Swamp Island was a website which in my mind started when I started dicking around with websites. Which the best estimate of a time frame was around March 2004 and possibly even January of February. Especially considering I remember posting the DS press release (the original one before it got a name) and I’m pretty sure that was released early in the year. Also by then my site had already picked up- and used Publisher based layouts.
The first ever page I could say which I’ve utalised on the internet was a simple white page with a tag board inserted, I do believe the page featured no align tags of any sort- and the whole design was essentially left aligned. The white page also contained under the tag board lots and lots of links and buttons to various websites which “blog rolled” your website for you if you ad their button. Above the tagboard there was a simple thing saying “Hi I’m Trent, I like harvest moon”- not exactly those words but something to that effect.
For those stuck in the web 2.0 world, a tag board or a shout box had many names and was essentially a 150 by 300 or so small iframe box which contained a forum on the bottom of the tag board which you could write your name, email, website and comment. Above this would be all the comments from people who had came to the site.
You could customize these only down to the design and width and height, the website which I got the code for it would also have options for having it in various positions and styles as well.
I think the site was like this for quite some time- and possibly I even made another Geocities site for what was going to be swamp island after that- I’m not to sure.
The site contained a few articles and postings, as well as a few bits of content for Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life (Game Cube) once it got going- I think I used a few free designs for awhile before I started to make them using Mircosoft Publisher- why I was making websites using publisher I have no idea. But they where essentially cut and past designs which featured a banner and some horrible border design. Basically if I had bothered to learn HTML would of looked much better etc.
I think for the most part I’ve forgotten most of the things about this site- but on the same token their isn’t much to say.
It did feature the DS as soon as it was announced so I’m pretty sure the site had been running longer then that- or least it was openned with the DS in mind- its quite confusing time line wise, all I remember is adding the DS after posting the press release and then slowly removing my AWL content or forgetting about it before I then moved onto the Nintendo DS completly and while my affiliates for the most part where Zelda and Harvest Moon sites I did in the end use the back bone of what I’ve collected for the next project and it kind of just stuck like that over the year.
Ah DS Network- the first true website I’ve ran, and to think that that year it had gotten more additions and design changes and forums then my current sites get new layouts.
DS Network was the first time I decided “hey Publisher layouts are shit”, and when I started working on the website for it- it contained free layouts using cutenews and other php applications to essentially power itself.
It also had an Invasion Free forum- its hard to remember which came first the forum or the site- its kind of like what came first the chicken or the egg- and its essentially as redundant as that as well.
Content wise it featured what I had lying around from Swamp Island which related to the Nintendo DS- and was slightly updated to have the latest game announcements and media. (This same content was used essentially un edited on all my other sites relating to the Nintendo DS that year, aka Aussie-DS, DS Like etc.) The only thing missing from each website was the news which was powered by cutenews, which means each website had started fresh in that regard.
Article wise, it never really kicked off and I think there was a few previews which where made, but they are lost in time- while my blog (trinest.com) does contain a few articles from back then, its limited to what I have left and not was accuarly written back then.
DS Network was pretty dam successful if compared to Swamp Island, heck I’m pretty sure I kept most of the affiliates and only added more gaming related ones.
Because of this, a few people from the community wanted to help out- that was pretty cool, which is how Aussie-DS was made, we decided a new name was in order, especially one which embodied what we where about.
Though I think in the end we where all the wrong people to do the site, Aussie-DS did start to work for abit, heck we had a design made by a fellow affiliate who was happy to help out, and it was hosted on Ninhost then as well. (the site part) heck we also got a new forum as well.
Though little content was really made from everyone else, and even I didn’t put much in, so we decided to say hey lets have other people to come in and help out. Until we picked the worst people who basically screwed us over by taking the forum from under us. Because of this and the lack of activity leading up to the site I moved onto DS Like, and then shortly after Another Code labs.
DS Like really wasn’t meant to be for viewers- what it was in the end while it did contain affiliate links on the side (and used free layouts once again) it didn’t really offer anything new- and it was more of an archive of what was collected over the year then a fully functional website. I worked on it occasionally and added various other goodies, and downloads as well to the site to make it more interesting then what it was. But really it was closed in favor of Another Code Labs.
After I had worked on Another Code Labs for awhile, I was confronted by one of the people who worked on Aussie DS with me, saying we should start it up again- but by then I really wasn’t interested so everyone went their separate paths.
