deviant petz: a history
Here is a history of Deviant Petz and my experiences in the Petz Community, for your reading pleasure.
The Beginning
My friend Grace and I split the cost and bought Catz 4 when we were in 6th grade, which would be 1999ish I think. We had a bunch of fun with our catz, and soon discovered the online Petz Community (capital P, capital C.) We both decided to try our hand at joining in.
We both made our first websites.. you know, the really awful kind that you can just tell was made with a Homestead-like pagebuilder. I believe my first website was called "Sparkle's Catz 4 Cattery." Sparkle was my first ever cat, a calico, named after my real calico cat Sparkle.
Of course I got tired of the whole pagebuilder thing, so I decided to teach myself HTML. Sometime around this point Grace and I bought Dogz 4. My first HTML website was a disaster (lots of marquees and things like that), and was called "Cheezy Poof's Kennelz and Cattery" because I had this awesome fuzzy orange catz called Cheezy Poof that I used as the mascot.
Once I got a better handle on HTML I reopened the site as "Sparkle and Bandit's Petz 4 Kennelz and Cattery" (Bandit was my second ever catz, a B+W Shorthair), but it didn't last very long... around this time I lost interest and deleted all of my petz.
Dew Drop
A few months or years later, I don't really remember, I decided to try a petz website again, so I opened Dew Drop Kennelz and Cattery. Actually, I think it started as Dew Drop Showz and then I expanded it. But whatever. I had a better handle on HTML, so this website turned out a lot better than the previous websites, i.e. people actually visited it. I used freebie graphics from some website and I had a TON of content... you know, one of those newbie sites that has 80 million poorly-organized pages that no one really cares about. It had a good run until the first Cataclysm where I lost all my petz, and gave up on the website.
Deviation
A few months after that, I decided to try a petz website yet again. I believe Deviation started coming together around 2001ish. I was going to call it "Deviation" because I wanted to devote it to finding mutations in purebred lines of petz. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I had more fun breeding mixed petz, so I turned it into a downloadable adoptions database instead, because there was a lack of downloadable adoptions back in the day. The name got changed to "Deviant Petz" because it made for a better show title ("DP's Blah Blah Blah") and just sounded better anyway, and the rest is history. So, for all of you who have wondered why the name of the website is "Deviant Petz" when there really isn't anything deviant about it, now you know.
I really like the way Deviant has turned out. I mean, it's basically just a big ol' mess of downloadable adoptions, so I can just not update it for a year and people can still enjoy it for what it is. O'er the years DP has also had traditional things like shows and adoptions where you mail in requesting a pet and the owner sends it to you (I always called those "unique adoptions" and it confused people), but the downloadable adoptions have always been my favorite. I'm especially proud because there aren't many other downloadable adoptions websites of this size.
Layouts
My layouts are usually pretty simple, with simple patterns and bold, solid colors and the like, because I'm not very good at making fancy graphics. I always forget to take screenshots of my layouts, so I only have pictures of a few old ones. But here they are, for your viewing pleasure!
My first 80 or so layouts were just experimenting with different colors, iframes, and different frame layouts. They were so simple that I remodeled about once a week. This one was I think my first REAL layout, with real graphics. It was called "Did I mention that red is my favorite color?" because red is indeed my favorite color, and this layout was very red. I was very proud of that background, but it took forever to load because it was like 500 x 500 pixels, no joke. I think I got yelled at for that in a review once.
I believe this layout was just called "Oldschool." I really liked the idea of doing a notepad layout because I hadn't seen one in a while, and it was really unique at the time. This picture doesn't really do it much justice. It wasn't that ugly, I promise. The current layout is a remake of this old one.
I made this layout solely because, for some reason, I really wanted to use that pink gingham background. I remember the dog on the front page's name was Valentine and she was sweet. I lost her in the second Cataclysm where I lost all my petz. Ah, c'est la vie. This was not the last pink layout I ever did.
I was really proud of this layout because it was really different from my usual stuff. This is the only layout I've ever done that uses a drop down menu. The cat's eyes are from a picture of my real cat, Tiger, that I took using my digital camera and then played around with in Paint Shop Pro. Oh, layout, how I miss thee.
This layout was hot pink and purple. I didn't have any petz to be the mascot(s), so I just took a bunch of petz from the adoption pages and made a collage. I dunno. It was a nice layout, I guess.
I liked this layout (even though none of my reviewers really did...). I don't know. I guess I just liked its simplicity. It featured one of my dogz (Nyche) licking a shoe. It was kind of inspired by a really old petz site named Alchemy that I used to love back in the day, and which had a layout similar to this only it used tables, not frames, and everything was on the left side of the screen, and there were no pawprints. You all might remember it.
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