About Neo-Reality

Lol, just yanking on your chain ^^ So you wanted to find out more about this awesome site, did you? Well you've obviously come to the right page, the only other place to find out this sort of information would be to ask us personally. So where do I start?

The beginning *dum Dum DUM*
Neo-Reality was officially opened on Wednesday the 16th of February 2005 (that's right, Jen did her homework!) by non other than the legendary Jen and Kathrin! At first we couldn't decide on the name of the site because it was just sooooo hard! Every name had been taken and our brain cells completely fizzed up after 2 hours. Kathrin wanted something with the word "neo" in it, and I wanted something that didn't have a specific theme so I could keep changing the layout whenever an idea struck me. Then the following period is really fuzzy in my memory (probably too many brain cells died because I was thinking too hard) and out came the name to our site: Neo-Reality. I think it took us another 2 hours to decide on whether or not we should put a hyphon in the name =P

So there we go, our new site (not so new anymore ^^). Now all we had to do was to find a host and start making some pages full of content. We started with Hostultra because it had unlimited bandwidth but the popups on that site just kept getting worse and worse. I don't know about Kathrin but I had to use 3 popup blockers to stop the popups on just one page. Unfortunately, we didn't have much of a choice because we needed a host for our cutenews and Hostultra was the only one that seemed to support it so that's where we uploaded everything. This explains our old domain name (www.neoreality.vzz.net) which was supplied by Hostultra for all members. And so our site started.

At first there were no visitors, so Kathrin and I went advertising everywhere. We put up links in our user lookups, advertised on the neoboards (gave out custom requests and slapped on our site credit) and registered with so many topsites (none of our original topsites are functioning anymore). After a few days, our counter started going up miraculously and we finally had some posts in the chat box, it was a dream come true =3. Our first main focus were Guild Layouts and we were the first neopets graphics site to offer animated graphics.

The site's appearance
As shocking as it sounds, Neo-Reality didn't always have the layout you're looking at right now. It used to be so primitive, and I'm being dead serious. There were only about 4 headings, a really simple top banner and 2 sidebars that were pretty much empty. It's a shame I don't have screenshots to show you, but just take my word for it. Our very first layout was a green theme (once again, have to emphasise that is was a reeeeaaaallly simple top banner and color scheme) and it did not look as flash as the layout you're staring at right now =P We've had 2 different styles over the past years and this is the third one (and the best one so I'm keeping it for a while).

As for the content (the important sidebars that I'm always trying to make even), we only had a Graphics and Neopets Help section to start with, and most of the layouts that we had were either re-made or deleted because they just looked too... plain. As time progressed, we added more and more graphics and out list grew from 6 links to over 15. Our help pages grew as well, with different section for items, secrets and other areas of Neopets. And then came the big leap: Kathrin got Paint Shop Pro. The more she tinkered with it, the more she found out about it, and the more she wanted to share it with all our visitors (isn't she just the best?). So that's the story of how the PSP tutorials came about =P As for the other sections, they mostly came from visitors who were curious about the odd things here and there. Some were repeated questions so we made guides explaining it all instead of having our inbox flooded.

Our affilates
Yes, I know, our site's big and popular and having us as an affiliate would definitely improve your site's hits. But have you ever wondered what kind of affiliates we had before we got so popular? Neo-Reality's first affiliate was actually me and Kathrin's guild (I know, it sounds sad, but it's true). We had no visitors and other sites found us too small and new to affiliate with so under the Affiliates heading, there was a link button to my guild (now deleted because it became too inactive). But out of the blue, a site called Caliente Graphics applied to be our affiliate (I don't know if it still exists but the last time I went there it said it was closing down), and from there on we gained the confidence to apply to other sites. In fact, I think I got a bit addicted to applying for affiliation with other sites because our list grew from 2 buttons to 15 in two weeks. It was a really amazing time period for us XD

But even though Neo-Reality has grown and people expect us to only affiliate with extremely popular sites or sites with their own domain, we still look out for the little sites who remind us of Neo-Reality when we were still struggling. That's why a lot of new sites who apply are not rejected and they go on to becoming really great sites after some time. You notice how our affiliate list is quite long =P.

The big question
So back to the question at the very beginning: who exactly is Jen and Kathrin? Well I could go into a detailed analysis about mitosis and DNA replication but I don't think that's what you had in mind. Let's just start at a time long long ago...

I used to work for a site called Cutie's Palace (I know, sounds really stupid but I didn't make it up, the owner did). After a few months of making graphics for that site, I decided to create a new guild so that people would stop the flooding of guild invites. It started off as a private guild that nobody was supposed to see and join. But one day, I received a neomail from a curious little twelve year old. She called herself Kathrin and wondered if she could become the co-owner of my guild. I was absolutely fascinated that aomeone actually wanted to join my completely dead guild, so I said yes. It wasn't till a year later did I find out that she sought me out from the site I worked at and wanted to learn about graphics and stuff *pats Kathrin*

And so our guild began. Kathrin did a LOT of recruiting, it was seriously amazing. In one week we went from 2 members to 10 members and a full council. Then we started all these guild activities and made a guild website to help other members and things started growing from there. After a few months we had out 100 member guild party and then a while after that we had our 150 member party. But alas, it was too good to stay for long. Kathrin started working for Cutie's Palace as well and both of us got really distracted from the guild and it wasn't before long that the guild got completely inactive. So, after 2 painstaking ours, I deleted every single member and announced the guild officially closed (this was before you could hand guild leadership to someone else).

But then we had a little disagreement with the owner of Cutie's Palace and in a huff I took down all my graphics and coding (you should've seen it, the site looked completely desolate) and deleted all my images. It was so depressing because I loved all of them so much but I didn't want any of my graphics with that site's name on it. After having a little chat with Kathrin, we decided to make our own site, and that's when all my brain cells decided to die =P

Our Domain
It was on October 17th 2006 that Kathrin finally got Neo-Reality a domain. From this point on we are hosted by Bravenet. The reason for this move was the fact that our old host, cabspace, had a large amount of downtime and, of course, Neo-Reality had been around for over a year and a half and it just was clear to us that this was something we would continue for a long time and therefore it was time to get a host. The move is still not complete though, due to the fact that we have a huge amount of graphics where the links need changing. However, whenever we have a spare moment, we are working on getting all the links properly changed.

The site now
*looks around stupefied* I'm really amazed at what the site has become today, it just comes to show how hard work can turn into something so awesome ^^

I hope you guys enjoy your time at Neo-Reality and we hope to see you coming here more often!

~ Jen & Kathrin