Site Info

Here's the page where I take the opportunity to explain some things about this website, such as the bizarre title to why there are only five character shrines when there were at least 11 main characters, as well as give you a little background on the site and tell you how it got to be where it is now. We've gone through a lot of ups and downs, but I'm proud to be the maintainer of the oldest, still regularly-updated Atlantis fansite...even if it's been down more than it's been up the past year and a half.

The title: Atlantis 12345
Let's begin at the beginning, shall we? The site title. Atlantis 12345. Why on earth would I choose to give an Atlantean fansite such, to use the term Kat from Something Personal used back in the day, "a Sesame Street-sounding name"? Well, let me tell you, it wasn't my choice. When I first got into website building when I was around 14 or 15, I wanted something easy to use where I could click and drag things where I wanted, where I could give my site a customized look instead of using a template (all that was available on Geocities at the time) or learning HTML, which was too complicated for my little brain to comprehend. I stumbled across Homestead through one of my friends, and discovered the perfect host - easy to use, customizable, and free. So, when my mania for Atlantis exploded in early summer 2001 and I noticed the sore lackage of Atlantis-themed fansites, I decided to rectify the problem and make my own. However, when I tried to register a name for my site on Homestead, I discovered all the good names ("Atlantis," "Lost Empire," etc) had been taken. After 6 or 7 times of "this username has already been chosen by someone else," I angrily typed in "atlantis12345," more out of spite than seriousness. And, hey, it went through! So the site was Atlantis12345.Homestead.com. I couldn't think of a unique title for my site ("Atlantea" had already been snatched, curse it all), and somehow the name "Atlantis 12345" just took off and I was stuck with it. I still refer to the site that way so people realize that it's the same site even though it's moved and gone down about 3 times (and now looks completely different).

Site History
As I said above, the site started out as a free site hosted on Homestead. The site was quite popular and hit-heavy during its first two years of existence, and I adored running it. Therefore, when the punks at Homestead announced about 6 months to a year after I started it that they were going to make us pay or force us to delete our sites, my mother had mercy on my soul. She knew how much the site meant to me, so she forked over the cash and I got a paid Homestead account. That allowed me to put off learning HTML for a few years, at least. However, every year it got more expensive, but I wasn't getting any benefits--$90 a year for 75 MB? I don't think so. So, near the beginning of 2004, I decided to learn HTML, and in April of 2004 I got my domain, Blue Magic.

The next step was to move everything over from Homestead to the domain. Believe you me, this was a time-consuming process. My HTML skills were not all that great yet, and the source code for the original move is appalling to me now, LOL. On April 4, 2004, Atlantis 12345 opened in its new location, looking just about identical to how it was on Homestead with a bit of added content.

All went swimmingly until the end of December 2004, when some jerk worm thing called "NeverEverNoSanity" (Generation 12). Thanks to this lovely hacker, I was forced to re-upload everything again, but did manage to clean up some of my revolting HTML (although, looking at it now, it wasn't much of an improvement).

The turmoil wasn't over YET, though; the site went down for a week or two in May because my host, Cyberpixels, screwed up my billing; and just when I thought I could finally relax, my whole freaking domain disappeared in mid-July 2005 and didn't re-appear for six whole weeks. When it initially went down, I e-mailed my host and they told me that the server crashed, that they were working on a backup, and that everything would be back soon. However, it didn't go back up, so I called my host and they told me that everything was lost, eternally and forever, and that I'd have to start over fresh. Unfortunately for me, I was moving out the following week to start university, and I had over 30 fanlistings and fansites to re-upload, not counting my sister's. Needless to say, I didn't have a lot of time on my hands, so recovering from the crash was an excessively time consuming project. My largest fansites, this site among them, got shoved to the end of the line.

At long last, after almost six months of downtime, the site made its return on January 6, 2006, with a brand new look and feel and the hopes that it would remain that way. So, what happened? Three weeks after the grand re-opening, I got hacked again. Fortunately, the backup here was recent, but other sites weren't as lucky; backups turned out to be corrupt and my host was most uncooperative in providing support (don't use CyberPixels). I finally decided to ditch my old host and got a brand new domain. The site moved yet again in May 2006, and hopefully it will remain here for a very long time with no more disasters. :-D

5/11 Characters...?
I'm sure you all noticed that I have significantly fewer character pages than there were characters. When I first started the site, the character pages were more like character shrines, complete with images and the like. Therefore, I originally created them for only my four favorites: Milo, Kida, Audrey, and Helga. I added Rourke later because I figured that, as the villain, he was kinda important. Now the pages have been downsized to a simple mugshot and bio, so more than likely I'll add the rest of the characters when I get the chance and flesh out the character library.

KFU: Kidagakash Fans Unite!
Surprisingly, though Kida is inarguably the best character in the whole movie (*dodges tomatoes thrown by the naysayers), when I started this site, nobody liked her. The biggest A:TLE fansite on the web after Tenth Planet Art's was Milo's Gals, a.k.a. "Milo Thatch, Our Hero." Needless to say, the rabid Milo fangirls wanted him to themselves and wished death upon Kida and any others who opposed them. Animated Heroines went for months with pages dedicated to Helga and Audrey but no Kida, and when they did list her they toted her as being the least interesting female character in the movie. Scads of Audrey fansites existed, and there were even a bunch of Helga sites (although most of them eventually closed). Fanlistings hadn't even been in existence for a year at the time, so not a lot of people knew about those. There was no Kida to be found except on my site, and I was revolted.

I was expressing my disgust to my friend Julie when she suggested I create a Yahoo Club so that fans of Kida could post about their love for the Princess. I happily complied, and Kidagakash Fans Unite (KFU for short) was born!

We remained on Yahoo for about seven months, until they switched to Yahoo Groups and changed the format from a message board to a mailing list. The members and I weren't sure if we liked that, so we decided to move on from Yahoo and created a Network 54 forum, which opened on March 7, 2002. Network 54 served us well and we developed a tight-knit community of Kida fans, the majority of whom still post regularly to this day.

Unfortunately, after about two years the pop-up ads and download prompts on Network 54 got to be too much to handle, so I decided to take advantage of my newly purchased domain and moved KFU to its third location, opening on July 9, 2004. Everything smoothly except for a three-month downtime after the server crash in July of 2005, until a second hack in February. This time, everything was obliterated right at the beginning of my busiest semester at college, and due to my host's lact of cooperation, I was unable to repair the site. Finally, in late May 2006, I decided I'd had my bellyful of my old host and bought a new domain, Noble Scarlet. I moved the forum to its current location, and we began anew. Hopefully KFU has seen its last move.

Of everything in the Atlantis fandom, I have to say KFU is my favorite. I've "met" and made lasting friendships with people from Brazil, Greece, Finland, Germany, and everywhere in between. I've "watched" children grow into teenagers and teenagers into adults; I've seen my friends from all over the worlds go from speaking choppy English to perfectly formed, fluent colloquial English simply from chatting on the board on a daily basis. We're a small but tight-knit community, and we're always happy to welcome new friends to our ranks!