Site History
The Illustrious History of The Solar Sanctuary, as told by BeeZeroOne
Welcome, weary traveller. You've arrived at a destination where you can hear an "epic" tale that spans many generations (read: months). This is the history of The Solar Sanctuary!
...Seriously though. Here is a short history of TSS, from humble (read: rubbish) beginnings to the writing site it is today. The journey begins in mid 2006, when the idea for the site first came about.
Mid 2006: Initial Idea
It was the middle of the year of Two Thousand and Six, and Hugh and I were still writing away at Orion (which was started in about March). We were posting it at the time in a thread on the Nintendo-Europe forums posed as a fanfiction, but we started to get paranoid about plagiarism (hah). So, I promised I'd make an official Orion website and call it The Solar Sanctuary, after a floating palace in the world of Orion.
Late 2006 - Early 2007: Version 0.1
This version came about but never reached the internet. The background was a pencil sketch, there was awful navigation, and awful looking black-on-pencil colour scheme. See screenshot below:
March 2007: Version 0.5 - TSS Goes Live
The first version of this site to grace the Internet was an improved version of version 0.1, a little. It had a colourscheme that made the font hard to read, mostly due to the image background. It was still an Orion site at this point. See screenshot:
July 2007: Version 1.0 And Forums
I finally made some kind of layout. By that I mean an image header built on a tutorial, and a better background which meant the majority of text could be read just fine. It still wasn't what you'd call great though, and later on in this layout's life, the usefulness of the site and Orion came into question. Between versions 0.5 and 1 I added a forum, which experienced a brief burst of activity thanks to some friends before becoming a graveyard of dead topics. See screenshot:
October 2007: Version 2.0 - The Big Change of Direction
This was when this site went from showcase to writing site. Articles came into full force, and a new layout took over. This was the point when the site started to evolve into what it is today, and I started to use deviantART to get some promotion (ironically, this stopped me from working on the site a great deal). I closed the forums temporarily, eventually rehauling them with a new colourscheme and wiped of all old topics and posts. See screenshot:
June 2008: Version 3.0
This is where we are today. Work on the site is increasing substantially, so you can expect to see a drastic increase in content. No need for a screenshot since you happen to be looking at the layout - this is by far the best-looking one I've made yet.
And thus concludes and epic tale. Hope you enjoyed the history of this little corner of the Internet!
--Benjamin Hall (BeeZeroOne), webmaster
Website layout (c) 2008 Benjamin Hall and The Solar Sanctuary. All works (c) their respective owners
