IT'S A SYMPHONY!

[Pai]

Today is one of those days in an Admin's life that they thought they'd probably never get to. The day their forum reaches its first Birthday... but with many active members and lots of posting. It's an amazing day, the kind that just makes you want to get up and start randomly dancing.

The forum originated from my wish to join a Tales of Symphonia RP; but when I googled them, there really weren't any. And if there were, they... never really took off. Now, I don't particularly like making my own sites, but I felt that this was something I had to do. My dilema, though, was whether to make it canon or non-canon. For, if I made it canon, I'd want to take half of them. Eventually, I made up my mind, and I made the forum.

The first thing I did was the skin; I was still kind of a n00b to graphic design, and I really didn't have a clear grip on what I wanted to do. I made a few test banners, but the text couldn't fit into them. They mostly had Martel as their focal point. But then I thought, "Why not do a group shot, with Yggy smirking in the background like he did in the OVA?" ... bing. Got it. Done. Made all the rest of the images, and the skin was up in no time. The only thing I had problems with were the category splitters; they were really nice ones with Zelos on them. But they only split the Info Center and the News Fader. Not the categories. I let it go, because I loved the splitters I made too much. <3

It took a heck of a long time to make all of the boards; There are over a hundred, it feels like, with board decriptions and I had to do research for the ones I hadn't gone into yet (at the time, I still hadn't finished the game. I'd needed to go and finish it in order to make the rest of the boards XD namely Vinheim and Dherris-Kharlan). But I usually just picked snowy afternoons and chugged them out. I remember finishing them on my Birthday, and humming, "Happy Birthday to meee..." to myself in the Cbox.

When I finally opened the site... no members came. The first was Faust after about a month and a half of dead-ness, and he would appear and disappear constantly, and it scared me to death xD I wanted a member. Then came Yomi, who started right off the bat with two or three bios--Her Dwarf whose name escapes me at the moment, Angie, and Yuan. She was the first to claim a Canon, and I hadn't even written the rules for canon yet. I had to write them before she tried to make off with Kratos, too xD I was very excited with her being here.

After that came Peach and Toast, who joined while I was on vacation. Not the best first impression there... they thought I was inactive. Although, I made fast friends with the two as I did with Yomi.

The members started flowing in after that, and I began to get tired of the skin. And so I decided to make a new one--the first had been based off of the OP and the OVA, so I thought I'd go off of the manga. I had the first three volumes at my disposal, anyway. It was tough, but I liked it. It was my first grey skin. The banner was my favorite part; every piece of it is seperate parts of the manga. I also appointed Yomi and Peach as Gmods.

The next major event I remember after that was in July, when we hit our 26 members online at once thing. Drake told us we could be online with more than one account at once, and so everyone logged in under all of their accounts for a few seconds to tip that 26. It was fun. We'd had about 36 members at the time, too. We hit 40 only a few days later, as well as 4 lines of active members in the past 24 hours. Hell, I'm excited when we have two--but four? That's amazing.

And now, we have the new skin, over which I slaved for months, and months, and months. And here we are today. Happy Birthday. Amazing job to you all.

We'll be holding member awards soon because of this ^^

LOVE YOU ALL

PAI.


... Yomi may also write a word if she wishes, or and anyone else, feel free to comment. I'd write more but I have to get to school -stabs school-

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[Yomi]

Since Pai reaccounted her details of how the site came to be, I thought why not talk about how I came to find the site.

Before I came here I was a member of an Inuyasha site, my very first one I've ever joined. Of course I'm still with the site, have been for over a year and half, but that's not the point. On to the story. Being one of the moderators of the site, I was browsing around the site to make sure that everything was working out smoothly. Checked profiles here and there, and templates blah blah blah. When I finally got to the advertisment section, which I hardly check because another staff looks at that one, I nearly had a heart attack.

There was a ToS RP.

Yeah, I've looked around a few times to see if I could find one, but I never did. Either they were pretty good at eluding me or there wasn't any at all. I'll be honest with you all though, when I joined the site I've only played the game once. Never owned it, but rented it from the lovely blockbuster. Despite that, the story line and the characters stuck with. Even after a year of not playing it, events during the game were still vivid in my mind. Sad I know, but I liked the game a lot.

Back to my feelings of finding the site.

I screamed my head off in joy. I actually got up and started dancing in joy at finding a ToS RP. I didn't hesitate in joining as most of you know. Nor did I hesitate in grabing my Yuan, and making two more characters. Though after seeing Pai accept Yuan, I kind of went 'oh, there's rules for it...crap..eh...HE'S MINE!'.

I went about my dandy ways with him and had a blast.

I quickly became friends with Pai and Drake, whom still are my best buds online. Though I am sad that Peach and Toast are gone, its nice to find Fergus--the first member--to come back. FERGUS!

But everyone must be astounded with Pai's amazing skins. I mean, I thought her first skin was terrific than there came the second one, blown away, third one, to amazing to say into words.

Now that I think about the time when everyone came online to make the most members online number to 26, I say we tempt it once more. After all,we do have more characters and members than before, and guests do make a difference. _{hinthintsnickersnicker}

So everyone! Let's bump up the count and show how active SM really is!

From your friendly neighborhood spiderman G-Mod,
Yomi

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PS. Join the Party thread!

PSS. Love the happy birthday banner, Pai!

PSSS. I love these too much xD
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