-How the IA Came to Be-
[Click to see the topic.]
Petz as a present of course.
Googling cheats is what gamers do!
The eginning: the IAKC.
Making the important committment.
Like a phoenix: IA rises from the ashes.
Fate had something else in mind.
Everything happens for a reason!

Layouts?



Before
Once upon a time...just kidding.
It all started very un-uniquely. My parents, being the very giving smart-alecs they were, always bought me a version of what I had asked for [thank God, or else I would be...probably worse than spoiled]. When I wanted a new life-size Barbie battery-powered car, they bought a car for Barbie. When I wanted a mac PC [the ones that came out in pretty colors], they bought me a brand new mac PC alarm clock. And so when I wanted more than anything to have a kitten or a puppy [pretty much since birth], they got me Petz.

After
My mother had Dogz 1 on her computer from a friend, and just so I could play it I think. I thought it was alright, but nothing special. Years later, when I was around 11 or so, I received Dogz & Catz 4, and was elated. Being the experienced gamer I was, I started looking up cheat codes so I could make my petz have their babies quicker, or to age petz faster, and that sort of thing. What I found was nearly a revelation: the PC. I was immediately & pleasantly bombarded by copious colors, designs, layouts & graphics, and I immediately thought what I'd imagine every n00b thinks when they first experience the PC: I wanted in.


The IAKC
So I set to work: taking pictures of petz I was willing to part with for the sake of my future Web site's adoptionz, creating graphics in paint, & then I stepped foot into Microsoft Word to develop a Web page [as I was advised to do so when I asked my mother how to make a Web site].
When I was finished, I had been laboring for days and was incredibly proud of myself. I showed my family, and bragged about my future daily page views. It was then I realized: my site isn't on the web! I needed to, as I Googled, "find a host." After some heavy research, I learned that hosting was either bought, html-pretty on Geocities, or Freeweb pre-made. When I found that I would have to give up my creative vision and stick to a pre-made layout, I mourned my unpublished site and scrapped the idea altogether. Htm-what? Was way too complicated, and I knew my parents would never want me that near the internet after they learned of the previous exchange between myself and my internet "boyfriend." So, I sulked for a week or so, and then set to work trying to establish myself as an upstanding PC citizen.


Making the Commitment
Years later, when I was 18 & the season was winter, I had developed a ridiculously long on again-off again relationship with the Petz game. I found I went through the regular circle of obsession-from love to drab to hate to love again. I decided to make the commitment to creating & upholding a site, but I wasn't ready to pay for a host. I shopped around, and found Microsoft Office Live. Their pre-made layouts were pretty manipulatable, so I set to work making graphics again in Paint. What I ended up with was a great email account at my site's address dot com [the email I still use today], my own domain for free, a neat little site called the Infinite Abyss Kennel & Cattery [that's still up today], and a small fan base! I was stoked! I had submissions and friends and...an actual Web site! I slaved over it for some time, and then, after reading one of Noelle's articles [the first about owning a Web site], found myself wanting more: html. I also felt that she was right-Kennel & Cattery wasn't original at all, so I dropped the KC and turned to html. I remembered that Geocities hosted for free and offered html editing capabilities, so I hit the books.
I submerged myself in html, being a good student and reading everything available from sites from all walks of life. I took notes, I bookmarked, I even changed my browser because it was highly recommended to do so [& thank heaven for that!] & shelled out the 100 bones it took to buy PSP XI because it too came highly recommended [& again, thank heaven!]. After a weekend, I had learned the basics of html, & then some of the advanced tricks, like iframes. I had followed tutorials step-by-step [de Noelle @ Diversity & Lissa @ Lissa Explains it all] and finally had a layout I was quite proud of-with iframes. I started getting insane amounts of page views compared to the previous counts I was getting, and had more fans & requests than ever. After a layout change and some sitely additions, I received an email of doom: the IA was deleted.


