Site History

This is a very detailed rundown of all that has gone on since the start of the site, and beyond. Some dates and such may not be entirely accurate, but they're pretty darn close. Also, take note that a lot of the specific dates are from the News Archives so you may want to check there for some nice history facts as well.

Before the Site -- The Forums

Before the site even came to being, there was the forums. The forums, which were hosted on Invision Free, were created on March 26, 2006. I don't know where I first got the inspiration to create one; I guess it was because a lot of other people around me were just starting their own Proboards and Invision Free forums, so I decided to take a shot at it myself. During the first three days of creation, no one joined. I made some threads myself and tried to make the place lively. I was greatly disappointed by the results.

But then, one brilliant afternoon after school, I saw that there were some posts on the forum! Two people had joined -- latios and Dragon Rider. Overnight, a good friend of mine, sarah, joined as well. We made over 40 posts that day. Over the month, we got lots of new members and 1,400 posts. Back then, I never realized what a feat that was for an Invision Free forum that had nothing to stabilize itself. Now, I realize that that was pretty impressive -- the start to all the glories that lay ahead.

ePokemon Network

On July 14, I decided to chance a main site for the forums. I tried to make one a long time ago on the Freewebs site builder, but I ditched it after about a week of creating it. Now, I wanted to be serious about it and decided to use HTML mode for way more flexibility on my web page, as well as learn HTML itself. At first, I struggled with it. All the HTML guides that I was reading always told me how to format webpages, but never told me how to actually design them. Frustrated, I decided to take the easy way out and use a free template from Free Layouts. From that, I made a new site on Freewebs -- ePokemon Network.

ePN was supposed to be the main site for Lugia's Island. It was going well at first and I was really excited to update it and add new stuff to it. But then, I was faced with a problem -- every time I wanted to update something like a new link on the navigation bar, I had to update every single page. At first, I stuck up with it, determined not to give up. Eventually, my patience swayed and the site was starting to get messy from laziness of updating every page just to make one small adjustment. The problem soon became so annoying that I just decided to give up on the site all together.

Special! For the first time ever, I'm revealing the URL to the ever-so-secret ePN: CLICK HERE. Bathe in it's all-mighty crappiness.

The Birth of the Site

I made yet another site on Freewebs shortly after giving up on ePN. I decided to rename it back to Lugia's Island, to match the forums. This time, though, I gathered the guts to make a new layout myself, using simple tables. The layout was dark, gray, boring, and monotone but I loved it back then. Who cares if it looked bad? The point is that it was 100% my creation and I was very proud of it. It was full of gaming pages, like those all-too-common pages with the box art and some random details about the game, with tables full of gym leaders and TMs and such.

But what was even greater than the new layout was the discovery of how to update every single one of my pages just by editing a single file -- SSI. I was browsing around the PokeCommunity forums when a thread titled "Updating Menus" (or something like that) caught my eye. Interested, I read the topic and learned about includes and how I can include one file on all my pages. Hearing of it, I quickly implemented it onto the site. Everything went uphill then.

A New Aim

It was late July/early August. It was then that I decided that I was fed up with the content of my site -- I loved the site itself but making the actual pages was a pain. Coding these complicated tables of long lists and information was boring, and there was no flavor in the content. I soon realized that there was no point in just recreated the work that others have made. I saw a site called The Cave of Dragonflies, which was full of fun content and interesting reviews. I decided that I wanted a site like that, instead of one that just supplied bland gaming information, and I recreated the whole site, layout, content, and just general overall feel.

The layout now sported a bright, cheery blue color instead of the dark gray color the last one had. It was still tables -- not much different in design than the last -- but I still liked it a lot more. I started over with new content, but this time with guides, reviews, and a lot of personal opinions. There weren't any more game pages, long lists, or anything else of teh sort. I was much happier with the new site, because for once making content was actually fun.

New Hosting

In mid August, I decided that I was tired of no one knowing about the site besides the forum members, and decided to do some advertising. The first place I advertised on was the PokeCommunity forums. The site received positive responses and good feedback. I was happy with the way people complimented on it. On the thread, people suggested that I get a new host instead of Freewebs. I told them that Freewebs was good enough for now, and that I'd ask someone to host me when the site got too big for it.

What I never expected was someone to actually offer me hosting. ShadowDragon, another member of PC, apparently saw my ad, liked my site, and PMed me, offering to host me. I was overjoyed that someone thought that LI was good enough to host. We discussed the plans on IM a few days later but the problem was, I had no idea that hosting (other than Freewebs of course) worked. I learned that I had to use something called FTP to upload my files to the site. So I downloaded it and played around with it and before the night was over, the new site was set up, at http://lugiasisland.zoomserve.com.

