SITE HISTORY

So you wanna know how LELOLA got started? I guess that's a pretty good question.

Ever since I learned of their existence, I've wanted a website. In 1997, a friend of mine, named Zainab, got a website on a free server. I didn't even know a free server existed, but I was intrigued and got my own account at a free server called GoPlay.com.

The username I wanted at GoPlay was taken, so I started coming up with other usernames. When we were younger, my friends and I used to write "LELOLALILU" on the chalk boards at school. It's the letter "L" with vowels following it. I shortened it to "LELOLA" and tried it as a username.

Bingo. It worked. And so, LELOLA was born.

At first, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't really have any reason or purpose to create a website. I just knew I wanted one. I made the first version of LELOLA using one of GoPlay's website builders. I had no idea what I was doing, but I played with things. I found the website builder limiting, and realized that if I wanted to improve, I needed to learn HTML.

Bit by bit, I worked with the HTML the website builder gave me and some HTML help sites to teach myself the basics of HTML.

LELOLA still had barely any content. It had annoying background midis (if you're wondering, mostly Savage Garden songs - the main page played Tears of Pearls), and lots of images. If anything, it was mismanaged image gallery. In all honesty, it was a piece of garbage.

And for another random fact, it had a section dedicated to Garrett Wang images. *sweatdrops* I have no idea. I was a young and inexperienced webmisstress who thought she knew what she was doing. Looking back, I realize I couldn't have been more wrong. I had no idea what I was doing.

I knew I had to take the time to write information and content, but being in middle school, and being lazy, I couldn't be bothered to write content. Thus, LELOLA was a piece of garbage.

About a year after I created LELOLA, I opened a Power Rangers shrine to one of my favorite characters. If it wasn't for that shrine, I wouldn't have learned half of what I knew about websites. I made a semi-decent layout for my little shrine and taught myself a ton of HTML and hosting information. It's not exactly part of LELOLA's history, per say, but it was still a very important step. And just because I find it amusing, my cheesy little Power Ranger shrine got more hits than LELOLA.

Around the same time, I also used to post FoxKids related news at message boards. You have this experience to blame for why LELOLA is news based these days.

In 1999, I came to my senses about fixing LELOLA. At this point, I had added the Pokemon and Sailor Moon sections to LELOLA, and not much else. I knew I had to make some major updates, so I decided to move LELOLA to Geocities.com.

I re-started LELOLA from scratch. I re-created the layout and re-built everything. This time, I started to write actual content. Looking back, none of it was very good, but I had fun making it. Examples of the really old LELOLA content can still be found in LELOLA's Sailor Moon and Pokemon sections. I really should re-create those sections, ne?

You may want to note that at some point I wanted to make LELOLA a Pokemon website. Much of my inspiration came from a (now dead) site called PsyPoke.com. I read about the website in the local newspaper, and the article mentioned how the webmaster updated the site daily. The webmaster, who went by the name "Abra Kadabra", became my inspiration. I never knew him. I might have e-mailed him once, but I never got a response. Needless to say, I knew nothing about him. I just wanted a website like his.

I remember that feeling, and it's very strange to think that people feel that way about me now. If I ever met Abra Kadabra, he'd be frightened of me. Perhaps even a little annoyed.

Anyway, the Pokemon section ate a lot of my time. Then came the DragonBall Z section. I spent two full weekends on just the character biographies. It was a lot of hard work, and at the time, I was really proud of myself. Now, when I look at those character biographies, I want to run into a wall head first. They're horribly done. Back then, I thought they were great. I guess that means I've grown.

Then came the section that changed it all - Digimon. From the moment I saw Digimon, I was in love. The series grabbed me and wouldn't let go. Thus, I created the Digimon section at LELOLA. Due to a lack of Digimon websites on the internet, the Digimon section became relatively popular. I remember being 24th place on some topsite. I was so proud of myself for reaching 24th place.

It was also around this time that I started making "thank yous". I got the idea from Japanese websites which created some called "kiribans". When someone is a special number visitor of a site (100th, 200th... 1000th... 100000th, etc.), they'd make an image. Usually, this image would be a fanart request, but since I couldn't draw very well, I decided to put my own spin on the idea. I took anime images and wrote thank yous to my visitors. I was so happy to receive 20 hits a day, that when I got 200 hits for the first time, I was thrilled. I wanted to thank the people that make that possible.

