History
'Pokémon Fansites, Made by Fans!?' Before the Site
It all started back in spring 2007. I decided to look around Google images for pictures of Pidgey (I loved Pidgey back then :3). On the first page there was a prettyful picture of Pidgey from Arkeis. I went to the site and soon discovered the Pokémon Factory (If you've never been to Arkeis, the Pokémon Factory is a project to draw all of the Pokémon ever made! xD) I saved all of the Pokémon that I liked, (which was a lot! xD) and I was automatically inspired to make graphics of my own. I drew a Vaporeon on Microsoft Paint 
and I was proud of it. Although, I was not satisfied for very long...
I went back to Arkeis and started to explore the wonderful affiliates! I browsed them and after finding many tutorials, I finally started spriting. I gave up on drawing in paint and sprited for weeks. But I still continued to browse the affiliates. I found more, and more, and more graphics, and that just made me all the more determined to make my own.
I browsed, browsed, and browsed more. Then, I found Sevault Canyon (now Aiiro) which introduced me to pixel overs and region map making. That made me happy, but I STILL wasn't satisfied! I found Aiiro's partner site, Pokémon Chibi (now back to Official Minito).
That was the happiest day of my life.
I finally found what I was looking for. I found GIMP. I found out that it was free and downloaded it immediately. I used it for days nonstop. (Luckily it was my summer vacation at the time! xD). I used Azu's tutorials for GIMP to help me get used to the program. I still use those to this day!
But, I thought, what would I do with all of those graphics?
'Fansite. Me. Want.' The Beginning of the Site
This is where the website part comes in. You've seen all those websites I mentioned, haven't you? Their layouts are so neat and their content is so helpful! I wanted to help people like me! So, I got interested in building a website of my own.
I studied all of those guides and all that HTML. I was so CONFUZZLED! Those of you who have a website went through this; it's so stressing. But I found the w3 Schools website which helped a lot! So around November 2007, I used a layout from Pokenova and tried to make a website. But I didn't have a host! xP Also, after a while I got sick of the premade layout and scrapped the idea. I didn't even have a name! I first thought Milotics Moonlight Lake, but it was too long. It was a miracle a few days later when I thought the name Pokémon Era (I'm usually so uncreative with names. x3). I soon found Eonlight Valley and found a tutorial on how to make a Photoshop layout! Even better, I could make one on GIMP! I made two layouts that night and I told my mom I needed an email so that I could get a host. She said, "Ask your brother the next time he comes home." So, obviously, I did. Though he never got me an email, he did host me on his server. So that was done with. But I didn't get an email. I told him I still needed one anyway. The site was up for a few days in December 2007 and then I completely forgot about it. Then for my Christmas present from my brother, I got a piece of paper... O.o; BUT on it, it said, www.pokemonera.net and below that it said silverstorm@pokemonera.net! He got me a domain name! And he got an email! The email didn't work yet, as I said before, but it came around eventually.
'ZOMG. This is so Fun and Easy!' Open to the Public
So I continued to improve, add, and fix parts of the site. I learned Cute News, then Fusion News, I created the huge contest, blahblahblah...
The site went on, continuing to grow, and soon came July. I'd been working on a huge revamp for months, and planned to release it on July 5th. So a chatfest occurred (This was when the site chat came to be, which is the source of most of my entertainment nowadays and also how I got to know some of the awesome people I know now. Yes, you know who you guys are. :D), and the site revamp went by. The site was incredibly active. In about August, I created Paradox, my graphics site. So Pokémon Era lost some attention. People stopped coming, even I stopped coming. The whole site went through a long dead time. For nine months or so, the site had no updates that actually made the site any better. I had refused to even LOOK at PE for a while, it was pitiful. At some point, I had actually thought about closing, but I never did. For some reason I had this idea that the site might spring back up again, that I'd get the random splee of motivation someday...
I was right.
In May 2009, I finally looked at PE, and thought "What is this!? I killed my first site!" As I announced on the chat I was going to work on PE, everyone was amazed. The site was so dead that everyone thought it was hopeless! But at that point, I had never had so much motivation to work on this site. I was excited! I got to work straight away, and completely revamped the site. Pretty soon, the site got back into action again.
Hopefully, it will stay that way...