Like a Phoenix
After discovering that Geocities had deleted my site for violating the TOS [apparently linking to other sites-SISTERS & LINKS mind you-is a no no...something to do with bandwith? I'm not sure about all that jazz], I panicked. What could I do? I had put months into that site, and it had grown so much! And to top it all off, I hadn't backed up any of my pages...they were all only found on Geocities. So I went around telling friends & feeling very sorry for myself, when I finally got angry. I turned to my email and begged Geocities to hand me back my site, or at least my files. After I explained what the links were, a magical thing happened...the IA was restored. I couldn't believe it! I immediately saved all of my pages that I had built from scratch as Word documents and came back with a new layout. The page views had gotten so insane, however, that my site was down every day because it had reached its data file transfer limit. I quickly searched around for a hostess-I knew I was ready. I applied at a few places-I can only recall applying @ Fillibuster though, because when Alicia said she went to explore my site and probably host me, my site had disappeared again.
It was a small stab to the hear this time, not nearly as catastrophic as the latter, because I had, after all, backed up my work. I had, unfortunately, also changed my profile name on my laptop, causing a meltdown. All my files were once again lost. As an angel sent to comfort me, Veno @ Magonda kindly offered up her hosting capabilities, and I felt like all my worries and frustrations were finally going to be put to rest. I was a little hesitant and inquisitive, but I humbly accepted Veno's offer. The IA was getting hosted! A dream come true I had never imagined!


Star-crossed
But the fates did not allow such a joy for me. For just before I accepted Veno's gracious offer, she vanished from the PC to tend to her mum, leaving me once again devastated with no pages, and no host. I had planned to rebuild, and had the incredibly kind backing of my PC friends, but I had made a commitment to the Air Force, and before I could gather my strength and get another foothold in the PC, I was off to Basic Training. After 6 months of Basic & Tech School, I had enough time to dig through the ashes and find the remnants of the IA. I had to re-teach myself html for the most part, and made a layout by August. This time, I decided to spare no expense, and host myself. I went to the same host that Anita @ PixiMyst has, and bought a stout package plan. I had my summery layout finished and my content decided, but when I went to post my pages, I learned that hosting wasn't what it had been with Geocities...that was when I realized that there was a beast in my closet, and that beast was FTP.
Through more gracious friends lending their help and advice, and Google, I gathered what I needed and set to work trying to pagenate. To my dismay, I still didn't understand things. Finally, about 2 months later, I had learned that I needed a program to publish my pages, how to use an FTP server, and that Microsoft Frontpage was a bust. I asked around my html gurus and found that Adobe Dreamweaver was the best way to go.


@ Turtle Speed
Again, the fates did not see it fit for IA to be up just yet. I had been traveling since I left Tech School, and the visitors I had happened upon at the time had no wireless internet-my pages were trapped on my laptop. About a month later, I had most of the IA up, and a month after that I was finished, and better than ever. I like to think that if I hadn't taken the exact journey I did, I wouldn't have ended up with the beautiful, hosted site I have now. And because of that, I wouldn't change a thing about my IA journey.

Thanks for reading!





Layouts


-vNone-


Snowy Lake
Spring07-Summer07
Not sure when exactly I started the IA, but it was sometime in the Spring of 07. I had a Microsoft Live website, and I still use the email account to this day. I made a graphic with my favorite pet, Snow, and the layout was colored to match it. It was just a small premade site at first, with way too many copyright and TM symbols everywhere, but I had a lot of viewers, surprisingly. I knew after only a couple months that the IA needed to get bigger, and that an html-designed layout was what I really wanted. So I sat down and taught myself html. Thanks to Noelle, Rylee, Diversity & Lissa Explains it All, I learned it very quickly and this layout was retired after a few months of living. I never thought of it as a version, because I only thought of html-built sites as being able to have versions, so I call this layout vNone.


-v1-

Give Peace a Chance
Summer07-LateSummer07
My first html layout was a hit! Minus the fact that the colors were very bright, of course. Well, I liked it and so did a lot of other people. It was orange, pink, and yellow with blue swirls and peace signs. The layout was a simple long square [sideways vertical rectangle?] with designs making up the blue border, which matched the blue text. I actually drew the layout by hand, scanned it, and then colored it in PSPXI [and that was awful hell]. I really liked how it turned out, but it was a little too simple and I kept getting complaints about it being too bright. Nonetheless, the IA was unviewable just about every day because of the Geocities transfer limit. I was so excited that people were starting to really visit! It was like a dream come true to have hundreds of views a day! I also had drawn and perfected [with the help of the most amazing Anita] show pose examples. I lost those along with this layout's screenshot [and most thereafter] in the great laptop crash of Jan08. The layout itself last long though, because I wanted to make all my viewers happy, and I didn't really want to burn their retinas. xD


