One early Saturday mourning (around Nov. 10th 2001), bored, nothing to do. A thought popped into my head! Why not try to make a site! Of course when I made it I was planning on only working on the site for a week or two. That idea didn't exactly happened. It was my first time ever using HTML.

At first I had a couple pages. It was pretty crappy. My navigation was at the bottom, pretty simple. But I wanted to get better. I started downloading programs. Like Unlead Gif Animator, where I made some of my first banners. I still use them! I slowly started getting better at making pictures. But my site was still awful. I had no idea what to do.

The first thing I wanted to change was the navigation. It was awful. Whenever I added a new page I had to go through all the pages to add it to the navigation. It was simple text links at the bottom. Size 2 fonts with a | in between every page. So I decided to try and make some buttons, I did. Using some graphics from Blink ONE82 (with his permission) I had my first button navigation. I put the buttons on the top of the page. But now whenever I added a new page I had to make a new picture, make sure I use the right symbol (plane, pants, jacket) and then once again go through all the pages changing them!

Believe me, I was stupid about HTML back then. I didn’t even know what frames were. I heard of them, but didn’t know what they were. Then, one day while I was searching for a new way to do my navigation, I stumbled on a frame guide at bravenet.com. I used it and then I had my very first site with a semi good navigation. Just to tell you, I was still using the pictures.

Click For Full Size Image

Soon, I got bored of the pictures and went back to text. I had some problems with it, sizing and all. Then, I got a little help from Strike, the webmaster of 12ML. Soon I had a excellent navigation.

Next to work on some pages. I had no idea what to do really. I was just messing around. I don't really remember exactly what I did. I know I had the meanings up pretty quickly. But thats about all I remember.

Since then I've started expanding my website. Now I've got an arcade, e-mail system, loads of information, and well, everything you need for blink. But I still needed to make it look more professional. When my good friend Ryan, webmaster of Dammit 182 USA and a great graphic designer, make me a header. This header has been very useful. I've used it for everything. I choped it up to make my introduction, used the same symbols to make my new header, with the addition of Mark and Tom in between. That header has helped me out a lot.

Soon, I was tired of my boring old layout. Frames don't look the best and their simple enough to do. So I decided to try out Iframes. To me, they look a lot better. My entire site was made out of them

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So, now I had my new layout, but my home page was a disappointment. Click Here to see my old home page. I completely redid it and it looks way better. (to see it click on the picture above).

Then, on January 21, 2002 I suffered a terrible blow. My computer crashed and I lost all my files. But little did I know how much would happened to my site while my computer was down. I signed on at school and realized I had over 1000 hits in a week! I was so happy. I had no idea how that happened. When I finally got my computer back (January 29, 2002 I think) I signed on to MSN. A little disappointed finding that all my files, songs, pictures everything on my computer had been deleted. But I got a major boost. Ryan, D182USA webmaster, talked to me right away. HE told me some of the best news I've heard for a while. Blink 182 Rules was linked in the community section of Blink182.com! That's what got me so many hits.

Click for Full Size Image

Recently (Early Feb. 2002) I did a new layout. My 5th one. It is my second one without frames, but this one looks excellent (click on the picture to the left to see it) Unfortunetly, I had prbalems right away. Half way through changing the pages, I realised that I had missed one simple quotion mark ("). Without that mark two linsk were ruined. My Affiliates link didn't show up, instead it went into the Links link which did not work with the coding. So i changed it on the rest of the pages. Once I was done I had to go back and do all the pages that I missed again. I had some more problems which made me have to go over the site again, but I won't bore you with the details.

I loved my layout that I had, but I couldn't keep it. First of all I was perticualry prud since it wasn't MY layout. I, like other Blink webmaster, took teh layout from freelayout.com but that wasn;t the biggest problem. The layout took way too much bandwitch up. In teh amount of 4 days, I went over my limit 50 times! So I had to change it or no one would be able to see my site. It went up for ten minutes, gto suspended for two hours. It kept doing that for a couple days. So I decided to try out a layout program, Microsoft Front Page. I was pretty good at it. SO I started making tables with it and iFrames and all sorts. It looked pretty cool. So then I needed a godo background, so I wnet to my good friend Ryan site, Dead Man's Curve and looked through some of his eye candy. I saw this one and loved it. So I asked if I could use it for my background and he said sure.

