why?
what is this stuff?
I started this website due to nostalgia. It all began in the early 2000s with The Palace chat and Neopets. The Palace was software that offered a real-time avatar chat. It would probably be considered archaic in modern times, but it was cutting edge in 2001. You know those cartoon dollz that you used to see on MySpace and are now making a resurgence?
Yep, those ones. They originated from the Palace and were called "preps" there were many other iterations of styles, but I won't digress as there's too much information and this section is already going to be too long. If you want more information about doll styles you can click here for an article from the person who created the original dollz.
The Palace had a very basic MS paint style pixel editor built in so the users could customize their avatar. You could even set up your own room to have a shop or salon where you offered edits to other users. There was no currency on the Palace, we offered the help because it was enjoyable. This is how I learned to make pixel art. If I can find a screenshot of what these shops looked like I will add one to this page. Strangely enough, I can't find one anywhere.
Around the same time that I began playing Neopets. I first started learning HTML via Lissa Explains in order to customize my pet's pages. I can't remember how I landed in the world of cutesy, pixel personal sites but I was enthralled. I knew I had to make one and the journey began.
I spent so much time making layouts, pixel art and getting to know new internet friends via forums like OrangeSliceBBS, 1/4Fruit and some others. I spent a few years deeply involved until I started high school and became interested in other things.
Within the last few years I've spent more time than I care to admit digging around on the Wayback Machine getting the rush of nostalgia that comes with finding relics of the past. Unfortunately, when it came to finding my old website (circa 2002-2004), none of my layout loads, only the splash page.
It seems like most of the websites that were well archived either had a lot of traffic or a layout that wasn't in a pop up. Unfortunately, I had my layout in a pop up and my website wasn't particularly popular. I was able to salvage some of my pixel art and my pill pals, but most of the other content is embarrassing. Things like pages where 50 Javascript alerts open consecutively, word-salads, quizzes and stupid jokes.
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I know that there are others like myself who miss this era and I hope that they enjoy what I have collected. Alternatively, if you have never seen this portion of the internet that is now teetering on lost media, you may still find some things of interest here that spark memories of the past. Either way, I hope you enjoy your time here!