There really wasn’t much to say about these DS sites, they where typical DS sites for the time (media pictures from e3, collections of games etc.) at the time there where DS sites which did it better, though they disappeared shortly after as well. Most closing down others just merged with bigger sites etc.
I’m not going to go crazy talking about the design of Another Code Labs- I’ve done that before and you can find the article if you look hard enough in the archives. In fact I’ve talked about the design for lots of my sites heaps of times over the years.
No today I’m going to talk about the site in general- its ups and downs, and all that other crap.
Another Code Labs was created late into 2004 when the game was first announced- accuarly I’m pretty sure now it was announced at E3, so possibly not- but basically near the end of the year after running the various DS sites I would assume Another Code was one of the games which stood out to me- as an awesome game, and in my earlier articles I’ve even deemed it “Myst Like”.
It’s a shame that the developer Cing is now in financial trouble- which you can read about a few articles down, but so is the life and death of the industry.
Another Code Labs was pretty much really the dawn of my web design hobby- because really before then yes I tooled around with websites, but all I knew was how to bold something and make a table, and once I got started with ACL, I started to learn more things about tables (made various table layouts) and div’s etc. I only really used free layouts for the first little while I had the site- essentially the first month as I was getting things organized.
Another Code Labs was started around late into 2004 after the Nintendo DS was launched, it featured content around Cing’s Another Code: 2 Memories game. It started using free layouts, in which I edited and developed upon until I was comfortable enough to develop my own designs. The website also had various hosting problems (it switched back and forth from Yahoo Geocities to NinHost). Throughout the years, while also covering Another Code: 2 Memories, it grew to cover Konami’s Survival Kids series, Cing’s new DS game Hotel Dusk and then other franchise such as Animal Crossing and Darwinia. All extra games where removed as the site developed to only cover both Cing and Konami titles mentioned, until Survival Kids flipped into a new blog and Another Code Labs still continued to cover the Cing titles (until Another Code Wii was released in which it dropped Hotel Dusk). In 2009 it had a rocky end of rebirths, shutdowns and other hiatuses until the site was finally stopped late 2009. – From the “Project” page.
The site really was about one thing and one thing only, Another Code: 2 Memories. I collected various resources and videos etc. about the game to catalog and keep the site interesting before the release of the game.
Forum wise, I’ll say it right now- well like all my projects there was heaps of them at one stage or another. Let’s just leave it as that.
Site and content wise, its had many forms. More recently from 2008 – 2009 before it was closed for the last time it has had the most changes. Especially considering I had no longer its content- so it had changed from a big site to a mini site and hosted a few bits of media from time to time etc. It was basically just a big bad micro site which had no where to go but down at that point.
But bef0re then I would say Another Code Labs was one of the biggest sites I had ever had, and one of the most successful- it did have a small little following and while it wasn’t a blockbuster site it did the job it set out to do and contained heaps of information about the games the site covered.
Game wise it went from just Another Code: 2 Memories to also having Hotel Dusk: Room 215. I then near the middle of its life had the site running through iGaming CMS so just before then Konami’s Survival Kids series was added, and afterwoods Darwina and Animal Crossing DS was added. I’m pretty sure there was something else on that list as well.
As soon as I stopped using iGaming CMS I pretty much ditched everything else and went back to just Another Code and Hotel Dusk. The sequel to Another Code wasn’t announced when I had the site up and running nicely, so when it was I did give the site another chance- but with the quality of content I had left for both games the best I could do was host a few FAQs for the original game and then try and clean up the current site.
Because the content was originally designed for a micro site after I lost everything because of my own clumsiness, the site had to be designed from scratch. I can’t remember if I worked on ACL in 2010 or 2009 to bring it up to this current standard but above is an image of what I was working on- for the most part I was trying to get the original games section back up and running well.
It is always on the back of my mind to restore the site to its former glory, and thats kind of been my goal for the past few years. But now with the possible downfall of the developer- I’m thinking if I do restore it, it will be more of a “Shrine” type site- and cover all their works they are credited for. Least most of them- I’m not to sure.
But on the same token if I was to restore the site, its always been a project I’ve decided now I can’t do by myself. When I was younger (around when I started the site for the first time), it was much easier to collect information, especially considering thats when the game was been released- so there was always something to post news etc. But now theres not.
Maybe I should restore the site- I’m not to sure why I would bother, but maybe I should…