Perhaps that's a good way of looking of my mentality towards LELOLA. I didn't really want hits, but I was glad to receive them. I never posted "Check out my website!" everywhere or anything. I always found things like that annoying. I figured that if it annoyed me, it would annoy other people as well. I didn't really want to do that. I just wanted a website. I didn't care if I got one hit, or three thousand. It wasn't about the hits. Every site I've seen focused on hits has failed. Back then, I didn't know that, but I was so naive and innocent that it didn't matter.

The Monster Rancher section came in sometime around here, and so did lots of other random stuff. Being a middle school student at the time, I had very little homework, and thus, lots of time to kill. So, I worked on LELOLA.

Since I liked random facts, I'll give you a few. At some point I wanted to hide the fact I was at GeoCities, and discovered 'onMouseOver' codes. It hid the URL in the little box at the bottom of the Internet Explorer screen. Of course, being young, I didn't know about 'onMouseOff' codes yet. This meant that the disguised URL wouldn't disappear after the mouse was removed from the link. I still use that faulty coding today. I know how to fix it, but it's a part of the past I want to keep for some reason. I could easily correct it, but I've come to look at it like a signature. When other sites use the same faulty coding, I know that they got it off me. There are countless examples of things like this all over LELOLA.

Anyway, it was sometime around here I learned how to use blank HTML pages to make websites offline. I learned about how to properly access and edit a source code without any type of editor. Notepad became my best friend. Heck, I'll writing this history lesson in Notepad.

In late 1999, I became obsessed with the idea of owning a subdomain. Why? Because I learned about something called SSI (Side Scrollbar Included). When updating LELOLA, every time I added a section, I manually edited every single page until all of them had the new link. It was a painfully long process, and being a perfectionist, I couldn't let anything be imperfect. A broken link was unacceptable and had to be corrected no matter what.

Long story short, I learned that SSI could allow me to update one page and that would update every page for me. I loved this idea as it would save me hours and hours of work.

I tried to make SSI work, but it wouldn't. No matter what I tried, it all failed. Then, I learned that SSI didn't work on free servers and the only way to get SSI to work was if I had a subdomain or domain.

And so, I became obsessed with getting a subdomain. There was no way I could possibly go from a free server to a domain. I knew that. I may have been a kid, but I had a few brain cells. I knew when things were out of my reach, and I knew the importance of perseverance. If you keep going, and never give up hope, you'll beat all those people that give up.

Anyway, I e-mailed lots of webmasters and asked for subdomains. I even e-mailed the webmaster of PsyPoke.com, but no one wanted to give me one. At the time, I was hurt, but looking back on it, I understand why they didn't want to give me one. LELOLA was crappy, and I was using outdated primitive coding (much of which I still use). My graphics skills were only what I could do with MS Paint, and LELOLA's layout was a blank looking logo, a table, and random content. It was very plain, and since the content wasn't much to look at, it was (for the lack of a better word) garbage.

I e-mailed more webmasters asking for subdomains in the hopes one would accept me. I knew I could do more with a subdomain than without one. I knew that free servers were limiting me, and so I applied. And applied. And applied. One of the sites I applied to was called BulbaCenter.com, and at the time, it was relatively new. The webmaster, Anime, took a chance on me and gave me a subdomain, and so I moved LELOLA to my new subdomain, lelola.bulbacenter.com.

In the application, I told the webmaster I was working on a new layout. I put all the table coding I knew together to make a table based layout much like the one you see today. I spent about a week figuring out the layout and how to use SSI. I had no help, and in some ways, I think it was better that way. By teaching myself how to do these things, I gained more experience than someone doing it for me. You know what they say: If you give someone a fish, they'll eat for a day. If you teach them to fish, you feed them for life.

It was here that I started to really work on LELOLA. I started cataloging things into sections, and made pics and quotes of the week. This also marks the first time I made the small hentai free badges. I had them at GeoCities, but never this size they are now. The size was chosen randomly one day, and I've been using them since. The old hentai free badges used to say 'kid safe' on them. Oh, the random fact-ness!

Errr... I finally released the subdomain version of LELOLA in May of 2000.

