Well, here it finally is. Everything about the site and me that you wanted to know but were afraid to ask. Basically this section is for links to site related pages that I don't want to add to the site navigation bar on the main page for fear of cluttering it up. It is also a place for me to add odds and ends that don't quite fit elsewhere.
History - Pufh! Where to begin?
This site was first created back in the late 90s, when I wanted to host all of my fan fiction in one place. At that time I only wrote for the Star Wars fandom, so it made sense to create a Star Wars website. I was also taking basic HTML lessons and we had to create several pages as part of the class, and thus the site was born. At first it was a pretty basic site with all the story links on the main page and little else. Back then the title of the site was simply Val's Star Wars Stories.
As I wrote more stories and started thinking of adding more material, I eventually created a Fan Fiction page and things started looking better but were still pretty basic with the main page consisting of a simple column of links to other pages. At this time, I would also post summaries for fics that were in fanzines and thus not yet available online. I quickly scrubbed this practice when it was brought to my attention that someone was using these summaries and the fact that the stories weren't online to steal my plot ideas and pass them off as their own. Hence I started refusing to tell people what upcoming stories were about.
As I added more sections, I was forced to move from the very limited amount of webspace my internet provider offered to the then add-free and unlimited space offered by crosswinds.net. This followed by another HTML class, allowed me to give the site a different face and with it came a new name, Dark vs. Light. Based on a marked increase in the number of awards the site received, people liked the improvements as new stories and sections were added. I also began adding pictures to the different pages, which were still pretty simple HTML despite all of the improvements.
Dark vs. Light remained this way for a while until crosswinds began altering what it offered free members. And then, one day without warning, they deleted their free accounts and my site was gone. Although I had all of my site files on my computer, I had been in the middle of making a series of changes and was just starting college at the same time. Due to a lack of time, a lack of knowledge of other free webproviders, and a desire to improve the layout and overall feel of the site, Dark vs. Light disappeared from cyberspace for a few years.
During this time I was struggling to rehaul the site until I stumbled across cascading stylesheets one night. I spent hours looking up all I could on it and taking several free tutorials online until I got the basics of how to combine it with tables (within tables, within tables ... !). But then I was still faced with the challenge of converting my old site files into the new look. I struggled with this briefly until I realized that I needed a template first.
While Dark vs. Light was down, I got drawn into the Harry Potter fandom and had begun writing for it as well. I'd wanted to eventually create a website for my fan fiction there too and I realized that it would be better to create that site from scratch (than to covert my old Star Wars one) and then to use the resulting framework. This led to the creation of my Harry Potter website Fire & Ice in December of 2004, after which I found it a relatively simple matter to come up with the new look for Dark vs. Light although it still took half a year to convert my site files.
Eventually, however, I managed to get it all done and Dark vs. Light reappeared online on the 2nd of June 2005, nearly three years after it had vanished. Along with the new look came several new sections, most important of which was the Art Gallery allowing me to display some of the fantastic artwork done for my stories. For the next year, new stories and sections were added, though overall the site didn't change dramatically.
In July of 2006, my massive co-authored fic Dynasty came online. Due to the space the fic and its art would require, I used a second free Geocities site under my mother's name as I didn't want to reach the limit of my account. This worked for about a month and a half. Then, suddenly, I discovered that, despite the separation of the fic, the main site was repeatedly exceeding its allotted hourly data transfer. I tried a few changes before admitting defeat and upgrading to a paid Geocities account that provided additional space and data transfer as well as other features (no sidebar ads!). With this move Dynasty migrated off the second site to the main one.
The upgrade also led to several additional changes, such as the return of an Index page and more site sections such as this one.
Nothing big really changed until late November 2006 when I reorganized the site slightly as certain sections and the site navigation table were becoming too cluttered. The navigation bar was rearranged and the Art Gallery was subdivided for easier surfing.
The next real alteration to the normal running of the site came in April 2007 when a PayPal donation button was added to the Main Page to help me meet the costs of hosting the site on an add free paid account.
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