![The Lost Cave [formerly Lost In The Shadows]](http://www.lostcave.net/Banner.png)
html and css
This site is hand-coded by me. I always hand-code in notepad and have no patience for web page builders, if they work for you, fine, but they don’t work for me.
This site was initially coded only in html, then css, and now finally, php.
I learnt html from a book, I only wish I knew the title, because I would recommend it to anyone wanting to learn. It's very straight-forward and easy to pick up, and the book only cost £4.99.
CSS was something I learnt online, so google for CSS tutorials, and you will find plenty.
php, mySQL and Scripts
php was slightly trickier. I've got two books, PHP Essentials (very helpful although there are many errors on the pages, meaning that the codes you patiently copy word-for-word will not work, and you end up downloading the pages from the website), and PHP & mySQL for Dummies (impossible to understand, half the book is wasted on how to add up using php, then it tells you "If you know html, you'll know how to process a form", which doesn't really help when all you want to do is get information in an online form and insert it into a database, which, incidentally, is not covered by html!). However, an invaluable resource is CodeGrrl.com. I use their Generic PHP pages for most of my sites now.
I also use eFiction for the automated archive. It's a brilliant script and it's free.
For the forum, I use phpBB 2.0.21, and have used a couple of hacks so far, most notably:
Delete Extra Exclamation Points and Question Marks in Messages (by Underhill)
Delete Extra Exclamation Points and Question Marks in Titles (by Underhill)
Username Link to Profile (by Michael Bacoz)
File Attachment Hack (by Acyd Burn)
Multiple Ranks with Staff and Online View in Memberlist (by Mighty Gorgon)
all from phpBBHacks.com
Other
Flaming Text provides cool banners
Dynamic Drive DHTML Code Library provides extras, which is a nice site for picking up code snippets that really perk up a standard site.
I use Paint Shop Pro on all of my graphics with brushes from Illuminated and Lush Brushes. Also, if you check out my LJ user info page you can find links for other brushes. I give this link because they are LJ people, who usually like to have comments and credit when someone uses their stuff.
Da Font provided the small fonts you see on my link to buttons and avatars (I used everything in the 04b family and silkscreen)
Lost In The Shadows was the first site I built using html. If you ever visited it during it’s first year (around August 2001 maybe) you will have noticed how much better it has become since then. The main reason I built it was because I had a load of screen caps from the movie and had just bought a book about html and it seemed a good way to pass the time. I also joined a mailing list that seems to house the nicest and most supportive people on the net, so they were a big encouragement. This site is the bane of my life, when I was using topcities or geocities it was constantly being shut down because I exceeded bandwidth. Now that I’ve got a lot of space and bandwidth I was able to expand the site, more pictures, better quality, more everything.
I have other sites in different fandoms. To be honest, they’re pretty much defunct except for queertet.net.
Starlight-Tales.com was the first dot.com I bought, and will probably always be my favourite. For awhile it was divided into sections, housing mini-sites for all the fandoms I wrote in. Now it is simply one domain, holding all of my fan fiction and all of my fanvids. The fan fiction covers Buffy, The Lost Boys, Making Out, Mean Girls, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Mighty Ducks and crossovers, while the fanvids are for The Mighty Ducks, Needful Things, The Hole and The Mighty Boosh.
The Mighty Queertet started out of boredom. I was wandering aimlessly around ff.net when I found the Mighty Ducks category. There were only 9 fics in it at the time, so I decided that I would contribute at least one more. I decided to slash up the fandom which, at that point, only had a small reference to slash in it. I wrote the first slash piece at ff.net that went into that category (the very first chapter of “Smoke”), then Victory Thru Tears contacted me and we decided that we could add to the story and the Mighty Queertet series was born. Now there’s slash everywhere, which thrills me no end, since on posting I got a review that said “Urgh, Mighty Ducks slash... don’t do that again I don’t like it”.
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