What got you to Web Designing?

So how did you get into Web Designing, knowing that you could always alternatively try out different paths, such as Programming?

As for me though, Web Designing is just an extra perk, which I started and enjoyed doing back when I started middle school. And currently in college, Web Designing is just a minor subject on the course that I study.

I got into it coz:
1. FORUMS! I loved forums ever since I joined one and later when I made my own I had to enter the world of web design.
2. I like art and pretty things. eye candy, pretty looking websites do catch my attention.

so yeah that was enough to make me get into it and then CSS become my love lol

I started with a Nintendo related gaming board on FM both in English as in Dutch back in 2012 or so, just solely serving the purpose of offering a safe haven to members who were being harassed on a daily basis, kids at the age of 12 - 18 while I was 23, on the old (ran by a different admin) and now second site I'm administrating. On my first site, Game-Xtreme.com, I made arrangements for Mario Kart 7 tournaments three times a week on Tuesdays (mini Grand Prix), Fridays (battles) and Saturdays (Grand Prix), being both an admin as well as a gaming host. The importance of having a chatbox became all too clear very soon as we all met up to have a bit of a fun conversation hours prior to the start of the tournaments. And thus I started to look at the possibilities of standard FM chat and compare them to 3rd parties. Ever since I'm not using standard FM chat no more and started to get very interested in styling my chatbox, which, of course, involves some basic knowledge of CSS and some JS.

Over the years I had to let go of Game-Xtreme, mainly because Nintendo decided to pull the plug on online Mario Kart 7 playing around 2 years ago. My site died with it, lost all of my members because of that.

Then, half a year later, still being a member on that chat / forum where everyone got their daily share of harassment, I got the opportunity to buy the domain I currently own. After 8 years of being a laid-back admin, the former owner decided to give up on it. So I secretly made arrangements with him to snatch away the domain before anyone else could and started to set up the site I currently run. After a few months I got the basics done to get it opened up with pure luck I already had some experience running the last board I owned and loads of help by @Ange Tuteur and some webdev I met back in the days. I hoped to be able to continue where the former site admin had left off, but the old members, well most of them, got so angry with me I snatched away the domain right before their eyes and stopped their ability to harass members any further they stayed away. Sometimes, one of the old members signed up leaving a nasty remark on my site, but I just banned them straight after. I just got a few active members left now. The audience I had grew up, lost interest and focussed on other, more important things in life.

My interest in styling chat never died. I even became an admin on the 3rd party site that offers a shell around standard FM chat with extended capabilities. The owner however didn't show up no more because of personal reasons, so I left. This is what became of my chat today:


Having met Ange, knowing his skills and sharing interests it was almost natural to me to continue here on his site. Due to a security glitch I became a moderator. Well, I just basically tried to become staff in a genius way. And so, having seen my capabilities and knowing I'm dedicated, he agreed to have me on the team. Seeing what goes around each day on here still keeps me fresh in regards to developing. Mainly, my interests still lie with chat and toys. Being very creative by nature,I'm a genius when it comes down to suggesting new stuff, but someone else always needs to program that part after.

Now that the heydays of my site are over and my personal life drastically changed over the years, I'll be cleaning up my site for good around the end of this year / start of next year. I'll still be keeping the domain name however so I can transport it (redirect it) to a new non-FM site if I want to recreate Friendcodes at any given time again. I just want to copy over and save some scripts before closing down, just in case I want to start a new site in the future. I also want to share a couple of my paid for, copyrighted by me and very unique toys with you by sharing some of those in the form of a member's tutorial next few months. One of the first coming up is the 'Mood System' I've got for the profiles.

Holy shit that was some lore respond

But lucky you to have a past of owning an active community before, all my forums back then, never even had 5 or more people

I got into web designing way back around 2012, because I wanted to design a personalized theme for my forum. Needless to say it was horrid ! xD When 2013 came around I joined the FM Support forum and started helping people with their problems, that's when I really started studying and improving my design skills to help people with CSS problems, and design new themes. If it wasn't for all the people I helped, I wouldn't know what I know today. In short, you could say that I love designing things and enjoy seeing the happy responses from the people that use the stuff I make.