NeopetsGuide

Can I make a request?

When was the site started?

Can I use this content as my own?

When was the site started?

You haven't responded to me! How come?

How do I make a website?

My question isn't on this page!

As told by the owner, Shalane
Many people have asked how I started my site. Well, I was only 12 years old, didn't have any clue about coding, and had only been on Neopets for a short time. I started a small little website hosted on Geocities that was mostly random with a small neopet help section. It looked really bad. I soon learned basics like hex codes, html tags, etc. I eventually decided to make my neopets section larger, and learned much more and created a decent little site on Geocities. It was fairly popular for a while. I eventually got bored with Neopets and went on to do greater things. (This was when n00bs started popping up everywhere and Neopets didn't have a lot of security and didn't freeze people very easily.) I took a break and closed the site.

My dad works with computers, my brother (Ben) is basically a computer genius, and I know enough to maintain my site. When my dad put up servers in my basement (it is crazy to look down there with all of the computers everywhere) I decided to re-open. It was a while coming, since I had always used iframes and decided to use PHP this time. I kept trying to come up with a nice layout, but my color schemes were always way off. I was randomly searching the web and went to Neo-Reality. I just saw the layout and loved it. I don't think I could have come up with a better set-up. It isn't that I can't code, it was just someone had already done everything I wanted to!

I re-opened officially during the early summer 2006, but never gave too much effort to start, in fact, it didn't have anything but the idea, because I worked all summer. In September, I signed up for a .co.nr site. Once we hit 50 visitors a day I decided to buy the .com. We started to slowly grow from there.

Then in December of 2006, a site called Golden-Neo (located @ golden-neo.co.nr) decided to go ahead and merge with NeopetsGuide. Golden-Neo owner, Ena, an online friend of mine and part-time staff at NeopetsGuide, was great. We merged and Ena became co-owner. After a short while, Ena found she no longer had time for NeopetsGuide and I thought we would once again fall into a dreary time.

A little while went by before I decided to advertise that I'd like another co-owner or site to merge with us. We received many responses and found one really good one, paradiseisland.co.nr. Lauren and I got along great right away so we decided to merge.

Things went well for a little while, but Lauren found the stress of applying to college to be too much so she took a long-term hiatus, and still is on it. Shalane was lost, and so she promoted the most dedicated staff member, Viv to the position of Co-Owner. Viv was excellent and NeopetsGuide moved forward.

Shalane re-designed the site in WordPress. That lasted a year before it became too much to maintain. Then Shalane switched back to hand-coded PHP pages and here it remains. Long time friend and partner-site owner Scarlett joined on to help out and has become an amazing attribute to NG.

Both Viv and Scarlett have become too busy with the real world, so Shalane maintains the site alone currently, but is seeking help.