the actual domain, though, with my personal site where it was, so I just basically had two personal sites, one with more stuff about me, and the domain with the journal entries. After a really long time, I got really mad at this and made Enceladus into Blue Christmas and made it entirely personal; no visitor section. So all the visitor section stuff moved to the domain. Then I got bored with that, too, and recreated Enceladus and decided I didn't want to have two really personal things on the same site and that I wanted it to be hosted.
I asked quite a few domain owners, but Jenna at pocket-lint.org was the only one to accept me. So I moved Enceladus to pocket-lint.org/jesus and called it Thirty-Three. Meanwhile, at the domain, I was going through layouts and ideas quickly and soon decided that I wanted a completely hosting domain, so I had to find a host for /moose. My friend Jen at muffled.net said she'd host me, so I moved it to there, at spachtel.muffled.net. I'm pretty sure I renamed it too, but I really don't remember.
At this time, I was also creating my other sites, such as Squirt! the 80's pixel adoption page, some cliques like Vicious Veggies, and I took control of the Corrosive Head Pollution webring after Amber. It didn't take long for me to get really sick of the arrangement everything was in, but it did take almost a year to convince my mom to buy me another domain. In March 2002, I moved /jesus and :/spachtel to my new domain, Tintalle.net.
I wanted this domain to be completely personal. Partly because I just wanted one, and partly because I did not want to host people there. I did not want a prospective employer to come across a hostees' site and email me about my wonderful designing skills and try to hire me off of that. So fadedmoo.com became completely hosting [except a few cliques of mine] and tintalle.net was all mine.
Toward the end of the first year of fadedmoo, I got really bored with it's format. It was basically an updates blog, hostees, hosting, links, and cliques. I wanted something more out of it, since I was paying $200 to keep it up. I also wanted more spaces for hostees since I'd been running out and making people share usernames. So I got the idea for a community. I designed it four times before I decided on what it was going to be, so that's what it is now conveniently right when I had to renew it. So I bought a package to get more usernames and there it is. I've decided to not upload a layout there unless I am extremely happy with it, and now that Dodo taught me PHP, I can all make them in that. I don't want this to be like it was before, when there was a new layout practically every week. I want people to be able to visit and say "Hey, I remember this layout! Fadedmoo.com rocks!" (Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit on the last part.)
My plan is to make fadedmoo.com into a real community, like those community sites, you know? I realise I have to be much more advanced than I am now to get to my goal, but I am determined to learn as much as possible, and take any effort to get the word out there. My main goal, though, is someday to be mentioned in a magazine article or newspaper about uprising community sites.
Tintalle.net was on a very unreliable server. If you are looking for a company to host your domain, do not choose Hosturbo!!! Unless, of course, you don't mind your page being down pretty much all the time. So when I made the package switch on fadedmoo, I also made a server switch on tintalle to Cyberpixels, and have found them to be somewhat reliable (though Can-Host is the best). Tintalle.net will always be a personal domain, and I will never host here. I am a-okay with getting very few visitors here, because this stuff really is up for me, and maybe my boyfriend and friends.
I decided to completely delete my 'collective' page, whatever form it was in or name it had at the time ... And combine it into the domain, making Tintalle.net Designs, so someday if I ever get hired or make a site for someone, they can link me as that.
Well, after two years, the name 'fadedmoo' began to sicken me. It's not because I'd had the domain for so long ... It's because the name once actually meant something to me, and all loving feelings toward it were lost. So in 2003 I decided to replace it with a new domain, oh-darling.org. I originially only wanted ohdarling.org, but it was registered 7 days before I was able to get it, but I don't care anymore because the hyphen has grown on me. It's bigger and better than fadedmoo, and I'm very proud of it. I had to leave Can-Host because I was paying way too much for things I didn't really need (2500MBs), however I don't think I'll ever find another place with such reliable service.