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Creation:
Cherry Soda was created in May of 2001, a long time ago in internet time, which is kind've like dog years, one might think.
Anyway, initially it was just done on a whim. I expected it to be just a itty-bitty shrine to Sakura, who interested me.
So, I set up an account on TriPod. Designed a little Iframes design on Paint Shop Pro v.7.0, then went off to do some reasearch.
Then I was thinking "Excuse me! Nobody ever told me there was this much to Card Captor Sakura!" I found myself learning more and more and Cherry Soda kept getting bigger and bigger, because I wanted to share my new-found knowledge.
I had already fallen in love with the artistry of CCS and the music. To this day I love the music of CCS.

The Move:
So, Cherry Soda had been up for more than a year, and TriPod decided to decrease the amount of space they give you. 50MB to 20MB, and while, even to this day, Cherry Soda doesn't need either of those amounts, I wanted room to grow. And the pop-up ads were killing me. Torture!
Not to mention I wanted to start messing around with more advanced web-languages. HTML and Cascading Style Sheets are fantastic, the very heart of my website designs, but I wanted to learn other things. Like PHP, for example.
CoolFreePages seemed to offer me that kind of opportunity...and with just ONE pop-under ad! Oooh! Goody!
So I moved. Every essential file got transfered to CoolFreePages. I loved it! I was so proud. Just ask Jon, or any regular visitor that might remember the move, if such a creature exists.

CoolFreePages:
Actually people, CoolFreePages turned out to be less than satisfactory. I couldn't figure out how to work the MySQL thing, even with tutorials, and the only PHP I used was includes, which I still love. PHP includes are life/time savers!.
And the 'pop-under' ad tended to pop-up a lot. I was informed that it was annoying. I had a pop-up eliminator, called POW! and they didn't bother me.
But, anyway, Cherry Soda did grow and thrive at CoolFreePages. It got several new designs, three I think, I was only there a few months, I added pictures, re-did navigation, added a few things here and there. We continued to grow.
Sadly though, I found myself longing for TriPod when I was at CoolFreePages.

The big Change:
Then, in Feburary, Feburary 27, 2003, to be specific, I purchased a domain from DreamHost. Thrill. Excitement. Joy. Antisipation. *giggles* I was so happy! Absolutely excited. The two days it took for the DNS to make it's way across the globe was pure torture.
I didn't just transfer all the pages over, no siree Bob. I made a new, simpler design, I edited every single thumbnail. I edited, in some way, every single HTML file. I re-orginized every thing into fewer sections. I gave my visitors new ways to contact me. Ways that didn't bombard me or you with annoying ads of any sort. I made my contact form with the use of PHP, my guestbook is my own, using PHP, since DreamHost also supplied me with PHPmyAdmin. The counter is my own, and therefore, I'll never loose the service unless I can't continue to pay for hosting.
I wanted Cherry Soda to be better than it ever was, and so far, I think it is! I'm so proud. Everything is a product of my hard work, except, naturally, for the scanning of the pictures, and the recording of the Mp3, but you know what I mean. There's no third-party anything! No ads, pop-up or otherwise, everything is as I want it, where I can happily add it, edit it, and customize it to my wishes for this site!

So, here we are
So, now, March 25, 2003, here we are. Cherry Soda has been fully uploaded. Everything, to my knowledge, works. It's cleaner, easier to navigate, simpler, maybe a little more humorous. And it's not finished yet! What good site is? There has to be more that I can offer to you, my visitors.

What the Future Brings?
Nobody knows. Not even I know this. Nothing is written in stone, and, as we all know HTML is easily changed. What will be will be, but I hope that Cherry Soda will continue to evolve to something even better, if you'll excuse my pride, than it is now.

I © my Host!