I was wondering about my sites’ evolution, how long they lasted, etc. So while jotting down that info for myself, I thought it would made a good base for a history page since I’m all about the nostalgia lately, haha. I may add my other sites and domains in the future, but I’ll need more dates first.
Zoe’s Humble Playpen / Zodiacia’s Hallway
(1996 – 1999)
geocities.com/soho/lofts/8862
The page that started it all. When I was 14 and 15, I vowed that when I would finally get online, the first thing I would do was make a website. ZHP was a Geocities masterpiece. Every “layout” had a black background and tended to be monochromatic with various shades of blue or purple text. A midi of Children by Robert Miles played while you browsed, whether you wanted it to or not. I thought scrolling text was advanced web design and so very slick. My links page was MASSIVE – I think I pretty much just linked to every website I came across. Aww, I could have pioneered early blogging! Haha.
I had a one-page shrine to Erasure of course (which grew VERY quickly and become Hideaway), a couple mini fan sites, a shrine to jesters and fools (I had an odd fixation on them for a moment), art and poetry by my friends, lots of surveys, an award (Cult of the Rabid Cow) and two “talking dolls” (Adopt A Ditz and Adopt A Gangfight Victim).
I bounced between calling myself Zoe and Zodiacia (zo-dee-uh-see-ya), almost in the same breath, and, if I remember correctly, Zodiacia’s Hallway was what I called my first splash page which directed people to either ZHP or Hideaway. I supposed that was my first Collective, haha.
Imajika
(9/6/99? – 8/5/00)
members.home.net/imajika
skyice.net/arazyre
visage.cx/unholy
At some point in 1998 or 1999, I was browsing around and came across a survey that asked the question, “The girls of delish: talented or stuck up?” I had no idea what “delish” was; I rarely left Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod, Altern, or Eccentrica. I tracked down delish.net and was astonished – you mean regular people, girls MY age or even younger, could have their own whole website? I didn’t quite know how to find other sites like that yet. Not long after, I went to a site I liked and was directed to her new site at Plastique. And thus, I’d officially learned what the concepts of “domains” and “hosting” were – and learned I really needed to step up my game because I wanted to be in THIS club now, not whatever club I was in with “Zoe’s Humble Playpen”, haha.
Around this time, I was a thrift shop with my mom* and noticed a book called Imajica by Clive Barker. I thought the word really suited what I wanted my life, my personality, and my site to be. I really thought I was so mysterious, haha. The word was stuck in my head until I finally went through with my first rebranding. I adopted my new name and moved to my ISP’s space because members.home.net was so much better than geocities.com, right? hehe. My efforts got me hosted at skyice.net, the only domain I’ve ever been hosted at, before I bought Visage.
At some point in this era, I started going by Arazyre instead of Zodiacia. Arazyre was a made up play on “Erasure”, which I suppose would be pronounced “Ar-asia”.
(* Incidentally, it was at that same thrift shop when I got the inspiration to start going by “Zoe” about 2 years earlier)
Visage
(1/1/00 – 6/20/07)
visage.cx
My very first domain. Visage’s existence was bookended by mistakes: I made a point to register visage.cx on January 1 2000 (and I’d be sooo cool for that, right?)… but I didn’t realize I was registering it in Christmas Island, where it was January 2. Then, seven years later, I renewed for a year only to find my site down in July – turns out my registrar quietly doubled their price and the $60 I paid was only for 6 months when I thought it was for a year. Oh well. It was exclusive to that registrar at the time, and it was too expensive anyway.
I never wanted to have my site at the root of Visage, but after 9 months of comments about Visage not having any content (because it was a hosting domain! I just wanted it to be pretty. Haha) I renamed my site and moved it to Visage.
Universal
(9/5/00 – 1/30/01)
visage.cx
As mentioned, I kept my personal site separate, at /unholy, listed alongside my hostees, until eventually just moving my personal site to Visage. I thought it could use another rebranding (I was maturing and growing in my web life, obviously. haha) and I chose Universal, named after an OMD song, as I was going through a huge OMD phase at the time.
I know now I was trying way too hard. I was a follower, obsessed with fitting in, wanting validation and notoriety so badly – which is so odd because that has NEVER been a trait I have in the real world. It’s unfortunate to say Visage, Imajika, and Universal were 100% Frankenstein’d emulations of other sites and domains. I wouldn’t say I copied, but I definitely never had an original idea. I think the only things I ever did without seeing someone else do it first were using a “chromeless popup” and having an illustrated timeline of my life. In retrospect, it’s hilarious that the most original and creative I ever was online, and the only time I ever had my own personality, was with Zoe’s Humble Playpen.
Electriclove
(8/10/07 – 2015)
electriclove.ws
After losing Visage, I had to act fast and find a new domain. I named it after a line in the Suede song Starcrazy: “Shaking like a mechanical thing with an electric love in her eye”.
Electriclove did start out blog based, but I stopped blogging not long after I started. I’d lost my father in 2006; I was so angry, and that reflected in a lot of the things I wrote. I didn’t like being that person, so in around 2008 or so I decided to just kill the whole site and made Electriclove a sort of landing page of links to all my socials (I was still collecting them all at the time). Even my Livejournal fell by the wayside and only posted my Tweets until the app I was using for that stopped working in 2010. The only sites I kept active were my Fanlisting collective, my Erasure site, and the site I’d built for my car club. Behind the scenes, it was just file storage. It stayed that way until 2015 when I finally just let everything expire.
Lucent
(2026 – Current)
lucent.tapestry.nu
10 years after letting Electriclove go, Lucent is my apprehensive step back into the personal site thing. The web is a much different place than it was. Sites are either enterprises, blogs, or indieweb. Lucent will not be any of those. I just want an online space to call my own again.