I have a lot of memories in working with the sites of the Chrono
Trigger Novel Project, but the main idea and goal has always been the same:
to promote the novel. The site, often termed "CTSite" by the
Committee members and myself (probably based from one of my email addresses, ctsite@hotmail.com),
has been around for a while, but in various forms. It has always existed
to explain what the Chrono Trigger novel is, what I'm doing, who I am,
and how the novel is moving along. Things are a little more complicated
now with more than a dozen Committee members and thousands of supporters (past
and present), so many adjustments have been made on my part. In light of
all that CTSite has been through, I thought that it would be quite fitting to
include a page about it and the changes that it has gone through over the years.
The very first site launched on the GeoCities servers
sometime toward the end of 1998. It's difficult for me to remember all
that I was doing, but I know that I was probably still developing it well into
1999. It was the first site that I ever worked on, so I was learning
everything about HTML as I went along. If you have ever seen the Chrono
Trigger site from Luckyboy,
then you'll probably remember him. He helped me out a lot while I was
learning HTML and trying to get my GeoCities site up to par. This first
attempt was little more than a simple site with colorful backgrounds and content
similar to its redesign (the second launch). I decided to upload this
first site for you on the new servers just for kicks (click the link above).
The second launch introduced my first frames page to the
web. After going through a frames tutorial at AskJeeves,
I decided that the concept would work well for my own site. This change
was made after the first launch ended mid-1999, and I kept it active until its
last update on October 7, 2001, when I left it to pursue the site's first launch
at ChronoTrigger.info. Amazingly enough, however, the old first site is still
up on the web and is still visited from time to time, even though the second
release (first at ChronoTrigger.info) is not up on the web anymore.
Immediately following the end of the second launch, I
introduced a brand new site to the table for all of the supporters of the Chrono
Trigger novel. Eric Poggel (here's
his site, d512.com), a great friend of mine from church, helped me to design
this site with his talents in graphic design. It was first created
November 3, 2001 and soon launched for the first time at ChronoTrigger.info.
This new and exciting page introduced a sand-based graphics scheme, CSS
(style-sheets), inline frames, and lots of new content, all on a more ambitious
premise than ever before. Now it wasn't just about the Chrono Trigger
novel, but CTNP, the Chrono Trigger Novel Project. This site,
itself, saw a few changes, mostly in the content pages and side-menu
links. Eventually, however, the amount of graphics became daunting and too
impractical to expect people to load on slower connections. The static
table settings prevented the site content from filling the screen of any
computer using a resolution higher than 800 x 600, which often created lots of
extra scroll bars that could be quite difficult to navigate. I, myself,
began to feel a bit bored with the rather bleak layout of the site, so it was
time for a redesign...
You can view most of the main pages from this site by
clicking the link above. Many of the pages may not load, however, so use
it only for viewing purposes.
Fourth Launch: HostDime, Current
Design
As you are now well aware, this is the current launch of
the site at ChronoTrigger.info, which sports a brand new color scheme.
After many updates using the old, bleak, sandy scheme, this new, vivid design is
certainly a pleasure to the eyes. Eric Poggel also created the images for
this site using my ideas for the design. This site uses a more dynamic
table and inline frame (iframe) setup that sizes itself according to the screen size of
the computer viewing it. This means that, finally, the content pages will
not "shrink," but will expand to fill the entire screen. The
navigation has also been tweaked so that there are multiple ways to reach many
different pages.
As of July 7, 2005, ChronoTrigger.info makes use of PHP for site navigation and page includes, which replaces the former iframes that once existed. This modification fixed a gradually increasing vertical sizing problem that previously existed. Even under the new design, however, iframes are still utilized but not relied upon as before. Under the present design, PHP includes are used for all of the site's content pages, while iframes are used for some of the frequently used external pages, such as the guestbook and petition sites. Having PHP enabled on the site also affords the project some more exciting and dynamic opportunities for development and user involvement that will hopefully be experienced in future site updates.
CT
Novelist
18588289
ctsite@hotmail.com
still_like_snes
.
