Category: Throwback

Reflection – A look back at fan sites

Reflection from Justin

In 2004 I started my first blog which featured a lot of my favorite hobbies. Soon I joined MSN Groups because a lot of people were creating fan groups on it. I was impressed with all that could be done and started to create my own. Evanescence were one of my first fan groups I created on there and I slowly learned how to design website graphics. After about a year or so I started to look into how to get a domain name so I could have my own website and have the freedom of doing anything I wanted.

It took me about another year to actually buy a domain name and at first I just had the domain name point to one of my msn group page about Amy Lee but I knew that I really wanted to get my own website but was to inexperienced to do it at the time. It wasn’t until 2007 that I applied to have my very own website at fan-sites.org and was thrilled to actually get accepted. I opened up an Evanescence fansite called Evmortal and kept it for a few years. I had a ton of help from other webmasters who taught me how to code and how to work with photoshop which greatly improved my websites.  I was sad to see that msn groups were closing down and that all my first fan groups would be gone but this caused me to learn even more coding.

At the time there were hundreds of fansites dedicated to Amy Lee and Evanescence. Everyone who owned a fan site were so creative with them and had tons of different fan art and fun contest to do. It really was a fun time for me. I adopted an Amy Lee website from another fansite webmaster and helped her with the website but sadly the domain expired and I did not own it so I had to shut it down which is where it led me to make my own Amy Lee website called Amy-l.net. Amy Lee Net stayed open for 4 years before shutting down.

After six years of making websites I got a little but restless with what I was doing. Then I had a couple personal issues with family members who had died and financial difficulties that I finally could not afford to keep anymore of my websites open. About a year and half ago I started looking for some fansites for information on Amy Lee and was really sad to see that not many where opened anymore, this made me decide that I wanted to re-open my fansite. I had to buy a new domain because my old host had shut down and they owned the domain and I also had to find a new affordable host which I was very fortunate to find one. I started to import all the data that I had on my computer from the original site but also had to create new content that needed updated. In conclusion I am very fortunate for all the memories I have had from created fansites and would not trade it for the world and I sincerely hope you enjoy all the content I try to provide.

Throw Back Thursday – Photo

Photoshoot of Amy Lee!

Click to view full size image

Evanescence Related > Photoshoots 2003-2008 > Sessions 1-10