-v2-

Chandelirious
LateSummer07-EarlyFall07
This layout will always be one of my favorites. I really liked the photo [taken by a local photographer who is now so successful that she lives in Cairo] and it really inspired me. This was a standard layout: block for photo edited to have a petzy pet & navigation + block for content. That's back when those layouts were really popular, and everyone was doing the latest harry potter characters. I had so many views that the IA was down most of the time, and I hated Geocities immensely because of it. Also around this time, a friend of mine in the PC that I had been talking to was going through some tough RL things, so I dedicated this layout to her. I had a very small polaroid of her on the entrance page, and a small dedication sentence wishing her well.


-v3-

Winter Cottage
EarlyFall07-Dec07
This was by far the best layout to date at that time for me. I worked really hard on it, and it was so cute! A little snow scene with a warm cottage in the woods, and I had found a really cool brush to make snowflakes with. And of course, my pet Snow was the mascot again. She looked horrible though, looking back in my memory, because I had overburned & dodged her. xD Despite that, I really wish I could have left this layout up for longer, but my Geocities account was deleted for the second time, my laptop had crashed, and I was about to enter Basic Military Training for the Air Force. I had to put the IA on pause for a bit.


-v4-


Somewhere Beyond the Sea
Aug08-Feb09
After I had gotten out of my Air Force training, I started reconstructing the IA from the ashes I had. I really only had my ideas, and what I had remembered that I had before. I started sketching again, and decided to use a photo of Lucy I had just taken just outside of my mom's house, at the beach [loooove it there]. She seemed to be looking off into the abyss, and it seemed so infinite. I thought it would make a perfect theme, and set to work on the IA's first layout since the crash. I think I did a fairly awful job overdodging & burning again. xD But at least it wasn't as bad as the last time I had a go at Snow. The title came from a song I love and listened to a lot that summer, and it was even posted on the main page. I really loved this layout, because I loved bragging about my baby girl, so it stayed up for a while.


-v5-


Springtime Blossoms
Feb09-June09
I really enjoyed making this layout! I liked the colors in the photo, and it just screamed spring to me. And since I was finished with the summer-layout-in-the-winter thing, I figured I might as well go with the season, and stop confusing people :) The pet featured in this layout is the gorgeous kitty Mulan, who I won from shopping victoriously on PA. The entrance changed as well, encorporating all the subsites of IA as well as the IA itself. An :everything IA: page. During this layout, laptop crash II came to visit and plunder. I lost everything again, but luckily I had an FTP account with all of my files for the IA. I uploaded everything back into my computer, and started from scratch with the rest yet again. I had to do things like templates over from scratch, and the CWP really suffered--the CWP list had been saved in a folder I couldn't recover, as well as the graphic I had spent weeks on. An unrelated item, my novel I was half-finished with--my first ever piece of writing I didn't destroy after making and really liked and had hopes for--was lost in the blue screen abyss as well. I really liked this layout, and I think the song by Moe that played on it sutied it well. But it was time for a change after four months, and I had just the idea of what to change it out with.


-v6-


Pokerface
June09-Sept09
This layout was a royal pain [no, not flush :D ]. I was inspired to create it after I recieved my first *ever* hexed pet: Rio. I got her from Rachel @ Chien after applying for her on a thread @ the PCG. You can read more about that story here.
Rio's design inspired me to do a card-symbol-themed layout of course, and after googling some images of samples of that design, I came across this photo. It inspired me to the type of layout design I wanted. So I set to work, and after a day of labor, and reminding myself of Kazzie's comments about thinking outside of the box, v6 was born, and I dedicated it to her. Everything matched down to the cbox, spacers and voting banners, and I loved how intricate it all was. Not very long after, I found myself lucky enough to come upon three more hexes. The latter inspired me again, but I kept this layout up because of how much I had put into it, and how much I like it. I also changed the entrance page to be named "Tutto" which is Italian for "everything" as in Everything IA. I think this layout was a hit, with all two of my friend/fans, haha! This is the first layout I really felt to be incredibly original, so it's always going to be close to my heart. RIP v6!