Our Website's HistoryWritten by: Haily | This article will show what IceCaves.net as a website has been through and how we came to be what we are today.

How It All Began - Why "IceCaves"

IceCaves first opened as a fan site for the then popular online game Neopets. Before that, my dad, a webmaster and computer engineer, showed me how I could set up my own website. He gave me the domain www.haily.org and I got to work. I needed content (and a purpose) for my site, so I decided to go and make a Neopets help section. I saw the potential a Neopets fan site had by looking at some of the most popular fan sites out there.

P.S. If you go to www.haily.org, you'll be redirected to IceCaves. ;)

After a few months of working with www.haily.org, my HTML was fluent and I wanted to increase the potential my site had by getting a domain name that reflected the site and not the site owner. I also wanted to name my site that was also remotely related to the Neopets game. From the beginning I planned to only stay as a fan site for Neopets for a short while then to expand to another theme when the site (or rather, I) was ready.

Thinking of such a name was harder than I thought. I spent a couple of days in early April thinking of a name. While browsing the Neopets site one day, I came across an advert for their game "Hannah and the Ice Caves." I thought about the idea of using IceCaves.net and it just clicked. It was the perfect name. It had some connection to Neopets, but not too much of a connection. After I would break away from Neopets, "IceCaves.net" wouldn't be restricted to a certain audience or content. It was the perfect identity for the site and, at the same time, it could mean anything (in a way). The domain was purchased on April 9, 2006, and the site was formally released the next day. Our site's birthday is April 10.

Proudly Affiliated - Year 1

When IceCaves.net first opened in April 10, 2006 as a fan site, I kept an isolationist policy. I would not link to any other site except Neopets, and I wouldn't expect any other site to link to me either. I kept this policy for about 6 months until towards the end of the month of September. During these six months I worked on the site and hoped it would spread through visitor recommendations to their friends or our visitors posting our graphics in their Neopets profiles, shop, etc. The site did grow; in fact, we reached an average of 60 unique visits per day in the month of July and August during this period (a great improvement from the average of 6-10 visits in April after we opened). To this day, I continue to keep an isolationist mentality when working on the site. I judge my site and the ideas I have for it by my own ideals rather than which direction the flow is taking. For example, this is no normal Website's History article that you find in most sites. ;)

I had already noticed by the first months of IC that the other Neopets fan sites were all connected by a series of link exchanges called affiliations. At first glance, it was just a link exchange, but I found affiliations to be better than that. This type of affiliation is a certain level of friendship between the two sites and, often, also within the webmasters. I began making plans for acquiring some affiliates for IC, but I continued my policy of isolationism for another month to make the site the best it could be--which was what really mattered for the fledgling website IC was at the time.

Towards the end of September, I felt that IC had a sufficient amount of content. We had many articles, graphics, games cheats, and news updates. I began to send out applications mostly to the larger Neopets fan sites that were out there and we were proudly accepted. I was glad that these sites didn't look at the hits we were making but rather the quality of the site.

The site continued to grow more and more with each new affiliate we got. I was even more pleased when other sites began applying to us for affiliation. Today, IC has an intimidating affiliate application page with so many rules that a website must abide by, but if you pay close attention, you'll notice that almost any site can fit into the descriptions. I basically accept any website as an affiliate (hint, hint) that would take the time to read everything on that page and still apply because it really shows that they believe it is worth it. (But the site cannot be poor in quality.)

Today, IceCaves.net has many affiliates, but still I always try to stay in contact with the webmasters of my affiliates. Some webmasters prefer if they're affiliates have small affiliate lists so this could be more possible, but I don't believe the size of an affiliate list can affect the relationship between the two site owners. A friendship cannot be deterred by quantity but only quality.

A Neopets Fan Site - Years 1 & 2

During the two years that IceCaves.net focused on being a fan site and help/cheat site for the online game Neopets, I gained much needed experience as a webmaster and sharpened my website coding. The site had grown in popularity steadily since we've opened with about 200 unique visitors per day. By the time that IC had been open for about a year and a half, Neopets had continued to lower their targeted age group with a series of changes on the site. By this time, I had already been drawing plans and laying down the foundations to begin converting the site away from Neopets.

A couple of months before IC would convert into a new site, I created a page in the site that would solve a puzzle each member was given as part of a story plot. Not knowing how popular the page would get, I required that each visitor register an account to access the page. Through Google and Neopets message boards, IC's hits skyrocketed in the following week with desperate members looking for answers. We went from about 200+ unique visits per day to a peak of 1300+ unique visits. We acquired about 1200+ members, about 1000+ of which would never return to IC. But the site became greatly popular after that. We acquired dozens of members who would visit the site daily or weekly.

