How it Started - Orange Story
My career in graphic designs and websites started in June 29, 2002, I was first hosted at Angelfire, and my first ever site was Orange Story, featuring of course Orange Story Characters. Then I quickly grew tired of all the ads on Angelfire and moved to Brinkster. I used a linkware layout from Angelic Wings Designs. I stopped making site for 3 months because I had lots of trouble with my computer and a virus from e-mail deleted my whole hard drive. I was devastated and I was going to quit.
The Next Level - Baby Angel
Then my dad bought a new computer and I started working on my site on his computer. That's when 2nd version of Baby Angel came in, Silvery Night. Hosted by hostdepartment.com, and it was basically a neopets graphics site. I didn't know much about frames and editing with Photoshop. The site did attract a lot of viewers, but all from Neopets. I stopped playing the game and realized it was pointless. So with a few really good suggestions, I closed down the site and was determined to make a brand new graphic site, which will have layouts.
This is when the 3rd version of Baby Angel came in, then I was really addicted to Chobits by CLAMP, and I collected every single possible picture of Chobits out there. I chose a violet Chii picture and made the third layout, Violet. That was in November, 2002. I moved host again, that time, to Fateback. The host was great, and you get virtual sub-domains and ftp. I started making graphics, quickly grasping the basics and moved on to more advanced like making my avatars and buttons transparent. I had about 15 layouts to offer then, but they weren't all beautiful. I thought it was time for me to become hosted, as I saw affiliates and sister being hosted by wonderful sites. I searched around, and applied to a couple of hosts, and finally, in December, the generous Jessica and her site falling-tears.net hosted me. Happy moments didn't last, she had to close her site down for awhile for personal reasons and I was forced to move out. I had headaches trying to think how to save the situation.
Good thing then she bought another domain. Digital-riot.net, I was hosted again and I decided to change my layout. My friend sent me a really cool Love Hina picture and I decided to make that the theme for my 4th layout for Baby Angel. I finished editing everything by the end of the year, and the 4th version opened on Dec 29, 2002. The layout was a table layout, and I was making a lot of friends then, happy the way I am. Then I started to read many tutorials, and realized I can make my own customized guestbook and other tools, but most of the files require a CGI-bin and support for PHP and SSI. I e-mail Jessica, but unfortunately, her host, Activewebhosting, only gives her one CGI-bin. I was very sad because I learnt using PHP or SSI I could make a page so much easy to edit, since I had over 50+ sub-pages.
Then .tk closed down, my link was devastated, when on average I got 600 hits per day, and I only had 20 visitors on the days babyangel.tk wasn't working. I stressed my self out about all my graphics, because everything was watermarked under Babyangel.tk. Then after a few days, .tk came back on. But I was discouraged, what if the direct URL fail again? I could loose everything I worked so hard on. I confided in my parents and they understood the situation. My dad volunteered to get me a domain, and he helped me to look for a host, and after weeks of searching, I found a perfect hosting plan!
To My Beloved - Digik
The domain was bought at internetwebsitehost.com, their hosting price is REALLY cheap and I recommend them to people without much money. My plan came with 50GB bandwidth, 1GB storage and more, and a free domain.
I chose the name Digik because I was really sick and tired of names like "fluffy-sweet-clouds" or something similar, no offense. I really wanted something original, and with a short URL. Since Digi sounded very cool to me, so I tried every letter in the alphabet until I got Digik. And it no one actually took it! So now you have it, Digik.Net.
It seems my site just had to go through all the troubles for a webmaster. After a few months that I was used to Internetwebsitehost the whole server went down. Bringing all the sites it hosted down. I was depressed for a couple of months. If you are a slight experienced webmaster you would know since all the scripts had to be CHMODed and changed properties. But I didn't give up, I had all the backups on the computer, so I started looking for a new host.
Then I found www.1t3.com. Their price and offers were very promising, so I proceeded to sign up. It took a while for them to set up everything. I bought their service in November 2003, but by the time they had all the things set up (DNS name servers, domain registrations, etc.), I started working on it again in Feb 2004. It seemed reliable enough, and my site was progressing nicely, I went onto to experience with MySQL databases and PHP, when I almost figured out how to work somethings. Disaster struck again.
From April to July my site was down and I could work on it at all. It was ONLINE through until July, but I had no FTP access and despite my contacting the host they didn't fix much. Now in August, I finally see it back online again. I'm working on bringing the site back. All I want is a place to display and share my layouts as they are the main reasons I made Digik anyway. I love designing, and I'm glad that others like them too.
Further Development
It seems that my site is destined to run into all sorts of problems. With 1t3.com as my host, I designed happily for about four months, but when 1t3 ran out of business, and being the irresponsible hosts, they took off without telling us. I was left heartbroken, the site offline. It was hell trying to get my domain back into my ownership because when I signed up with 1t3, I transfered digik.net to their registrar. When I decided to move it to GoDaddy.com, I had to email administrators back and forth for two weeks to finish the configuration and bring Digik into my ownership. but I was determined to get back onto my feet, so I started to look around for hosts.
By then I was broke, having spend a lot of money on useless hosts that I didn't even use for half a year, I had to email around for sponsorship. One of the sites I emailed replied back, and that was Espinda.com. They agreed to providing me with a free hosting plan, enough resources for my needs, in return I have to had a regular size Google ad banner as advertisement. So of course I agreed and took it eagerly. For about a month I was hosted under them.
By then it was almost November of 2004, my birthday was coming near, so I talked to my parents, and after a lot of comprises, they agreed to buy me a new plan by New Year. So I started out to look for good, reliable hosting sites. Then I found HostDime.com, at that time I thought the resources were good and the price was reasonable: 1GB and 15GB Bandwidth for $65 annually. So I moved my site over there by January of 2005. The staffs there were nice enough to help move all my files from my old host Espinda over.
Hostdime is as reliable as I read on forums and reviews, but another problem arised: resource shortage. No matter how many sponsors I got, no matter how I try to cut down on image sizes and other bandwidth saving methods, just the text files on my sites were going over 12GB a month with more than 1500 visitors per day. I was always so nervous by the end of the month when my bandwidth would go over 90%.
The Current Site
So if you had the patience to read all the way here, you would ask, so what happened now? In July 2005 I moved hosts again. This to SurpassHosting. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw their oc-5 plan: 5GB and 100GB bandwidth for only $60 a year! It was more than four times I had at hostdime with the same price! I emailed them in the morning of my find with a couple of questions, they replied within minutes. I love their service.
Over a night (July 14, 2005) Digik switched hosts. They moved all my files and GoDaddy finished resolving the DNS, I can finally settle down and do some serious revamping. Because as I validated my site with W3C, every page had over 50 errors (~I know). So by spending the next entire day dedicated to editing all the pages on Digik, I completed my job by nightfall. Now Digik runs heavily on CSS, PHP, powered by 4 MySQL databases, and various customized scripts written by me. I came a long way since the beginning!