Since Digimon was still my largest obsession, I spent most of my time updating it. Digimon was my obsession for well over two years, and because those years happened to be years when I had lots of free time, LELOLA's Digimon section was updated more than any other section.

Anyway, since Digimon websites were fairly rare at the time, and mine was relatively large, LELOLA did extremely well. It surprised even me.

Less than two months later, I got an e-mail from a man named James. He ran the company that hosted BulbaCenter.com. At the time, Internet advertising was huge, and James made money through it. LELOLA had ads at this point. In exchange for free hosting, I had to put banner ad on every page of the site.

Anyway, James e-mailed me and offered me the domain name LELOLA.com. The second I read that e-mail, I think I broke my chair.

I was doing so well at BulbaCenter.com, that I was surpassing their hits. That is to say, I was getting more hits than my host. Wow.

Not having any idea what I was doing, I agreed, and James bought me the domain LELOLA.com. He handled pretty much everything for me in terms of buying the domain, but back then, I didn't know things had to be done. I moved LELOLA to LELOLA.com, and then my hits went up even more.

I used to open submissions all the time, and used to post the submissions once or twice a week. I had virtually no homework. Man, I miss those days. If only I knew what I know now back then.

I also learned about the evils of stealing stolen fanart sometime around here. I didn't know using fanart was bad. Maybe I did, but I just didn't think it was that big an issue. I don't remember. However, I did come to my senses, and made LELOLA stolen fanart free. I deleted all the stolen fanart I could find on LELOLA. Now when I see people using stolen fanart, I get annoyed. But I understand where they came from. Heck, an old LELOLA logo used stolen Digimon fanart. I simply didn't know any better.

Since I'm already off-topic, I might as well tell you something else semi-unrelated to this boring and useless history lesson. Because LELOLA didn't become popular overnight, I've been able to learn a lot. I don't think I could ever write down everything I've learned. The list would go one forever, and most of the things I learned, I never realized until later. I can trace a lot of my character to the experiences in my past. Perhaps this is why it annoys me when people expect to have a professional website overnight. Popularity is meaningless. If popularity is all you care about, I will guarantee your failure. If I had only cared about hits, I would have failed. Some of the best sites I know only get less than ten hits a day. Hits don't make a site—content does. And if you don't take the time to create decent content (this means spending entire nights writing), they why should anyone spend the time looking at what you've created?

I guess I was lucky. When I made LELOLA, I didn't know of any sites like it. I'm sure they existed, but at the time, I had no clue, and I was being original by creating a mutli-anime site like LELOLA. These days, there are tons of multi-anime sites like LELOLA. This is why they all fail and/or no one cares about them. Geez. I'm really off-topic, aren't I? I guess this is what I get for writing in a very unprofessional style. Meh. Back to the history lesson.

LELOLA.com grew, and I grew with it. I learned basic CGI coding, and my HTML and graphic knowledge improved. I didn't get a proper graphics program until late 2000, so all the graphics before then were made using only MS Paint.

See? You can do great things without getting too complicated. Actually, I still use MS Paint now. I got so used to using it that I can't stop. I used MS Paint in 99% of my images, but these days I use it along with Paint Shop Pro, and what do you know? I went off-topic again.

Back to LELOLA. I added new sections and became more involved with LELOLA than ever before. James still paid for LELOLA, and I still used banner ads.

Later in the LELOLA.com years, James offered me another domain. He needed someone to run a website called VGFF.net (*shrugs* I think it stood for "Video Game Fighting Force"). It was a site that hosted anime and teen related websites. The person who was running it quit, and James wanted to know if I wanted to run it for him. I agreed.

I always thought people were kind. I thought James wanted me to run the site out of the goodness of his heart. It never occurred to me he was just in it for the money. If I had only known what I know now.

Anyway, so little naive me started to run VGFF.net and hosting other people's websites. I thought I was doing them a favor by getting them off free servers.

At this time, LELOLA also had quite a few hostees. I was hosting sites off LELOLA domain's. I also became aware of the network of sites James "run".

Everything was going great. LELOLA was blossoming, and all my hostees were too.

And then the Internet economy collapsed.

At the time, I was too young to fully realize what that meant, but I had my own version of a wake up call soon after.

