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| History of TDD |
| It's been 1 year since I first opened the Digimon Digivolution and a lot has happened during that time. This page is a special page that is dedicated to the history of how this site began and also includes some stuff on what it's achieved. The Beginning. But where to start this? Well, before I had a site, I first had to think of doing one. I was amazed at all the sites that I saw on the net, Digiexperience, Lelola, Digital Monsters.com, and so forth. When I saw these sites, I wanted one of my own. It was a goal that I wished to achieve. The first thing that I did was think of a name. Sometimes I wonder just how I came up with the name, but I used the name Digimon Digivolution partly because it was to digivolve to the next level, and I wanted to take the Digimon series to the next level as well, or something to that effect. So, now that I had a name, I needed to start making the pages, this is where the Netscape Composer bit came in. About 2 months before TDD launched, I spent my free time creating pages on Netscape and it turned out okay. To be honest and this is true, TDD was once a site which would only have my stuff on it. Call it a personal page if you will. This was the idea for a while until I decided to make a typical Digimon site. The latter was the way to go and I created many pages with that idea in mind. I used Paint to make simple a simple banner too. The Host. Once I decided that I had done what I could to start the site, I then began looking for a host, easier said than done. Many were new to me, okay they were all new to me at the time, but a few of my online friends geared me towards a site called Homestead, back then, it was the only place I could go so I registered there and set myself up an account. TDD's First Days. Now came perhaps the saddest part of all this. My good friend Kate wished to help me put my site together on Homestead. We did by uploading the different pages as HTML pages, and it took a few minutes to get them all up. Alas, a major problem that we didn't suspect happened. The pages all came up wrong with unreadable text and stuff like that. Kate managed to fix a few of the pages, but there was no choice but to start from scratch. It took me some time to figure out the page builder, but when I did, it was easy. By around 5:10 on May 10, TDD had begun, and all that was there was the main page as I had just started. Over the next few days, I continued to make my pages from scratch and linking them all together. Already I had linked to many places such as Lelola, Digiexperience and a few of my friends sites. In fact, I had 47 hits on the first day alone. Anyway, I continued to florish as TDD slowly grew and my biggest moment was 500+ hits in one day. That record is one for my books. The Move to Geocities. Unfortunately, this would not last forever. In the beginning of June, I had received an email from Homestead which told of sadness, they were changing their builder from a free one to one where you had to pay money. This meant that I had to move to a new host within 90 days or lose my site. I didn't want to lose what I had just started. So I turned to my friends for help. One of my friends told me of Geocities and so I decided to try my luck there. My friend Mikomi, helped me with the move by moving my pics, and other stuff over. The pages themselves had to be restarted from scratch but that was okay. Another friend, Jayne also helped in redoing the pages and within 3 days, everything was gone from Homestead and onto Geocities. The only catch, my hits had to start again. I left Homestead with 2500 hits so I lost out right there, but I quickly regained them and a whole lot more. Other Sites. This idea started out well, but has since dwindled and failed, in all but a few places. I asked my staff if they wanted to do some sites of their own and make them a part of TDD. They said yes and so began the idea of multiple sites. At first this idea went well, but within a few months, they all ended up as dead sites, which were no longer updating. They had been abandoned and the idea shattered. However, the main Digimon site still flurished and grew stronger than ever by itself. These other sites included CardCaptors, Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon, Escaflowne, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gundam Wing,Final Fantasy, Super Smash Bros, Gamecube and a few more. Only 1 or 2 are still running, but most have been buried for good as it were. The Message Board. This was something that I had longed to do, but could npt figure out how to do it. Last July, my friend Jayne got me a Message Board at ezboard. She created it herself and it was very good, but it only lasted two days as you have to pay money per month to keep the board running, so it was abandoned. Two months later, another opportunity came for a message board. This time a YaBB board, which was a free one to have; a part of the X-Null network this was. Anyway, I have to mention special thanks to my friend Kyidramon who was kind enough to make the board for me. Thanks ever so much for all your help Kyidramon. The board has done okay, not that many members and not that many posts have been there, but it's ever growing, no matter how slow that growth is. The Second Move, kind of. Around September, Geocitis started to block my site to viewers. Normally sites get this done to them due to excessive Bandwidth, but in my case this was not so. Instead it was due to the Data File Transfer exceeding the 3 GB per month bit. At first I couldn't take it, so I had the site moved to Tripod for a day, then it got moved back as I decided to face the problem and deal with it. It doesn't occur as much as it does now, but if it does, then I must not be looking. The Fanart Site. The most recent addition to TDD is the Fanart site located as a button on the main page. I had always been fascinated by fanart that others had drawn and I yearned to showcase some of my own. This went on for a few months as the fanart was so good, it inspired me even more. The key sites I visited included Hey Digimon Art, which really started it all off, Bat-Pig Productions, Becci D's Digimon Site, Koani's site, Courageous Wings to name a few, but the art that I saw on these pages made it clear, I wanted to showcase my own. But to do that, I knew I had to use Photoshop to do this as many people cg'd their art to make it really stand out. Avout 2 months ago, I took a worshop in Photoshop to see how it would work. After that I tried it out but failed. Then I asked Gary and Louis Gallapegos of Hey Digimon Art for some help. They told me how to use the dodge and burn tool and I was able to do my first ever cg, of course it wasn't great, but not bad for a beginner. I thanked them so much for the help, that within two months, I did cg'd about 60 pics all in the span of two months. My fanart site opened at the end of February and each day that passed, my art got better and better as I mastered the program so quickly. I must also thank my great friend Michelle of Bat-Pig Productions for teaching me how to do layered backgrounds, use the gradient tool and a few other things. I of course did well and even went further in some cases, and we even done pics for one another. I also thank another great friend Becci D, who showed me how to use the dodge and burn tool more successfully. If it weren't for you guys, then I wouldn't have done nay of the great fanart that you see within my galleries. I want to make a special thank you to Melissa, my girlfriend for giving me the support that I needed during this time. Mel, someday, we will meet and have a great time together, I just know it. I also wish to thank the rest of my online friends for your continued support. We'll all meet someday soon too, I can feel it. Hits. Of course, how could I forget you, the great fans who come here. At the start TDD had hardly any hits and I felt that it was doomed to fail, but when I joined my first webring, the hits skyrocketed and how. I predicted 10,000 by May 10, but I reached this mark in mid-March. I then predicted 13,000 hits, but got that in mid-April. I finally predicted 14,000 hits, but got that just last week, but I thank all of you fans for visiting TDD. This place would be a much smaller place without you. And that is the end of the history of TDD. A lot has happened during this first year and I can imagine what great things will occur in the second one. There are some secret projects currently in the works that will be unleashed this month, but you'll have to see what they are when the time comes. Thanks for everything, all of you. |