Ever since I got an e-mail from Kirupa a year ago or so about its sudden revival (that’s how I saw it at least), I’ve been trying to recall which other sites I regularly visited when I was learning web design, ca 2004-2007, to get inspiration, flash tuts, photoshop tuts etc. But I can’t recall any of the names! The only thing I can recall is that I think one site was called something with “spoon” or “fork”, and I remember vaguely that it had pixel graphics and I think it was coloured in light blue (albeit you could probably switch theme which was popular at the time).
Anyway - were you active back then? If so, which sites did you use?
Good question. I can think of some of the sites I was a part of - probably not all, but they included:
were-here (and whatever its successor was, twelvestone?)
flashkit
ultrashock
newgrounds
kongregate
actionscript (I believe there was both a .org and a .com)
layer51
Naturally they’re all Flash sites because I was a big Flash guy . And most of my particular knowledge came from those forums, answering other people’s questions, figuring out the answer on my own if I didn’t already know it. Problem solving was a big part in my flashucation.
Funny story about me and kirupa.com. As with the other sites, I was heavy in forum activity and thought it would be funny and try to appeal to the dweebs who kept asking to be mods - this was a thing back then, nobodies pleading to get modded. So I thought I’d play a joke by telling them there was a secret way to get mod powers. That post of me explaining that had since been deleted, but I did just find the super-secret hidden in the mods-only forum post where the mods of the time were talking about it. It starts with this (apparently I had already established myself as a prankster or troublemaker ):
Senocular is at it again!
This time he posted to others how he could have moderator status. I deleted the post, but here is what he said:
actually, I know a secret (dont tell any of the actual mods this though) but you can trick the server into thinking you’re a mod if you make a new account with your current account name sith $mod at the end of the name ie.
alex$mod
for me its
senocular$mod
and then just reply to 10 posts which you created with that original name (alex) and the server will see the $mod name as a moderator user - just that your name wont appear in bold in whos online or appear in the members list as a mod because the name wasnt originally created to be a mod… but shh, dont let this out to everyone ok? It could cause disaster for ANY vBulletin forum!
I personally think we should block anyone from having a ( $ ) sign in their name for security reasons! Maybe even ban senocular for being a prick and exposing it to all these other little kids that could screw with the forums. I’m sure senocular can read this if he wanted to, here ya go senocular…
Yes, I started with “(dont tell any of the actual mods this though)” in a public posting, because, you know, that’s gonna keep it hidden. Yup, my blossoming career almost ended as soon as it started
What was just a t-shirt/design link for ISO50 is now Tycho, one of my favorite bands. Take a look at the “Respect” and related icons for a lot of other design communities from back in the day.
Thank you for helping me finally re-discovered Spoono
And the “support” section links to a lot of the other sites I used. I remember that I really loved the logo for iDigitalEmotion (which apparently is still up in it’s original form). I thought Shiver7 was a really cool site too. God, the memories. I just found my old DeviantArt page as well, those abstract graphics were so popular back then.
I still have all of my design and programming bookmarks from that era… so I have a bunch!
I posted a bit at Billy Bussey’s forums and actionscript.org, but in retrospect it makes sense that I mostly just stuck to one community (here) that touched on similar topics.
. And most of my particular knowledge came from those forums, answering other people’s questions, figuring out the answer on my own if I didn’t already know it. Problem solving was a big part in my flashucation.
):