On Thursday, March 1, 2001, James pulled the plug on VGFF, my hostees, and most sites on the network. In less than twenty-four hours, the network of well over fifty sites was reduced to two.

I felt horrible. Here were my hostees putting there trust in me, and I found myself the bad guy. By hosting their sites, I somehow destroyed them. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. I was incredibly stressed at the period of time. There were other things going on at school and in my personal life, and the hostee disaster was like the nail in the coffin. I snapped.

I remember it vaguely. My friend, Miaka, knew what was going on, but no one else did. I think I scared a lot of my classmates that day. I think it happened during a science quiz. I ran out of class and hid in a stairwell. One of the boys from my class followed me out. He must have been worried about me. He tried to comfort me, but failed. He couldn't do a thing. I wanted to cry.

I told my hostees I would try to get their backup files for them. And I did try. Repeatedly. I failed in the end, but at least I tried.

Anyway, since I was "profitable", I survived. The only other site that survived was my brother Raidix's site: DigiExperience.com

The next year saw more obstacles than any other. James kept moving us from server to server. He made us put up more banner ads, and even pop-up ads, to help pay for the site. He even used an image-compressor on LELOLA to save on bandwidth. It made all my images look like they went through a shedder, and they all had to be re-uploaded eventually anyway, but at the time, it was a good idea to him.

During the same time period, I also met Danni. It turned out that he was the real person behind all the work done to the server. He ran the server and did all the technical jobs. He was "partners" with James. Anyway, I got to know Danni a little better and he helped me through lots of the little obstacles and server changes. He also kept me informed about what he was doing to the server and why. I owe him a lot.

At some point, I decided to host some sites in my account "unofficially". But I stopped close to the end of October 2001. Why? LELOLA was hacked.

I went away to attend a funeral and left LELOLA in the hands of Miaka. Someone decided to take advantage of this and hacked LELOLA. What they did was inexcusable. They changed the main logo and posted offensive things on the main page under my name.

I felt betrayed. I created LELOLA as a safe environment for children. I feel proud that a parent can leave a child to surf around LELOLA and know they're safe. To think someone hacked LELOLA and made it offensive is horrible. It hurt.

Anyway, I was on the phone with Miaka when it happened. She fixed the offensive message on the main page, and I fixed the other damage that was done. While logged into my account, I could see that the hacker was still causing trouble. I called Danni immediately, and we shut LELOLA down temporarily and upgraded the security and changed all the passwords. Danni looked into the server logs and only two people had logged in that day -- me and my hostee. I logged in after the initial hack, but one of my hostees was logged in exactly when it happened. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Danni did more research, and even traced the hack down to the computer programs used on my hostee's computer. I freaked out. I couldn't believe that this person, who I trusted, would do something like this.

When James found out, he was furious. With a little bit of research, Danni had the address and phone number of the hacker. James wanted to call the authorities, but I still couldn't believe that my hostee would do this, so I begged James to wait, and called my hostee myself.

This was the first time I'd ever talked to my hostee and I think I scared them. They didn't seem to know what I was talking about. I kept trying to give them an alibi, but nothing worked. Knowing James was going to do something drastic, I asked to talk to their parents. So, there I was, dressed in black after coming home from a funeral, sitting on the phone with my now ex-hostee's father trying to warn them about James.

I think their father hung up on me. I don't remember, nor do I think it matters that much. I'm not really sure what happened after that. James figured it was just a kid playing tricks and decided not to press charges, but left them with a warning or something. I honestly never found out what happened.

Needless to say, I never hosted anyone ever again.

The hacking situation never left me. It haunts me to this day. I still can't believe a hostee would do that to me -- especially that certain hostee. It bothers me that I felt so helpless.

You know, even after all the proof I was shown, I don't believe my hostee was the one who hacked my site. I don't at all.

I remember they sent me an e-mail. Or maybe their friend sent it. I can't remember. Anyway, I received a long e-mail telling me what a horrible person I was for blaming this hostee of mine for hacking me. I can't remember the e-mail exactly, but I do remember what it was and how it hurt. I found myself being the bad guy again.

I chose to host them. If a hacker used them, they were blamed, and I couldn't do a damn thing to prove them innocent. I still don't know if they did it or not. I don't know the full story, but I do know that I feel horrible about the entire thing. It's been years, and I still feel horrible.