This occurred in February and the popularity spilled into March. The site was thriving and expanding, everything that I hoped would happen to IC when I had opened it, but our April 10 opening anniversary was approaching and I have been long planning on releasing a new IceCaves.net by this date. During the two weeks preceding the site's change, I closed the site labeling out my plans for the new IceCaves in the homepage. A handful of members stayed with us excited for the new IceCaves and our daily visitor count took an immediate toll after the site closed.

But the old Neopets fan site had fulfilled its purpose. The site had met my goals in a shorter time than anticipated. Plus, we ended with a bang, rather a slow spiraling death. As great as it was or could have been, I knew that IceCaves couldn't really go far restricting itself to being a fan site of another site. I wanted the site to stand on its own and for my creativity to flourish without being controlled by the people running Neopets.

From Web Design to Beyond - Year 3

Immediately after the change, the site was rather empty. We were back to square one. At first the site didn't have much or anything new aside from the Topsites and the graphics sections, which had been salvaged from the old site. This year included many large leaps. In the first few days I had decided that instead of making the website fully oriented towards one specific topic, it would be divided in several "departments," sub-sections of the site specifically oriented towards a theme.

In a few weeks, I had opened IC's first main department, Web Design. The new department grew from the salvaged graphics section of the old site, so the new department was originally called the Graphics department. The department opened up with most of what it still is today. Graphics, Photoshop Tutorials, and Photoshop Downloads.

As the department grew, so did the website. The submit graphics feature was especially influential in shaping what IC grew to be in those early months. The feature was incredibly popular with some of our members who liked being able to show off their design skills and critique others work. It was from this that IC's community-oriented style first came to be as I took this into account as I continued to work on expanding the site. As our 3rd birthday neared, IC had labeled itself as a Web Design community including a growing number of members that were webmasters.

Three More Departments - Year 4

This year was one of the fastest periods of growth for IceCaves compared to previous years. A month before our 3rd birthday anniversary, the Webmaster Department was released. Although it hasn't changed significantly since it debuted, it was IC's way to enter a new theme that would appeal to new members. The department offered a free scripts section that offered CSS, JavaScript, and PHP scripts. It also offered articles and tutorials for webmasters. Since then, the department has been kept quite active with new articles and tutorials.

About 3 months after the release of the Webmasters department, our Stock Photos department debuted. Today, it offers hundreds of photographs submitted by our members for other members and visitors to use. Later in about 3 more months later, we released our new Blog department. This department is a way to follow any new article added to the site as well as the occasional blog post for our readers.

Among other things we did this year include our jump into social networking such as Twitter and Facebook, our first annual IC Web Awards, which was a proud success for the site, and the beginning of our design and photography competitions. IC will continue to grow on by further taking new frontiers in where the site heads, but more importantly, with the support of its growing community.

Past and Current Layout Skins


This was IceCaves's default skin for the first several months after we converted to an independent site. The skin was simple, and, well, boring, as there was no clear vision of a site to build the skin around.


During the time that we used the previous skin as the default, I also created the above skins as variations of the default skin for our members to use to their preference.


The Wave, Blue Light, and Digital Ice skins were then released with the Wave skin as the site's new default skin.


A month later, the Midnight Skin was released as IC's next default skin. With this skin, I decided to use the background as part of the design and it came out amazing. We stayed with this skin for several months until I decided to revamp the site.


With this next skin, I decided to revamp the website. The new default skin I created was back to a lighter color scheme, the page modules were organized more efficiently to take up less space, the forums and many parts of the site were re-designed, etc, etc, etc. Looking back from this point, all of our older skins were pretty horrible and unbearable organization-wise and design-wise. x_X We junked all of the other skins but managed to revamp the Midnight skin.


Our next revamp was for the sole purpose of making the site less cluttered, more simple, and more organized. This new layout was designed with the intention of making the site more appealing to the first-time visitor at IceCaves. The past layouts were too cluttered with too much information displayed at once. While you could get used to it after getting to know where everything was, the past layouts scared away several new visitors. This new layout is more organized and easier to navigate through the website. In this layout we also switched away from our previous IceCaves.net Logo. It was too flashy, too horizontal, and too hard to use. The new homepage design was later added to better organize the news updates along with other information on the homepage.

   

| Written by: Haily | Added: Dec 28 2008 | Last Modified: Jun 11 2010 | Views: 4,897 | (Log in to rate) |

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