ABOUT THE SITE

Moon Rain is my personal site/blog that allows me to re-experience my late 90s-early 2000s web days. Back then I started my HTML journey on Neopets, then evolved to Geocities, then being hosted, to finally owning my own domain. That time sure was fun!

Then it stopped.

Behaviours changed in a way I didn't like and I didn't want to keep up with it or adapt, so I stopped entirely. Occasionally I would try to start up again going the Wordpress route because, that's the big donkey on the farm, but I just couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to care about ads and monetization and niches and blah blah blah.

Then I discovered Neocities and it reignited that fire in me. Even better, there were tons of people in the same ship as me. Even more exciting was seeing younger people delving in for the first time. Honestly, I've never used Wayback Machine - Internet Archive so much in my life! Pulling up old sites I used to frequent, websites that inspired me, and even my old sites which... cringe .

I had to dust off the HTML knowledge a bit, which was frustrating at first, realizing that now we have mobiles and the need for responsive layouts. That's not something on the top of my priority list. I just want to have fun like how I used to, so if this site looks like a disaster on mobile devices, lol, sorry .

CURRENT LAYOUT - VERSION 1

The layout is based off the character screen from The Lord of the Rings Online MMO. Click here to see a larger screenshot... and my beautiful elven hunter.

Coming up with the concept was pretty easy, but drawing it was challenging. At the time I made this, I had been diagnosed with Bell's Palsy (temporary facial paralysis) and had to tape my right eye shut so it did't dry out. It was really uncomfortable to wear my glasses, so I didn't, AND I have astigmatism, so I was looking like a wonky pirate leaning into my screen ! Good granny that was a feat in itself.

Yes I could have just waited it out until I was better but, I was having creativity up the butt. You know... priorities...

CREDITS

PAST LAYOUTS