My ex-hostee hates me now. I wouldn't be surprised if they want me dead, but I can't blame them at all. I'd have the same feelings if I were them. I'd hate me too.

But I can't hate them. Even if I can't prove it, I still believe they were innocent. Sometimes I go to their website just to see how they're doing—just to prove to myself that I didn't do as much damage as I think I did.

Some people who already know this story tell me I did nothing wrong. But I still can't forgive myself. I feel like I've done something unforgivable.

LELOLA was shaken by those events, but scars fade, and LELOLA moved on even if I didn't. More sections were added, and the updating continued until early 2002. James told Raidix that he'd no longer host DigiExperience.com unless Raidix paid him. He pretty much made me the same offer to me with LELOLA.com, but he continued to host us, until one day, when he suddenly stopped.

I called Danni and it turned out that many of the bills weren't paid. I hate to admit it, but I had some trust in James, so I thought he'd pull through. I was such a fool.

Raidix and I would move on to another server, but we couldn't. James had bought both our domain names for us, and therefore he owned them. We couldn't do a thing.

We e-mailed him and asked for our domains back, and I think I talked to him once on the phone about it. We thought we were going to get our domains back and that everything was going to be alright. We did, until James decided to disappear. He changed his address, phones number—everything. I guess you could say he "skipped town".

I felt horrible for Danni. James told him they be partners and split the profits, but while Danni did all the work, James spent the money and dug himself a grave. He used Danni's kindness. Heck, he used us all.

From what I can gather, James owes lots of people lots of money. I'll say it once, and I'll say it again: If I'd only known that sooner.

Since we were all in the same boat, Danni and Raidix helped me through it. Raidix and I still didn't have our .com domains though.

This is the main reason that LELOLA.com and DigiExperience.com switched to LELOLA.net and DigiExperience.net, respectively. I lost LELOLA.com, and I still don't own it. I hope that some day I will get it back just so I can make sure it doesn't turn into a hentai site or anything.

For a while, I updated Digital-Monsters.com for Izzy, the webmaster. After trying to repeatedly get LELOLA.com back, and failing miserably, I decided to get the domain name LELOLA.net.

The "com", of ".com" stands for "commercial", and usually means the site was created for profit. When James bought me LELOLA.com, I knew nothing about the meaning, but looking back on it, I guess the .com domain was fitting. The only reason James hosted me was to make money from advertising.

I like the domain name LELOLA.net much more. It's a lot friendlier. Moreover, it's something that's mine. To me, it has come to represent LELOLA as what it is—neither a cheesy website make by a child, nor a tool to make money—LELOLA.net is something that I can proudly say is mine. It's something I control. It's a part of me.

I didn't want any ads on LELOLA, so I got rid of them. I never made any money off LELOLA, and I make no money off LELOLA. If anything, I lose money. LELOLA isn't cheap, but to me, it's worth it. To me, LELOLA is much more than a simple website.

The domain LELOLA.net was bought. Then came the tough job of looking for hosting. Since LELOLA is a high-traffic website, very few hosting companies were willing to host it, and those that were cost a lot more than I could afford. I finally found a company that seemed reasonable and worked to create LELOLA.net.

Since I knew I had to re-upload every single file anyway, I decided to take this opportunity to do some handy work on LELOLA. I cleaned up the layout coding and lots of little things all over the site. I also had to re-name every single HTML file to a SHTML file to get SSI to work on the new server.

I re-uploaded the new and improved LELOLA to the new server, and for awhile, it looked like everything was going to be alright. Then I noticed little CGI errors and strange loading times. I started to bother the hosting company and soon found out that they were fairly corrupt. I was reminded of James, and found a nicer server to move to.

I really liked my second hosting company. They were great and their service was excellent. The only problem was that they were only giving me 60GB of bandwidth a month. While this might be a lot for most sites, LELOLA ate it up in no time, and I was forced to find another host.

Luckily, around the same time, Raidix was having the same troubles with his new DigiExperience.net domain. He proposed buying a server and running our sites off it. This way, we'd be on our own and running things our own way. I thought it was a great idea, but I knew very little about servers. Thankfully, Raidix knew a lot and took care of most of the tough stuff for us.

