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Advent Children
Once, there was a boy who was named Stephen Lee, he decided to make a GS site after all the excitement and power of the game. He looked at many sites, like Isaac's Revenge, Golden Sun Adept's Refuge, Golden Sun Venus Sanctum, Golden Sun Realm and Lemurian Moon. After the inspiration, he went off to make a site (his teacher didn't teach him any html and he was only 10 then), he named it Golden Sun Rage and it went fine with the help of Max, webmaster of Golden Sun Syndicate in current time. But even with the help of Max, he realised the trouble and stuff that held him back, he couldn't finish site why? Because he didn't know any html, he was a loser at imaging, he was planning to do it by himself and he wasn't even able to control Microsoft Frontpage properly, so he gave up.
After a years time he went to GSAR Forums (he called himself Swift now), he was popular there and he had many friends and he also learnt a bit more about website making etc. So he decided to revive his old excitement and create a site with other people. It went on fine he had image guys, html translators, scriptors and researchers. Now it went to hosting, hosting was something Swift was terrible at he tried and tried it went all bad. But after a phonecall with ChaoticGhost, he was able to upload it and his site was finally up without any content but hey it was just the beginning. Of course Swift set off to work, his staffers made him a good amount of content each day. Julian was hired and refreshed the layout using his skills with web design, imaging and CSS, ET had a very good layout for a site that had just started. Forums were up and running, ET gained an average amount of visitors until.
Course after something good happens a bad thing follows. Due to Swift's bad leadership and the lack of site improvement, 3 of the staffers left to go continue on with something else. Swift got real pissed but who cares, Swift hired two new staffers, Blane and Dervish, both skilled content writers. Content was going up everyday and ET was finally starting the grow. Later Swift noticed Blane's laziness and fired him, a lesson to be learnt there folks. Dervish suddenly vanished. Swift also noticed at school that the layout was crap on 800x600 dimension computers but he couldn't do anything about it due to the fact that he lost all his data on the site. Swift waited 5 months till he got his new computer translated and restored. He waited until Christmas.
Swift went to Australia for Christmas, sure he enjoyed his time there but he enjoyed it more when he came back and his computer connected and in ENGLISH! It was a brilliant comeback, but Swift didn't do nothing in 5 months! Amazingly Black hooked up a server on PMU. With the help of P131, Swift managed to learn the basics of PHP and sure they do help update the site! Swift grabbed all his files and started moving the site and with the help of the helpful Pyroman 131 they set off to work. OK... To tell the truth, Swift actually sucked at making layouts, V.2: Phoenix Ashses was just a the same as V.1: Ultima, without frames. The layout would look like crap on a 800x600 dimension screen and since he hasn't been on Photoshop since, the images also looked crap. Shadow's computer went mad and ET was starting to slow down in content. Knux and Sonic Blade disappeared and the site was left with the very few loyal staffers and webmasters that started it. Swift hooked up ideas of humor and changing the old ET from a GS site to a Gaming site.
Swift was starting to get impatient with ET V.2 so he designed a completely new layout naming it ET.V3: Midnight Metal (With the help of P131). He slapped it on a new host known as RPG Hideout and to tell the truth it looked pretty sweet! However, whilst the moving of ET, Swift couldn't install Fusion News or couldn't let anything PHP work. When Swift tried to fix it or install it, it would come up with a page called: 500 Internal Server Error. Yes, pierces the heart of a webmaster, so as quickly as he can, Swift e-mailed 2 people that would help the most, they are P131 and Viktor (Our Host). P131 did as he can, trying to install Fusion News but it still came up with one ugly '500 Internal Server Error', Viktor explained to me what I could do to fix it, read over the stupid readme again or install Cute News. Now if Fusion News won't work then Swift was sure Cute News could, even if it did suck, it was better than nothing. So Swift installed it, paying close attention to the instructions and it really did belt him when it didn't work. He e-mailed Viktor again and he said that the server was stilling teething but there was one thing, why did fusion and cute news worked on his server when it didn't work on mine? So we got ETV.3 up, it looked like sweet stuff. We had to post with HTML anyhow. we kept on updating ET, it was unbelievable how much content we got up so far. 4 reviews in 2 days like, Viktor was setting up our Database and Forums and hopefully Topsites. Want to go much later? PHP problem got fixed, we found out it was our FTP Browsers, the site got around 300 hits per day which was a whooping amount for an average gaming site, the site itself was very good too, content updated everyday and got broader, the forums getting active like hell, images upgrading into much more sweeter ones, more content ideas came and more interactiveness and more multimedia. Soon we had a new member to the staff, Blitz, he was a webmaster and Swift's old school friend, he had skills of images and html, we hired him as a news poster. Soon after DarkMaster came over, he was hired as an advanced content writer making content and codes that kick ass. With the addition of all of the staff, we made a great team, the site was getting better and better and nothing can stop it. More affiliates and More topsites and a site got hosted by ET (Blitz's) but soon Swift got worried about storage space, ET's storage space was only 100mb and Swift started panicing as with only 100mb, ET won't be able to host media which a great site needs. Swift talked to Black his most trusted staffer of all of ET, loyal and great with the internet and all that. Black knew that ET only had 100mb and they talked about it, we worked out that both of us may be able to pay for hosting to increase storage space, Black has saved ET once again by himself, Swift contacted Viktor about their idea and they await his reply.
