I figured I'd pull a Bara-chan and post some of the site's former layouts. ^_^;; This may bring back memories for some of you. As always, these images and designs and all that are still under copyright, so don't hijack. >_O If you see these anywhere else, please remember that all my layouts come from my own head and I would never consciously rip off someone else's. I've left out the Sanctuary's VERY VERY first layout because I didn't save it. That's a good thing, though. It wasn't anything to get excited about.

 

April 1998-August 1998: Very simple, poorly designed layout. The indent off the sidebar was originally done with Definition list tags. I fixed it later on when I learned how to do invisible tables. This was designed in AOLpress. Each subpage was described in detail as you scrolled down.
August 1998-April 1999: I decided to make some use out of the new invisible table design I'd learned how to do and redid the main banner image into a red yoshi hanging a cloth banner. I was originally going to have the yoshi on every subpage but with the banner saying the name of the page, but it was already pretty graphics-intensive and I decided not to. The sidebar consisted of purple bars listing each subpage. I kept the descriptions of all the subpages to help with navigation.
April 1999-June 1999: After the banner yoshi, something persuaded me to make seasonal logos on the main page. By this point, Pokemon fever had swept over the yoshi pages and I had incorporated them into the site. This layout used graphicless subpage links and no descriptions. To further feed upon the Pokemon craze, every week I'd add a new Pokemon of the Week with a description and a matching icon. Pokemon subsections were also added to the sidebar.
June 1999-Early October 1999: Still sticking with the cheerful pale yellow/purple color scheme, I decided to throw in a sidebar image in the background to make the site look more professional. I ended up redoing the background a few times because it didn't look professional enough. I kept the seasonal logos going and the text-based links made the page load fast enough, back when 28.8k modems were standard. Overall, this layout wasn't much different from the last one.
Late October 1999-Early November 1999: I thought I'd switch from a flowery yellowish look to a more serious, serene blue. Instead of seasonal logos, I decided to have a yoshi sit along the sidebar and change color according to the month. I replaced the seasonal logo with a simple picture of Zello and her Marril. Each update was encased in a table and the sidebar background image switched from a faded yoshi pic to a textured blue design. All of the subpage links were housed in a white box-type thing.
Late November 1999- Early February 2000: Not much of a change from the last layout. I didn't like the white box idea, so added in some graphics-intensive roll-over subpage links that seemed to light up when you put your mouse over it. I made the update tables more simple and transparent. To cut down on load time, I changed the textured sidebar background to a solid blue. I did end up keeping the Zello banner, the monthly color-changing yoshi, and the blue color scheme. Load time was a problem with this design.
Late February 2000-June 2000: I had been brainstorming on a new layout since December. I wanted to do more of a forest-type theme, but this was the best I could do. A very simplistic but slow-loading design that featured a large, faded pic of two yoshies in a forest as the background. It used text links again and added many of the subpage links to the opposite side. I tried to get it so I could fit everything -- the links, the updates, the copyrights -- all in the same window without having to use the scroll bar. It worked, almost. You still had to scroll down a little to see the bottom but otherwise it worked quite nicely.
June 2000-November 2000: Fed up with the long load time, I decided to make a simpler layout that ended up taking even more time to load. This time I used a purple/blue theme. I got rid of all backgrounds but made graphic-based roll over images for the sidebar links again. Only this time, an image popped up in the middle to describe the section. Each graphic ended up taking a longer time to load than expected. Updates were listed below. At this point all my Pokemon sections were old and outdated, so I got rid of them.
December 2000-June 2001: After tinkering around with my new Dreamweaver program, I decided to change the layout to something even simpler (and uglier, imo) and into something very casual. I used Dreamweaver's template thing (that lets you update each page that uses it in case you add a link to the sidebar or something). I did so because I wanted to be able to have all the links on each page, but I also wanted to not have to go into each one and change it every time I made an alteration. So this one featured named image titles on the top and a graphic image in the boxed corner. This theme was almost entirely purple. Good on load time, but very dull.
June 2001-September 2002: I got fed up with Dreamweaver's annoying template thing because it wouldn't let you edit individual pages unless you specified it to. So I decided to just stick with frames. I wanted to do something more visually appealing than the last layout, so I threw together a cloud theme. One of six of my characters sat on the side frame and would rotate each time the page was loaded through the use of a random image script. The subpages were accessed by dark blue pulldown menus. Featured decent load time, visually appealing graphics, and an easy-to-access subpage list.
September 2002-Present: My first dark website layout. I stuck with a frame-based navigation system to honor those with Javascript incompatible browsers. Alot of CSS tags were incorporated into this one, though. Oh well. I like the black and indigo color scheme. :) It's rather easy on the eyes.

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