LELOLA and DigiExperience then moved to our server.

Out of the kindness of his heart, Raidix decided to host a few other Digimon sites on the server. Besides that, it was just Raidix and me. I ran LELOLA with more freedom than I ever had before, and everything was great.

At the beginning of March 2003, Raidix and I shut down the server. I guess you could say we gave ourselves wings to fly. That won't make any sense unless you've experienced it.

For a long time now, I've known that Raidix has wanted to move on. Digimon was great, but let's face it, the Digimon Frontier isn't all that great. After you start to lose interest in something, it's hard to run a website about it. When the interest loses you, it's even harder. You know that you want to continue, but you can't bring yourself to. And in the end, you feel like you're letting people down.

Raidix, if you're reading this, I want you to know you haven't let anyone down. If anything, you've done the opposite. Not only your site, but you, yourself, have been an inspiration, and friend to countless people. Your web design style is well-known and is as original as they come.

But besides all that, I want to thank you for everything. It feels like you've been with me forever. We both started off as subdomains part of the same network. We both had the same problems with James, and even after he was gone, we found ourselves in the same boat together. I want you to know how grateful I am to you, and for everything you've done. I never felt alone knowing you were there to support me and help me up when I fell.

I can never thank you enough for all you did. You've saved LELOLA more than once, and you've saved me countless times. Out of all the people who have supported me over the years, you're the one I owe the most. Thank you. Thank you for everything.

No matter what happens in the future, you'll always have my support. We were in the same boat, and maybe we still are, but you know what? There's no one else I'd rather sail with.

As for LELOLA, after we took down the server, Raidix found me a new host. And after some downtime and re-uploading, LELOLA came back up again and is still going strong.

With school, work, and my personal life eating up every free second of my time, I've been finding it harder and harder to work on LELOLA. Maybe I'm not doing as much as I used to, but I still love LELOLA. I know it inside and out. I know its strengths, and I know its weaknesses. I know what sections have to be re-created, and I know what sections need to be added in the future.

If anything, my experiences with LELOLA have taught me the importance of perseverance. Things don't happen overnight, but if you work at something hard enough, and never give up hope, you'll come through at the end. Even when there no light at the end of the tunnel, you light a torch and find your way.

LELOLA is a reflection of who I am, and who I have become over the years. I can see parts of myself in every corner of it. I can see my creativity. I can see my ideas. I can see my hope.

Even with everything that's happened, I can't hate James, or my ex-hostee, or the people that copy me. Because I understand where they're coming from and why they do the things they do. LELOLA has taught me that.

When people copy me, it bothers me. It's a strange feeling to see part of yourself in someone else. It makes you feel honored, but at the same time, uneasy. Because you know that they're never going to live up to their full potential if they continue to copy you. And at the same time, they hurt you. By taking a part of LELOLA, people are taking a part of me. Because when it comes down to it, LELOLA is nothing more than a fragment of me. It's a part of me I care about. It's a part of me I take care of. It's a part of me I love.

And it's because of LELOLA that plagiarism is so strange to me. As much as I hate it when people copy me, I understand why they do.

I see hundreds of young webmasters at certain stages of their careers, and think to myself, "I was like that four years ago" or "I did something like that once". I understand what they do and why they do it because I was just like them. I started out just like everyone else, and because I worked so long and hard to create LELOLA, I understand more than anyone what it took to get to where I am today.

There is no "quick fix". There is only time, patience, and experience. Don't cling to others, because you never know when they might drop you. If you want something done right, don't get someone else to do it for you. If you want it, you'll do it yourself. Even if the journey takes years, do it yourself. In the end, you'll thank yourself.

LELOLA has taught me so much, and I owe it more than I can ever re-pay. I've learned more from it than any text book. I've been hurt by it more than any blade. I've been loved by it through continued support.

I guess the entire point of this massive rambling was to tell you that things aren't always easy, and that there is always a hill to climb. If you want to learn one thing from this, learn never to give up. Because if you keep climbing, you'll reach the top of that hill and get a better view of the world around you.

I know I'm not going to stop updating LELOLA. Not now. Not ever.

After all, I've come this far. There's no way I'm going to give up now.

This was written on March 11, 2003, by Pan.