Online History
2001 - Neopets^
2001 was the year where I first really started using the Internet, for things other than homework.
Although I had the internet at home, I didn't really bother with it due to the fact that I had dial-up and I'm an impatient person anyway. I used my internet at home to chat to random people on Yahoo! Instant Messenger and during the week at term times, I'd go to the after school ICT club.
When I was on the computers at school, I'd usually play on my Neopets^ account and play on the games on there, along with a few of my friends.
Then, I started getting loads of homework and, a year later, coursework. I no longer had time for Neopets^, so my account was left to rot.
2003 - Neopets^, Again
By now, I had finished my GCSEs and had started my A Levels. Me and the group of friends I had in one of my classes (Film Studies), would all stay in the Media Suite during lunch and break times and we'd all play Neopets^ together.
Towards the end of 2003, I'd rediscovered my old Neopets^ account and had joined a Guild called 'Helping the Poor'. I was one of the staff of this Guild and started learning HTML and CSS, so I could learn how to create Guild layouts and modify other parts of the site (like my user lookup, my pet's pages, etc).
2004 - My First Site
In January, I created a website for the Guild. This website was also known as 'Helping the Poor' and was hosted on Tripod^. I only had the most basic HTML, CSS and design skills but still managed to make my own layout, using tables!
Before the month was up, I'd had enough of my host and moved to 250free.com^. I'd also discovered frames and downloaded a free frames layout from Thuggndiva'z Dollz^. I modified the layout in an attempt to make it more unique. From downloading this layout, I learnt a few things; how to make my own frames layout and how to use external style sheets.
I started creating new layouts every couple of weeks.
My Neopets^ Guild site slowly started to morph into a doll site.
By March, the popularity of my site had grown considerably; I was now using too much bandwidth to stay on my current host and had to find a new host.
My favourite site at the time, Gurlpowerrr^ (owned by Eve), had hosting applications up and I applied. The next day, I came online to find that I'd been accepted!
My site became bigger, better and more popular until May, when our sites had to be moved to a new server. Something had gone wrong with Eve's domain and our sites disappeared for over a month.
For my 18th birthday, Eve bought me my first ever domain (helpingthepoor.net) and this spurred me on to continue working hard on my site until I could get it back up and running.
In September, Eve had grown tired of Gurlpowerrr and sold it off to The Doll Palace^. Since I had no job, I had no money to pay hosting bills with, so I had three options; get sponsored, get hosted or give up my site.
Then Gina from Pink Goddess Dolls^ offered to host my site! :)
Helping the Poor
In July 2005, Gina informed me that I was using too much bandwidth (more than 60GB a month) for her to continue hosting my site. I still had no job and couldn't pay any hosting bills, so I decided to see if I could get sponsored.
I emailed the man who'd sponsored Eve's site and - politely! - asked if it was possible for him to sponsor me. He agreed but said I would need to put up a link to his hosting company.
This is probably the worst thing I could have done for this site.
In October 2005, I was going to my dad's house in Gran Canaria for eight days (from the 8th til the 16th). I updated my site the day before I left and checked in on it on the Tuesday, while I was still there.
The day I got back, I checked in on my site before going to bed. Instead of my site, a 'This page cannot be displayed' notice was up instead. I thought it was probably just downtime and went to bed.
I tried to check my site the next day and it was still offline. So I tried logging into Plesk (it's kinda like a cPanel) but it was saying that my username and password were incorrect. This couldn't possibly have been the case, since Firefox automatically saved my username and password - all I had to do was press a button and I'd be logged in! I then tried logging into my FTP account and it came up with the same error.
I knew then that Helping the Poor was gone for good as my sponsor was also in charge of my domain name. :(
earwordssway.org
During the time I'd owned Helping the Poor, I'd also owned a few blogs on various hosts.
For Christmas 2004, I'd gotten some money and decided that I'd buy one domain and the smallest hosting package available on Surpass Hosting^ and this would be used for my blog.
The domain I chose was earwordssway.org ('swearwords' in pig latin, with a '.org' tacked onto the end).
My blogging weapon of choice was b2 and I posted fairly frequently. A while later, I learnt about b2's big brother, WordPress^ and used that as my blogging software instead.
I was never really happy with earwordssway.org and every few months, I'd take it down and revamp everything and then reopen it. The biggest revamp it went through was the one where I scrapped everything...even the name...
never-his.org
never-his.org was the site which replaced earwordssway.org. I knew now that the main reason I wasn't happy with my site was simply because it had a rubbish name, so I got a new name and redid everything. I even deleted all of my previous entries.
never-his.org was a lot more popular than earwordssway.org had ever been and I enjoyed blogging on this domain. I also started to add a few graphics and stuff for the visitor. However, I didn't feel I could add much, as most of the graphics I was making, were going onto my graphics and dolls site...
Yummyrae.net
This was the *new* Helping the Poor; once I'd gotten over losing my site, I'd decided that I'd simply put everything back online, under a new domain. Once I had it up and running, I contacted everyone I knew and asked if they could change all of their links from helpingthepoor.net to yummyrae.net and give me a little plug on their next update. This was so I could get the message out that Helping the Poor was BACK but with a new name and location!
Yummyrae.net was originally hosted by Jezurae^ as I didn't have enough money in my PayPal account for a domain and hosting. Jezurae even let me put popups on my site, so I could earn some money towards hosting!
The name "Yummyrae" was thought up by Jezurae and I opened the site in November 2005. By December 2005, I had enough money in my PayPal account to pay for hosting, so I started looking around. One of my online friends told me about Reseller Zoom^ and I decided to buy a reseller account there. I got 120GB of bandwidth a month and 8GB of space (for my main account and to sell), for $20USD a month.
I really loved this site but by May 2006, I'd had enough of 'the dollie world' and making graphics. The only site I was updating on a regular basis was my blog...
lirae.net
In June 2006, I registered lirae.net. I had no idea what I was going to do with the domain but had bought it anyway.
I thought about it a lot and realised that I was sick of dollie stuff, sick of making graphics and the only thing I did online which STILL interested me was blog and update on my blog / personal site.
Which *sounds* more personal? "never-his.org" or "MYNICKNAMENAME.net"?
Late June until early July was spent merging Yummyrae.net and never-his.org. During this time, I updated and scrapped content and also made some new stuff.
By July 21st 2006, it was ready for public consumption.
A minor name change came in October 2006 - from ".net" to ".co.uk". Just to make the domain name even MORE personal!
lirae.co.uk/net
As time went on, I started to become interested in accessibility, so I started validating my HTML and CSS and trying to make the site more accessible.
I got a job and a new boyfriend and became quite busy as a result, so I started deleting more and more content until I was left with just the blog and a handful of pages. I no longer had the time to support all of my content and I felt it would irresponsible of me to allow people to use my stuff but not give them any support.
This is how the site will stay until I learn to manage my time more effectively.
