History of The Dizzy Heavens

Overview

The Dizzy Heavens, a site I named after my favourite song by The Cure, Just Like Heaven, was unveiled in autumn 2010 when I was 15. It was the last website I'd code, spanning a period of two years until late 2012 when Tumblr became my main focus. Previously, I'd owned a string of domains dedicated to Pokemon, and my newer website still retained much of the fan-content I'd originially generated, such as graphics and shrines known as Fanlistings, but the updated incarnation of what was previously Pokemon Fanfiction (2008-2010), and 'Pokemon Valley Pokemon' (2010) was more personal, with a focus on '80s music, my original characters, and my artwork. This is the history of that journey:

Piczo

Piczo was a 'drag and drop' style website builder popular with teens in the late 2000's. Similar to Neocities, users could sign up for a site with the '.piczo.com' subdomain and forge their own place on the net. Unlike Neocities, however, users needed zero HTML knowledge to make a functioning site. This creativity allowed for a variety of styled pages. Some users were more savvy than others, and this is where I first came across the kind of graphic design I would come to love. Think lots of 'starbursts', photoshop brushes (Brusheezy was my go-to!) and anime pngs. Piczo opened up a community of likeminded teenagers to me, and I met friends on there who stayed in my life for a number of years. Eventually, in late 2009, Piczo made it so custom HTML wasn't an option, and users had to look elsewhere if they wanted to hard code their website.

Webs

Webs was my next stop. I still had my website under the name 'Pokemon Fanfiction' at this point. Unfortunately, this is the least preserved part of my life on the internet, as Webs (previously known as Freewebs), is now defunct. All traces of my website activity from that era are gone, with only one Internet Wayback Machine crawl dating to March 2010...when the website was already closed. At this point, it was commonplace to use images without credit. I used to put art I found on webistes like Photobucket on my graphics. This was a time when the practice of crediting was an afterthought. Many of these artworks were reuploaded without credit to the original artist, so I used to just use them without such. Ironic, given how crazy designers used to be about 'leaving credit on the designs'! If anyone can provide credit for the artwork used in the above pictures, please do let me know.

Pokemon Fanfiction hosted graphics, tutorials and other various things I would come up with like games. Usually these games came in the form of 'DO NOT CLICK HERE' clickbaits which led to 'never-ending' pop up dialogues (100+ windows) and awarded the user a graphic to display on their own website at the end.

'Pokemon Valley Pokemon' rebrand

At some point during my time on Webs, I decided to rebrand my website to 'Pokemon Valley Pokemon' as I no longer wrote fan fiction. This change came in early 2010 and lasted around 6 months until I made the decision to change to a more traditional website host, which required an FTP server to upload and manage. At that point, I renamed my site to The Dizzy Heavens.

The Dizzy Heavens

In late 2010, I discovered a small website offering free hosting called Bubble.nu. Many of the sites hosted on Bubble were similar in theme to mine so I quickly applied for a domain. I'd always wanted a 'proper' domain of my own with either a '.com' or '.co.uk' suffix, but couldn't afford it, and the subdomains offered by Bubble were quirky in nature, much funner than '.piczo.com' or '.webs.com' as I'd been used to. I quickly settled on '.spookish.net', and with my new name, decided to move my site's focus away from Pokemon and into a more personal space. Whilst retaining the anime graphic images and tutorials I'd created for Pokemon Fanfiction and Pokemon Valley Pokemon, I focused more on '80s music and started pages for my artwork as well as mini-shrines known as fanlistings. I owned multiple official fanlistings.

Fanlistings

I owned multiple fanlistings alongside The Dizzy Heavens. These were for:

• Officer Jenny from Pokemon
• Alice from the Pokemon movie 'The Rise of Darkrai'
• The song Just Like Heaven by The Cure
• The '80s band Duran Duran
• The musician Robert Smith
  
  Here are some buttons I made for those fanlistings. Feel free to save them and upload to your own website.
  
  
  
  
  
  I have only got scraps of these shrines left over on my harddrives. Many of the graphics were hosted on places like Tinypic, a site that is now defunct. So I have pieced together some screenshots based on the html files and graphics I have saved:

The last hurrah: Colour Cry

By 2012, I was more heavily into music than I was anime or gaming. I'd found a community of likeminded music-lovers on Tumblr and started spending a lot more time on there. As well as that, in 2013, I started university and didn't have as much time. Friends who I'd been close with since 2008 slowly slid away, never to return. Life sort of just, went on. I'd have one last go at a website, apparently hosted on Threewords (which I remember nothing of, but hey-ho!), before my hobby finally fizzled out and my sites were left to the sands of time. Nowadays I take archival more seriously, as back then, I really thought these websites would last forever. What a mistake. There are graphics and art which took many hours of my life that I will never get back due to my ignorance. Please don't make my mistake!

Before I had my last hurrah, I made a site called Colour Cry which ironically sounds a lot like the band Coloursound which is a band I wasn't aware of at the time but love now. Coloursound are great a duo made up of Billy Duffy from The Cult, and Mike Peters from The Alarm, both famous '80s bands! Anyway, Colour Cry had a focus on just that: '80s music. and '80s music alone. It first started out as a shrine for The Cure but if memory serves, I also made some layouts and graphics for other music artists I was getting into at the time as well like Kate Bush.

And with that, my journey came to an end! I always missed the old-style websites I grew up with and am so happy to see a revitalised interest in making the internet unique and hands-on again. Thank you for reading and please feel free to take as much inspo/design ideas as you like from my past work.