It all started back when I first started visiting the UTB message board. I was having problems with the mass cursing white wyrm I had retamed near my house, and wanted to know why. The counselor I spoke to gave me a link to the UTB (since Stratics was about as helpful as a rock). I had roughly 80ish taming then. So many people came to the forum and posted the same questions over and over (does it ever end? people *still* ask what to tame at a particular level). I was dissapointed that no one ever wrote the answers down in a faq or something or other.
The archive began its humble roots as simply the Q & A faq (it evolved into what is now the index page under "guides"), hidden on my old xoom site, which is no longer in existance. I have had that site since October 28, 1998, about the time I began learning web design. The Q & A was written some time in September '99, after I had tamed my first dragon. I wrote it as a reference for all my friends so that they would stop asking me so many questions about taming all the time.
It became obvious that no one was going to write down all this wonderful information that was being passed down by some of the knowledgeable elder tamers. Well, I thought, if no one else wants to, then I will. Eventually, more and more was added, until I decided that the taming information I had published so far needed its own website. I found the email with my Tripod membership from October 3, 1999. I'm pretty sure I don't have anything left from what it originally looked like. It was an exact duplicate of my personal xoom site (pictured above). When I began expanding the archive, I switched to submenus *exactly* like the ones featured there. Frames, navigation, the whole kit and kaboodle, was an exact duplicate (yes, even the pink).
Sometime in the spring of 2000, I changed the color scheme to blue and white. Thats when I really started my writing. I had the most accurate information for veterinary (methods for raising veterinary were changed the previous fall/winter). I was up to date and uploading constantly. I had a blue and white gradient background in the menu frame, and a dragon outline background for some of the individual pages.
I can't remember exactly when, must have been late spring or early summer, but I redesigned yet again. I changed to blue and gold (originally designed in blue and grey). At the *exact* same time I changed the archive to those colors, the CoB changed to gold and brown (they were originally grey). It was like we uploaded at the same time. Kinda weird. The flash calculators came in shortly afterwards.
A few months later, I accepted hosting from the UTB (I had declined the offer from Stratics for hosting). A few weeks after that, I accepted the position of moderator on the UTB forum. Just before housing was scheduled to come in, I ended up getting partnered with Generic Player during the last months of my time with the UTB. I was kinda depressed and unhappy with my current relationship and job, etc. He made me make a list of things I wanted to do with my life. I told him that I really wanted to redesign the UTB website. So I threw together some color combinations for him to look at. He picked green and brown, I wanted to go with blue and tan. So I worked on sketches and designs. What I ended up with never got published. I won't go into details as to why.. its a shame, though. I ended up leaving the UTB and stopped working on the archive.
Originally, the old slinky dragon design was meant to be used with the UTB. The research section was going to be the archive and the navigation within it was going to be done with DHTML menus like what Blizzard uses. When it became its own site again, that design had to be compromised. And I hated doing it. I'm still not satisfied with how it appears, but even I have limits. It now works the way the UO website does, only my server is a bit faster *grin*. For those curious, I began redoing this on Sunday, September 17 at 7am on my personal webserver as a come back to the UO world. That's the oldest "created" date I can find, which appears on my .css file. I registered with saxen.net on September 16, and officially went live here on September 24. This is when the Archive was changed from a plain HTML site to one that is easier to change and maintain in PHP (a serverside scripting language).
The Archive underwent another face-lift at the end of November 2000. I changed from the green and tan with the dragon to grey and burgundy. For about 2-3 weeks, a woman wearing a dress appeared to be soothing a mousy-brown colored dragon. I decided to scrap it and changed to a silhouette of a dire wolf howling at the two moons of Sosaria, Trammel and Felucca. For about 5 days, the archive wolf appeared with a red Christmas hat, just to be festive for the holidays. During this time frame, the "pet database" had been added in hopes of showing strengths of pets other than dragons.
I decided to redo the Archive yet again in anticipation of the new domain name. The redesign went public on January 11, 2001 after only a day's worth of work, with a unicorn and a nightmare, side by side. The following day, it moved to it's new domain name and better server. The Archive later appeared with blue accents instead of the original pink on January 18, 2001. Shortly afterwards, the printer-friendly script/page was added so that you could print out charts or various information without lots of colors or images.
I was still disgusted with how the Archive appeared (I have a feeling I will constantly be redoing it) and worked towards a new design and published it on February 6, 2001. I decided to use screenshots of my dragon fighting against a cyclops and moving towards more "earthy" colors. I changed the PHP index script to make it more secure for the server. This had no visible effect for people viewing the site.
I took a break from UO and the Archive over the summer of 2001. I missed the new ongoing content and the introduction of the ridgebacks. When I returned from my "vacation", I started updating things with a vengeance. I didn't want to turn into Stratics, letting their content get outdated all the time and leaving up articles as old as beta.
I decided the Archive needed a facelift. On January 27, 2002, the Archive became monochromatic blue with 2 simple images across the top. Across the top, words spoken to the more powerful creatures to tame them can be seen. The lovely brushes used to create the image across the top were created by Anna Sea. The goal with the layout was to make things easier to navigate by making more of the navigation appear above the "fold". A fair number of revisions were made to many of the articles and the Bugs section got revamped a little.
On January 30, 2002, I scrapped the design that went live just a few days before. The new design was done by taking animals from various positions with Inside UO. Just about every tamable is included, or at least their body style is. All except for dragonkin.
May 29, 2002 brought about fresh images and colors. The change was from blue to green. The scene at the top is of Reena brushing her nightmare at the Minoc stables. Much of the background was cloned out so that there could be a repeating background to please all resolutions. Unfortunately, 640x480 now has horizontal scrolling. All other resolutions should be fine, though. Very little layout changes. A few months before, the pet database got a make-over. The chart on the individual pet pages gives more information than previously. Eventually, I would like to convert the data into a real database.
Last modified on January 11, 2003 4:30 pm EST.
© 1999-2002
and maintained by Reena Dae.
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