It all started when PF Magic's website closed down their Adoption Centre, Matchmaking and lots of other good things; all the things that made their site the best site on the internet! I wanted the official downloadz for the Petz 3 game. One day I got an E-mail from dad at work. He gave me the link to a place called the Petz Kennel Club, and said that they might know where I could find the downloads. So, to cut a long story short I subscribed to the mailing list and got really into petz and the PKC.
On 7th April 2001 I created my first petz website (I had already created a couple of non-petz). This was at MSN. I had looked around at many, many different website providers and MSN seemed to suit me best. Over the next couple of months I gradually added more and more to it, until, after about 2 months, I became used to MSN, and I wanted to learn HTML. MSN was preventing me for doing this so I decided it was time to move on. I started the search for a free website provider again. Eventually I ended up back at Geocities. I created an account and got to work. It was at this point that we went into frames. As the month went on I realised that it was nearly done and it was 18th June. My birthday was the 22nd, so I decided that I would open it on my birthday. So on June 22nd we opened! This site is no longer suitable for anyone's eyes(!!) but I really enjoyed the experience, and it taught me a lot, however, there was no particular theme except for a turquoise colour that I liked, and so featured on nearly every page! I introduced a couple of quirky features, and learnt to make animations, a skill which I was very proud of! I also became a volunteer for a site that makes custom graphics for people.
Towards the middle of July I began to really want a domain name. A real home on the internet, something that felt like it was mine and I belonged there! I imagine it's the same sort of buzz you get from your first real house. I felt like this was my cyber home and I was just renting it from Geocities. Something that anyone could walk into. So I looked into domain names. First of all I was going to have http://www.vpetz.co.uk,then I decided I didn't want it too personal to Petz incase I decided to use it as a Personal Domain later. Then I decided I really liked Rainbow Petz. I would get a domain along the Rainbow lines and rename the website Rainbow Petz. That lasted until I found every possible name I liked was taken. So I shortened it to http://www.ranbow.co.uk, but I decided that was no good, because although it's short it's quite a hard name to get to, be it people typing in random names in their browser or people actually trying to get there. I could see a lot of typing mistakes being made! It was then I had my great idea. I remembered a Summer Camp I went to with a friend about 6 yrs back. We did one activity that used the colours of the rainbow. It was called tie dying. So I thought what about Tie Dye? It was a lot like a rainbow but I liked it even better! So I tried http://www.tiedye.co.uk - taken. Then I tried http://www.tie-dye.co.uk - Free! I was really, really excited! That would be my cyberhome. All I had to do was buy it!
On 28th July 2001 I purchased my new domain name. After many hours of working on my site it would be going live! We would have a members area and exclusive Tie-Dye Petz E-mail addresses! Loads of features on this site will hopefully make it one of the best Petz websitez on the internet! There's more work to do after it gets uploaded, but with our new name we can do anything! Just as soon as I get that multiple logins script to work...
In November 2004 I uploaded Version Six of TDP. I'd sorted out all my petz and retired a lot of my old petz. I split all my PKC things onto a seperate site, Argent, to enable me to do what I've been longing to do - breed lots of mixies again! This meant Noble had been retired, so a new host came to join us. A mixed breed, naturally ;-)
The end of 2005 and beginning of 2006 was an awful time for me, and when I went into hospital in late 2005 I made the decision to take TDP down until it was sorted. It was one of the hardest decisions I've had to make but at the time there really was no alternative. Things dragged on and on (oh the NHS...) and eventually I decided that although things weren't sorted I could just about cope with TDP again, so in June 2006 I brought the site back with a complete redesign, both the layout and content!
Come 2009...