Site History
2006
Night Explosion Opens
My first website, Night Explosion, opened in 2006! It started out as one of those personal websites you would see a lot in the early 2000’s, with graphics, “reads”, “dollz”, and other fun stuff for visitors. Below are some screenshots of the early versions of Night Explosion and what wonderful things would await its visitors!
What really drove me to create a “web presence” was getting involved in fanlistings and wanting to create one. I opened my first fanlisting on August 20, 2006. From 2006 – 2008 I opened the following fanlistings/hatelistings to the right, all of which have since closed.
From 2006-2008 I hosted Night Explosion on subdomains that I had access to, but they became very unreliable because I didn’t run the domains so if the web hosting bill didn’t get paid (keep in mind I was a kid), my website would get shut off and I had no control over it. Because of this I eventually had to close a lot of my fanlistings because I couldn’t keep them active.
2007
Punk Stardust launch
At some point in 2007 I closed Night Explosion and moved to Punk Stardust but it seems that website was short-lived. I think the screenshot alone sums up the era pretty well. Between the old-school Internet Explorer, iFrames, custom scrollbars, references to Microsoft Frontpage… Punk Stardust was my personal site (like those sites where people post custom graphics, dollz, etc.). I unfortunately can’t find any trace of it via the Wayback Archive, and these screenshots are all I have.
In general I had a lot interest in web design around this time and creating my own websites, particularly when free website design & hosting services such as Freewebs gained popularity. Some examples of other sites I had, which are now lost, are fansites (featuring topics such as Neopets, Habbo Hotel, and Hilary Duff) and a directory website where people could submit their personal websites to be listed.
2011
My own domain
In 2011 I finally got my own domain and officially moved away from free web hosting services.
At some point I split Night Explosion into two separate parts – a regular personal website, and a fanlisting collective. I was still trying to distinguish between the fanlisting and personal website parts of my website.
Other Projects
These are some other websites that I’ve run in the past.
2004 – Habbo Hotel Help 4 U (view archived version)
I was obsessed with Habbo Hotel as a kid and created a fansite that it appears provided updates on various things happening around the Hotel. (Fun fact – The “Hobbas” that are mentioned throughout were basically moderators who had elevated permissions and would pop in to the virtual room if you had issues – they were essentially celebrities and I absolutely idolized them for some reason.) I actually had a few friends on Habbo and have a lot of good memories playing it.
2005 – Neopian Bubble Gum (archived version)
I was obsessed with Neopets as a kid. This appears to have been a graphics website for things people could use to customize their Neopets pages (shops, pet pages, etc.) as at the time the customization features were becoming very popular. I was able to dig up some of the items that were hosted on Photobucket, but unfortunately it appears I used a now-defunct service called Ripway to host a lot of my graphics so they may be forever lost 🙁
2006 – Retro Place Directory
This appears to be have been one of those “directory” websites where people could add their links. This didn’t last very long though because there were a lot of these types of sites already.