ET was lived on, for around a month until Swift's friend Daley another Webmaster of RPG Hideout told him that RPG Hideout was dead. This was due to threatening of a hostee to delete the RPG Hideout account, he eventually did but I won't get into that so soon. Anyways, Elemental Temple was down, and apparently it was after Swift went over to his friend's house for a sleepover on the last day of school. Swift panicked and went all over the internet for a new host, not only did he find out alot of sites for hosting (he found over 7 hosts) and luckily one replied well two did but he declined one. The host was Asylum Gaming, a magnificent host, 500mb storage space, unlimited bandwidth, whatever we could have had on RPG Hideout, now Swift has begun the moving project. Course, school was over now and ET was definently up again, still they didn't get a many hits as they used to. But hits were increasing, ET was fully up with all the staff ready to rumble (at least Swift hopes so). Swift already had a new layout for ET just a taster for those who need it to keep them going and he already had plans for ET's birthday. Swift had all the content he made and some that Blitz made on his comp, he had ideas of a secret plan due to a friend called Veigue and lots of content section and ideas. Course he was making content for it as his staffers were too (at least he hoped so) and even if they were having a few PC probs they were fine. Wait dead stop. Well Swift had minor probs with Photoshop, one he can't get on it now and that mean't he couldn't make images and two he was really pissed off. Luckily Swift's dad got him Photoshop CS and Dreamweaver MX so they were going smoothly again, Swift also hit lucky and got a completely faster and new internet connection as well as his computer, even if it was real fast to start off with, now it's even faster! Finally the day came, Black opened the forums etc. Swift stayed up till midnight to celebrate (he even remembers the exact time so don't blame him). Swift pumped up the content onto ET's server for the big time.
Swift didn't sleep that well that week, waking up at around 7 o'clock everyday uploading content, sleeping at around midnight making some more. Swift opened up the forums thanks to Black and DarkMaster. Thanks to ideas from Veigue he got a network up which was starting to get really popular. Lots of gaming content, humor and much more as well as tons of Webmaster Images. Mods for the forums. ET was starting to get great. Swift looked at the site and monitored it. He found out that they had very little content for a gaming site. So he talked to all his staffers and he wanted more gaming content up this year. He promised that he will finish the Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Final Fantasies 7,8,9 and Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon sections this year as well as other sections coming up. He started his content.
All was good, Swift worked hard and got impressive amounts of content up frequently, he and Black also made a spanking topsites. That day, Swift worked hard, he made a new splash and much more, however, his hard drive broke down and for a few weeks he was dead, he tried a data transfer but his hard drive was so badly damaged that it didn't work, he had no choice but to get a new hard drive, by the time Windows was in english and all the files were restored, ET went down from 4000 to 400 hits again, Swift was horrified, not only did he find out that his new hard drive had 10 gig less than his old one, everyone was away for holidays, he gained 4 assignments for the first day of school and he was swamped. He pulled himself together and went back to work.
