This site has gone through many changes over the past couple years, and until last spring, it was fairly undecided where I wanted it to go.  I've had this notion of building a site for family and friends (and others just casually surfing the internet) to visit, chat with one another, check out pictures from recent holiday family gatherings and so on.  Being the strange little nerd that I am, I created an entire fantasy world of my own.  Only a few of my friends and family know about the site, however, now that I've finally got a good handle on how to manage such a project, it is finally time to let them in on my little secret.

It was April of 1997 when I first created my own webpage.  It was lame... nothing more than a one page spiel about me and my family.  Nothing really worth mentioning (although, for memorabilia sake, I did print out this site... again, remember the strange little nerd that I am  :)

From there, I decided it was high time I started experimenting on creating an actual website, not just a page, that had links, pictures, cool graphics, information about me and my people, and lots of fun stuff.  This site, as you may guess, got a little wild, not at all flowing (and by that, I mean that there were different styles of graphics, colors, fonts, etc.) and to this day it still remains pretty much in the same manner.  I have, however, implemented a Key of Graphics to dictate the site to better organize it.  Click on the Newspaper graphic and you go to Site News with the same graphic at the top of the page.  Ingenious, huh?  I know, I've got to be brighter than Einstein, as you must all be thinking, but truly I am but a Washingtonian, born and raised Vancouverite.  Although Cory'sPage (as the site is called, and has been since it's creation in April of 1997 on AOL) has been transferred from one server to another and to another and another, most pages are still the same as they've been since they were originally done.  Let me see, I started out with AOL, then went to Nettaxi, then to Webjump and finally to Freeservers, which I've been with over a year and have been very happy with their services.  Nettaxi and Webjump had to go because of stupid banner problems (like, they just kept building up the more you linked into the next page of my site until all you see on your screen is an entire page of the same banner, stacked on top of each other... Very annoying.)

After I got my personal homepage starting to look somewhat user friendly, I decided to tackle a directory site, and with that, created other sites to go along with it. Kids Ink Online! got started, a children's site filled with games, illustrated stories, original artwork and more.  Once Kwirk, as The Kwirk Network was tentatively titled, was beginning to take shape, I decided that the name was going to have to be changed for the directory site, and Kwirk will have to do as the name for the company responsible for creating the sites.  Thus, The Kwirk Network was born, and the site overhauled with new graphics and a simple color scheme.  It looks a lot more professional, and while surfing within the site, there is a sense of formality and unity that this is ONE SITE that works together and not just a bunch of mismatched pages stuck here and there in chaotic order.  During this time, I also decided that I might want to make a professional site for myself to use in conjunction with my resume, mostly because at the time I was unemployed.  I spent 2 days creating a completely unified site that was both fun and professional.  I still haven't updated The Official Website of Cory Blystone since it's been published (it still says UNEMPLOYED! in big letters!) mostly because there isn't much more I can do to it.  I made a complete site, and at that, probably the only complete project I've done to date.  Other sites listed that I've created for use within The Kwirk Network that still aren't really finished, but in various stages of completion are Kwirk's Reviews, Kwirk's e-Mall, and Kids Ink Magazine.

The Kwirk Network, although looking nicely uniform, was lacking of visuals.  I needed graphics, and preferably animated.  So I got ahold of some and loaded the page up with them.  The background was animated, there were animated figures ranging from Hello Kitty to Mortal Kombat's Sub-Zero to greet you and a little slogan stating "The Kwirk Network -- A Place for Everyone!"  This was TOO MUCH... way too much.  So I chucked them all and went with a solid black background.  I was back to square one and knew that the only way I was going to have graphics on this site was  to make them myself.  And I did.  But it wasn't until I downloaded a free trial version of an animated GIF program that I started realizing the possibilities.  It was then that I implemented the alien theme, adding Mr. Alien and his space craft to the decor, along with Planet TKN and it's spinning The Kwirk Network within the sphere's ring.  I also made an animated Mr. Alien to be put at the bottom of every site that is part of The Kwirk Network so that anyone can link from that site to here.  I know, I know, yet another ingenious implementation.  Since the Space Theme was in place, it was only obvious then that a star background be placed.  The one currently seen on the main page, however, is the second of these backgrounds, and was changed from the white stars to the colored stars because it went with the color scheme of the site far too well to not use it.

And there you have it!  A complete history of this site, along with the making and creation of other sites that it took to bring you this one.  I hope to continue building this site up, adding more personal homepages, more interesting things to Cool Stuff, and more to the entire site.  Hopefully in the near future I'll be able to host an entire web community created by Kwirk!