First Affiliates

So a few days after getting the new site up, I began to receive affiliation requests! The first one that I got was Articuno, one of the two webmasters of The Sky Temple of Lugia and Articuno. Now, TST was my all-time favorite Lugia fanshrine so you can only imagine how light-headedly, fainting with happiness and surprise that I was. For me, it was like being invited personally by a celebrity over for dinner. Needless to say, I pounced at the chance to affiliate with TST. My first affiliate was my favorite site every -- now that was sweet.

A few hours of after that, Faltzer of Pokeuniverse asked for affiliation as well. I wasn't quite over the shock of the last affiliation request, but that doesn't mean I still wasn't glowing with happiness. Faltzer mentioned in the affiliation request that he was quite impressed by the improvement of the site since the Freewebs days. I then first noticed the success that the site was having (like the forums, I was a bit slow of recognizing how big of an achievement I actually made). Of course, I accepted and by the end of the day, I had two wonderful sites nailed onto that affiliation list.

And just to prove how important they were to me, I even went through the trouble of digging through my old Inbox just to revisit those awesome moments:

http://lugia.co.uk

Hey there, I see your website is quite new and growing in size, you have a decent amount of content and a lovely layout, would you like to affiliate with The Sky Temple of Lugia and Articuno? The button can be found here:

http://www.lugia.co.uk/media/affiliates/button.gif

I'd also love to send over some fanart when I get a chance. Please get back to me, thanks a lot!

Hello, I want to affiliate with your website, Lugia's Island. I was impressed seeing at how you're growing so fast in such a short time, as well as you being hosted with free webs the first time. I also see that you've switched to a more reliable host. I would like to ask if you would affiliate with (http://pokeuniverse.amidal.com) or pokeuniverse.co.nr for short.

We're a fast growing site focused on the general pokemon games, as well as with the lastest information of Diamond and Pearl.We recieve around 70 total unique hits per day, and rising for up to 100+.

I have to sadly say, until I fix the problem with the menu denying affiliate buttons, I'll only be able to place a text link. Although, I've always thought affiliate buttons were pretty useless, because affiliate buttons carry no key words, and search engines deny buttons, and index links much better then button links. I can place a normal text link on my website and you can do the same.

If you don't wish to affiliate, it's fine with me.

-Faltzer

Ahh... I can keep rereading those lovely e-mails over and over again. <3

The New Layout

A few days later, I advertised the site on SPPf. The comments were much the same as they were on PC, but one person pointed out that the layout was mediocre. Of course, he never suggested that I change it, but the more I looked at it, the more apparent a layout change was. This time, though, I decided to reach above and beyond and use DIVs and CSS coding instead of the same old tables.

I found the concept of CSS positioning fairly simple and was able to cook up a nice blue layout with very pretty (in my opinion) navigation bars. It looked much more professional and I was able to finish it in three days and put it up on the site on September 12. And what was even better was that I could now implement a styleswitcher with it, since the layout was pretty much 100% CSs-based. I loved the new styleswitcher and I made styles featured Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, Rayquaza, Latios/Latias, and Mew. This way, I could create new layouts (since I really have a nack of making new layouts; I can't stick with the same layout for very long) but yet still keep the old, good ones.

Growing Bigger Than Ever...

By the time the New Year came around, Lugia's Island was getting about an average of 150-200 unique visitors a day! By then, my itch to create a new layout was stronger than ever and this time, I wanted something truly different. Again, I decided to try something new and create a layout with dropdown navigation bars. It was very unique and the positioning and everything was odd, but it created a nice affect. I think it was one of the oddest layouts I ever made.

Not only the new layout brought a huge change to the site though; as I was switching the pages over, I also converted the site to PHP. After doing some research about the language, I saw all the cool stuff that could be done with it. I decided that it was a lot better than SSI, so I switched over. I'm still learning how to use PHP today, although my earliest achievements is the self-made automatic e-mail form used for the Masked Pokemon competition.

LI's First Birthday!

And back again, Lugia's Island's first birthday was on March 26, 2007. I prepared a lot of surprises beforehand, but, unfortunately, my computer just decided to screw up when I needed it most, thus sending all of my work to oblivion. But, luckily, with a lot of support from LI fans, I found the boost that I needed to recreate all that I lost. I needed more time to recreate things because reinstallation of my computer was really slow, so I decided to wait until spring break to release the surprises. Among the surprises was yet another layout.

The styleswitcher came back with the new layout, but this time it was more flexible than ever. It was a lot like the old one, less original than the last, but it had my latest knowledge of CSS and I was able to use it much more efficiently than last time.

It all happened in one adventure-packed year -- from the forums, to the Freewebs site, to the large site that Lugia's Island is now. Hopefully the year after this one will be just as good.