ET was back up, Swift fired Travis, and hired Odyssey, Blitz quit his site for ET, and we were all coming back, Swift decided that this layout was falling, so he decided to go for a new look, something different, he immediatly sketched out his thoughts (of course he couldn't do the impossible so not entirly his thoughts). He worked continuously for a month on the brand new dream layout, times when he bore his head off reformating, and times when he just took his time having fun. Staff gave in content and ideas, including a jukebox and a screenshot gallery. After checking he was ready to fire his new layout. The new layout went fairly well, but ET started to slow down. ET never reached its prime point of hits as it did in it's last version. Updates also started to slow down. Staffers, once again, were wound up in life problems. Swift tired his best to maintain ET, he opened up forums and neatened up the layout as well as trying to keep the updates going. Soon Ajs was fired, Saturous and Serufi were hired to help maintain. Saturous and Serufi were a great help, writing content and also independantly helping the site. Eventually the forums started to die down. Swift still had a lot of ideas though, he decided to keep them going. It was time for a new version.
Swift started the layout, a totally new style of ET's layout, while keeping its typical blue color scheme. The layout also kept a marquee to help keep track of past updates. This wasn't just an update, it was a revamp. We decided to remove ET from its useless load of humor and features and make a new subsite, Phoenix Graphics, for its graphics load. The layout itself was easy to make, the result was a satisfactory one. However, recoding the pages has always been a problem for ET. Swift made a decision to change the pages typical design to one that the staffers can easily code and independantly update the site themselves. Also for complex tables, Swift decided to code it so that it was easier to reformat for later layouts. It all went well until Swift lost inspiration, life problems started to get hectic. Not only that but all of Swift's work had been lost thanks to a couple of computer wipeouts, this managed to destroy Swift's inspiration. One month past, two. Gaming drained out of Swift. People were complaining. It was only thanks to a few helpers. Zip and the other staffers bought life to the forum, it was thanks to them that ET stayed alive. Swift's friends and other people asked for ET, they wanted it back as well as Swift. Thanks to that Swift recontinued his work for ET. He was making slow progress but nevertheless it was progress and eventually he had the layout up and running and the new version of ET up.
ET began steadily rising in hits, the staffers revived and kept the forums alive. Updates began and Swift invented a new way of recoding pages and found a way which staffers can update without doing anything too drastic. Some the staff and visitors kinda died out, a loyal ET member told Swift what he thought is the cause of that, there needs to be more interaction and motivation for the staffers so Swift did just that. They put their heads together (not literally they lived 17 time zones apart) and worked out ideas, they did work something they just needed to put them into action. Remember never expect something to become amazingly successful in the next 10 minutes. OK, to tell the truth the current layout really sucked at the time. It was dirty, complex and too dark, just ugly. Swift decided to go for something new and different for the anniversary. He went for a simple and clean layout, grey and while it was simple, it looked nice and was complex at the same time. He actually made what he had in mind and it looked really nice. Something that Odyssey told Swift really got him started, media attracts people. Seeing that they had unlimited space, Swift decided to start a gallery and a media section. Having simpler ways of getting around content also was decided. Swift kept all these aspects in mind.
It was a while since Swift last made a light layout. For some reason, light layouts didn't appeal to him as much but he was better at them. He opened up Photoshop and produced results, this was without doubt, the best layout he ever made. The version was to be special. At one point, Swift thought that the more complex the layout is, the better. However, simplicity is what is generous to the visitor and you should always think about your guests first. Swift also recoded the pages so that coding in the future will be much easier and making layouts would be faster. It was soon time to release the layout. After the anniversary, ET was on fire. The staff started updating again, we began to fire updates like anything and the forums were starting to flourish. Before too much time, ET was creating more content, media and other things that would appeal to the user. Also, Swift had to face another choice.
The things that sucks about Swift's life is that he has more things going on than others. His studies increased and soon he had to start studying again. Of course, Swift always had time for the site, it was just reduced, alot. Blitz came to Swift with an amazing offer, how about having our own Ragnarok Online Private server? Now that was something new that a gaming site never released. Blitz never worked on the site too much but worked around it, he is what kept the forums alive, the network flourishing and the ideas coming. Before long, the forum's skin was changing and the beta version of SRO released. Swift was slowly updating, releasing a couple of pages a week (hey it's better than alot of other sites) and barely going online. ET started to slow down on hits but was alive, at least. And then on the 11th September (yes, we all know that date) SRO was released... To Be Continued... |
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History
The Beginning