Site History

Moonflower came into existance on the 8th of November, 2007. The site was first located at Freewebs.com, and I relied on premade layouts for the first few years. However, I wanted to be more creative with the site, so in January 2009, I started teaching myself html in my free time. By July, I had my crew site, Body Butter, up at 110MB.com. Satisfied with that, I decided to build Moonflower from scratch too, again at 110mb.com, though I kept the freewebs entry page. That wasn't too long lived - in September 2011, I moved Moonflower back to Freewebs (now Webs) because 110mb was seriously unreliable.

In August, 2009 I managed to get hold of Petz 4 so Moonflower officially went Petz 3+ in November.

In 2014, I opened Bask and Drawbridge (to replace my old hex archive and crew sites, Wattlebark and Body Butter).

In 2020, Webs.com announced they'd be soon shutting their free hosting services, so I decided to move the site to Neocities and give Moonflower a good polish... which brings us to the current day :3

Why 'Moonflower'?
The Moonflower vine (Ipomoea alba) has been always been special to me. As a child, I used to love watching the flowers open at night - they unfurl in a matter of seconds - and I have taken cuttings of the same plant whenever I've moved somewhere new. That's how I wanted my Petz site to be; beautiful and breathtaking.

These are all the past layouts that Moonflower has had. I've designed so many more that never made the cut (I'm kind of addicted, send help).


Version 17: Summer Bouquet, January 2020.
Pretty watercolour flowers :3 <3




Version 16: Lullaby, October '17.
It was simple, but I really loved this version. It celebrated the birth of my daughter <3




Version 15: Pastel Papers, December '16.
I think I enjoyed making this layout more than I enjoyed the final product, haha. I created it when I was on the road and needed something to do. I spent ages making up papery textures to apply to it, but in the end I wasn't really sure about it.




Version 14: Crystal Orbs, March '16.
Ooh boy, I looooved this layout. It was just so fresh and crisp and pretty, but it was massive in pixel size. I ended up having to tweak it several times to fit people's monitors, haha. I'm going to have to do another layout like this in the future, but a bit more compact next time!




Version 13: Floral Scrapbook, August '15.
Learnt how to use stylesheets for this one :) I enjoyed playing around with layers and shadows to create a 'scrapbooky' feel, and really adored the colour scheme.




Version 12: Ode to the Night, March '15.
A pretty, responsive layout, in which I focussed mainly on updating old code and refreshing the design of the place. New CSS skills ftw! :) It was inspired by my love of night-time and featured lovely artwork by freeminds.




Version 11: Masser and Secunda, December '14.
A nod to the game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, in which I have whiled away many hours fus ro derping around :) Man, I love that game. I'd originally been going for a vertical table layout, but I ended up settling on another iframe. I still loved it though:)




Version 10: Happy Halloween, November '14.
A pretty, clean-cut layout to celebrate Halloween!




Version 9: Decoupage, September, '14.
I absolutely adored this layout when I made it, but after a while I was a bit unsure about all the grey. Nevertheless, it was a fun one to make :)




Version 8: Art Splash, August, '14.
After some time where I let Moonflower go, I wanted to revive the website with some graphics I drew myself. It was fairly simple because I wanted to fix everything up as quick as possible.




Version 7: Endless Envy, November, '11.
I wanted to do something fancy, and I think this came out very refined. The graphics were huge though. The site stayed this way until 2014!




Version 6: A Spring Of New Beginnings, September, '11.
A fresh new start after an unplanned hiatus. This layout was inspired by all the changes that were going on in my life at the time, and I was really enjoying the beauty of the Spring. I didn't like it much, so it didn't last long, only until November.




Version 5: Managable, May '10.
A temporarily downsized layout of Moonflower - I was concerned about neglecting my site, because I'd moved out with my boyfriend and no longer had access to the internet.




Version 4: 'Tis Christmas, December '09.
A jolly Christmas layout I put up over the few weeks of the holiday. Afterwards, it went back to the previous layout.




Version 3: Celebrating Petz 3+, November '09 - April '10.
I liked the simplicity of the layout, yet it was still very pretty.




Version 2: Break Free, July - November '09.
This was Moonflower's first html version.



This is what Moonflower looked like when I first opened its doors, back at freewebs.

I changed the banner and background a few times (shown below).