Site History
So you want to learn a little bit about Pikachu's Hideaway's history eh? Well ok, I'll give you the brief short version:
Pikachu's Hideaway didn't begin as Pikachu's Hideaway way back in March of 2004. It began as one of those easy site builder templates on Freewebs. You know the kind, or maybe you don't? Well the original site is still around click here to see it. It was called "The Pokémon Zone" at first; a pretty generic sounding name. Really, this was my first attempt at a site so it wasn't great. It was only actively updated for about two months. Finally on May 10, 2004, I began a new site from scratch: Pikachu's Hideaway.
Um, that was my first venture into HTML which was...interesting. Really, my first layout wasn't "so" bad for my first attempt. Er...ok so it was some generic tables layout I downloaded from some free layout website... but it did look pretty good! Our content was good too, um, but I still wasn't that great with HTML until I finally made my own tables layout in August 2004. This marked Pikachu's Hideaway version 2.0, and where things really started picking up.
We broke 10,000 hits on October 12, 2004; not bad for only being up for 5 months. I had that layout for a bit until December 2004 when we had our first image based layout:
Very nice, huh? Pinkie designed it. Well that layout combined with ever growing content really got our unique hits up. We easily surpassed 50,000 hits by mid 2005. At the end of 2005, we had our next image based layout:
So everything keeps continuing on a positive track with our hits, affiliates, and topsites ranking all very well. We finally get our version 5.0 imaged based layout as you can see below in March 2006:
Add a style switcher to the mix later on, and Pikachu's Hideaway had three very nice image based layouts that you could choose from with the click of a mouse. It was cool stuff, however everything came crashing to an end in May of 2007; three days before our three year anniversary. The site's security and the forum's security were breeched, and I had to pull the plug on Pikachu's Hideaway. ..It was really an incredibly tough decision I remember making that night. PH means so much to me, that I couldn't let the site die entirely. I donated the site's content to Pichu's World.
One of my friends did archive the site before it's fall. You can view what it looked like the day before it was deleted here.
Over a year later in October 2008, the idea of resurrecting PH came about. I truly missed the place. So, once again with Pinkie's help: Pikachu's Hideaway Version 6.0: Forgotten Oasis came about:
The site was officially re-launched on December 8, 2008.
Today, I work closely with Pinkie of Pichu's World who has become an excellent friend of mine. We work to maintain both Pikachu's Hideaway and Pichu's World; working very hard to continue to make our sites for the fans. On May 10, 2009, we celebrated 5 years of Pikachu's Hideaway. I'm sure that with our determination, we can continue onwards towards the bright future of Pokémon and Pikachu's Hideaway!
Er... ok maybe that was the "long" version rather than the short version of my site's history; hm...