So I had the main layout and backgroudn and stuff, now all I needed was a cool banner to go uptop of my page. So I asked my other good friend Ryan, a great image creator and webmaster (Enthused) to see if he could make me a banner. He did, he wasn;t exactly happy with it, said it wasn't his best work. But me, I loved it! So I put that up on my page. Now the final step, font color. I spent almost and entire hour trying to find a good font color. The best one I could find for the site was red. So I stayed with my good old faithful red.

So I was done my layout. I then spent two hours transferring my entire site to fit it. The nezt day I was extremly happy. It solved my bandwitch problem! Itw as no longer being suspended! Just in time for The Ultimate Blink Fan Site contest! Lucky me.

But I still had some problems with my layout. First with my background, it didn't contrast very well with the font. So I changed it to a black pic with a silver type of cross in it, once again donated by Ryan Marko. It looked good, but in some places you couldn't read the font. So I chopped up the cross. I took a small side of it and put it on the left hand side of a pic with a black background. It looked a lot better but still wans't perfect. I just ended up using a plain black picture for it. So now everyone can read the font (well not the blind).

Now to the navigation. Well I had my regualr writting navigation, but it looked pretyt bad in my layout. So I was trying to find a pulldown menue that worked with frames for my nav.. But it was very hard. But I finally found one and the navigation looks a lot better.

Well as you probably read earlier, my site was being suspened by Agnelfire for going over my badnwitch limit. Well my layout wasn't the problem. Someone was (and still is) spamming my site. I was looking through the times that I went over my limit (now in like a week I went over 118 times or something) and I noticed a pattern. It was always on the 20th and 50th minutes of the hour that my site went over the limit. That was the last proof i needed (I already had a hunch that I was being spammed). But I think my spammer was a proffesional. You see, I went to bravenet.com and looked through the IP servers that came to my site on the 20ths and 50th minutes of hours that went over. I saw one server multiple times. So I made a post about it. Then a coupel days later I went back to bravenet. They had been hacked into! I think, now this is only my theory, that the person spamming my site saw my post. He/she realized that the only way I could have tracked it down was throught my Bravenet counter. So he hacked into bravenet to shut it down. But that is only my theory. Hopefully the spammer will stop once Blink 182 annonce teh Ultimate Blink Fan Site Winner. I hoped so much that the spammer only wnated to stop me form winnig the Ultimate Fan Site Contest. And i was extremly happy to find out I was right. On March 6th, 2002 12ML annonced that they had won the Ultimate Fan Site contest and my spammer stopped! I was overjoyed!

But it only lasted for two days time. Then he/she started up again. Slowly at first, once or twice a day. But by March 11, my site was almost always down from my spammer! I do not have a good idea on how to stop him. Finally angelfire responded to one of my many e-mails. They needed some extra information fom me and then they said that they'll investigate. Hopefully they'll be able to stop them!



On May 4ty, 2001 I Officially close Blink 182 Rules. It was a hard decision to make but I had to make it. Here is the news post I made on May 4th:

Today, May 4th 2001, is a sad day for all my loyal visitors. I am officially closing Blink 182 Rules. In its 7 month life I have done everything and more of what I wanted to do. I have received over 16000 hits. Which is more then I every dreamt of. I have received multiple awards and compliments throughout the creation of this site. But in the end, the spammer won. Today and yesterday when I went over my limit, Angelfire closed my site for 24 hours. I cant not compete against that and there is no reason to continue updating the site if no one can see it. I will be changing this page around a bit today and tomorrow to commemorate the life of Blink 182 Rules. If I ever hear some major Blink 182 news I might post it. The only way I will re-open this site is if someone sponsors it. I will miss B182R a lot. I have put loads of my personal time working on it. Not trying to compete with anyone, just trying to become the best webmaster I can be. But someone didn't want that. They wanted to shut me down. In the end then succeeded. When I started this site I knew NO HTML at all. I learnt it all by reading it and asking and studying it. I thank everyone who came to my site be it once or everyday. It means something to me. I did the best I could and came out with this. I will miss working on B182R and meeting people with it. Thank you all for visiting and helping me along the way. This is a hard decision for me to make but I must make it. Whoever is spamming me has won. I do not understand why he or she has done it but they have. If I get a sponsor I will re-open Blink 182 Rules. But intill then it will remain close. Thank you all very much. Special thanks to Ryan, Ryan and Matt (You guys know who you are), and especially thanks to Mark, Tom and Travis for supplying me with wonderful music to inspire me to make this website. Now it is time to say good bye.
Thank you all,
Flash
RIP
Blink 182 Rules
november 10, 2001 - May 4th, 2002