What was the first website/blog/... you had on the internet?

[dividedbyblue]

Three weeks for Dreamwidth: What was the first website/blog/... you had on the internet?

I think the first website (or page I had on a website) was on Elfwood, way back in the early 2000's. As far as I remember, you could post your fantasy art there (on the wiki it said it also featured scifi art but I don't remember that very clearly), fanart and also stories you've written. It had a page dedicated to tutorials, and it had a community part too, in the form of Elftown, where you could have a profile with your interests and send messages to other users. Strangely enough, while Elfwood ceased to exist years ago, Elftown still exists on the web. I have no idea if it still has active users however.

On Elfwood I had a page that was mostly filled with my early attempts at digital art in Photoshop and Corel Painter. I also had a few fanart drawings on it.

While I appreciate Elfwood for offering me a place for my fantasy art, I remember it was also notorious for it strict modding system. Every time you wanted to post an image, you had to send in a ticket with your drawing. Mods then decided if it was good enough to post (if it wasn't fantasy/scifi enough for their liking, for instance, you weren't allowed to post it). I remember that I had fanart rejected because I used a photo reference to draw it, and they saw that. The latter made me quit the site, as I found it an absurd reason to reject fan art.

Comments

[sisterdivinium]

That sounds like a pretty cool place to hang around online, the kind of thing we rarely see nowadays. A hub for art, fiction, tutorials, a forum... Of course you couldn't have a neat website without a forum! I didn't know Elfwood myself but reading your post gave me this nice sense of nostalgia for the web of that time. I do miss that.

The strict moderation isn't all that surprising, though. It makes me think of how fanzines were made and how editors had to carefully choose what would or wouldn't make it into a given volume. The site didn't need to think in terms of printing, of course, but image storing was always an (expensive) annoyance so I understand why they'd want to control what was posted or not, at least if we look at it through that angle... Cutting out art you made just because you had used a picture reference was certainly a strange decision, though. A little too restrictive!