Ignorant and "innocent" in 2000, I began to search for info on making a webpage. I looked at Angelfire.com, Tripod, and others, but I didn't know which one to choose so I just started looking up BSSM shrines and seeing the new info; i'd pretty much given up my shrine idea. Then I came across one of the more popular SMercury shrines (the name escapes me) and she was "selling" her site and giving away her account at Geocities.com (Yahoo and GeoCities were separate companies at the time). The only catch was that her successor must make a SMercury shrine. So, I decided, since SMercury was my favorite scout (yes I was all "NA" back then) I would take her offer and make the shrine. I was given her information for Geocities, username and password, and she deleted all her files and everything. Now, I was left with a blank sheet and my first site! But, what do I put on it?!

The first SMercury shrines I looked at for help were Mizuno Ami's Corner and IceSenshi's Lake of Illusions. I was very pleased with the multimedia MAC offered and the links grading system! Oh, how I wanted to get a perfect rating on that!. It was a nice site with decent information, so I decided to "copy" it - yes "copy" - to my own site. Thinking I was "sly" and "sneaky," I named by site "Amy Anderson's House" and dedicated it to the english Sailor Mercury; I knew almost nothing about the Japanese version. How stupid was I?

I knew nothing of HTML or any advanced pagebuilding. I thought, "Why would I learn that when I can do the same thing with 'Pagebuilder,'" a "WYSISYG" editor. My page had a the MAC background image with a scrolling text saying Amy Anderson's House and a picture of SMercury.

Mizuno Ami's Corner Background Image:

Main Image: (Click for Full Picture)

Statistics - UGh! - were put underneath the picture with a small "gallery" of regular-sized pictures (no thumbnails!). You can't believe how bad loading time was, especially on MY DIAL-UP MODEM!!. I gotta tell you, I was kinda proud of my bad looking site. Over the next few months, I split the page into sections - info, galleries, links - but with little change of the page itself (I sized the pictures using "width=" and "height=" to a resonable size, but they still took long to load). This charade lasted for five months until people finally stopped coming and I closed down for awhile.

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2001 came and I wanted to re-open my site with a more "professional" look. I grew interested in the whole "HTML" thing and I got out of the "amateur" PageBuilder. I left MAC's info and switch to stealing LoL's style, info, and names - no credit. The first layout of the year was a frame layout, using my new HTML knowledge, featuring this picture:

There were 3 frames: Navigation | Main | Navigation. The navigations were named "[something] by daylight" and "[something] by moonlight" (complete rip-offs from LoL. I copied most of LoL's information for each section but gave credit (like that was any better). My gallery page was much better, using thumbnails to link to pictures. I even started to include some multimedia onto my page! I was even more proud of this site and its design - much better than "Amy Anderson's House." I decided on a much more "mature" name for my site: Innocence. Thus, "innocence" was born.

My third layout was in the exact frame style as the previous one. No big changes, only added some links/pictures and media. This picture was used as the basis:

2001 was also the year I became interested in WPR Review sites. I only knew two: Who, Incorporated and Amazonness Quartet Reviews, but I still liked them. Nothing was submitted because I didn't think I was ready.

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In 2002, I began to grow very bored with Innocence. I wanted it to be "one of the greatest" but it was so bad. My information was still stolen, no credit was given, and I had little inspiration to keep it going. I wasn't until I became a reviewer for Who, Incorporated that I regained my passion. I entered .:innocence:. (now with the colons and periods) for awards and won many (although from the same website). At Who, Incorporated I reviewed as SMercury and even entered by site for a review - and won two awards! I was so proud of my stolen information!

But after that amount of praise and admiration for my site, remorse began settle in. I grew a little ashamed of my "success" and started to feel bad about taking all my information; it took awhile for my conscience to override my success. After my sixth layout, I closed down .:innocence:. and started to redo my information ... sort of. I rewrote a lot of the stolen information to make it almost plagiarized but not quite. I added more information - including seramyu and astrology - and grew interested in the Japanese version of BSSM. My next layout was much better and my information more solid and "original."

December 2002 fell upon .:innocence:. and I decided to make a Christmas layout using this fanart picture:

This layout new .:innocence:. received a lot of praise from reviewers and award sites. I was much more proud of this shrine then ever before. Now with information based on that of other sites, I was able to really advertise and make .:innocence:. the site I wanted it to be.

2003 was probably the most important year in .:innocence:. history. My layout designs became much more professional-looking and my information more in-depth. I even made a better gallery and provided more *working* multimedia than many other BSSM sites at the time. I got much praise and better reviews for my designs and information. But still, I felt a like I needed more. I like my whole information and stuff, but I wanted to present it in a much better form - like that of The Beam of the Love Senshi. I loved her frequently changing designs and the why the information was presented in an entertaining manner. Thus my concept of separate information pages was born ...

This "frame-less" layout, as I called it, would enable .:innocence:. to have a larger audience and house more information in a better organized way. I wanted to make a site that was informative yet entertaining at the same time. With school coming to a close, I decided to start on my project. The first thing I did was split the information between Ami and SMercury (similar to that of LoL). I made the Ami layout from this picture:

Ami's page was entitled "blue-eyed goddess" (inspired from 'Garnet Eyes'). This layout was probably the most complex out of the rest. I wanted to use colors that weren't necessarily associated with Ami (tan/yellow/etc.). SMercury's page came next, and I wanted to make it a much more elegant and beautiful page; so, I used a manga image since they are considered the most beautiful. It really turned out nice and had a nice effect to it. Although I had completed these layouts, the information was far from done. I had to start from scratch and write my own information - information not easily found on other shrine sites. "Snow Angel-" the mercury page - was the easiest to start since I had most of that information. "Blue-eyed goddess" took a lot of research, time, and dedication - a lot that didn't have before. I watched "Ami-chan no Hatsukoi" about a billion times to write a summary and get quotes, I researched the different love interests of Ami in the anime, I even looked at the differences between the anime and manga! At the end of July, most of the information was set.

I began work on the final two sections, the "entertainment center" and the "site domain." The entertainment center layout was based on a nice wedding picture of Ami:

I started gathering lyrics, mp3s, videos (very hard to find), animated gifs (the "thing" back then), and images to start this section. I must say, many links were broken here - especially between the pages. I strived the keep all the media files online and never broken (although that did happen sometimes). By the week before school started, this page was half-way done. The final section I wanted to start was the "site-domain," probably the hardest section for me to complete. Why? Mostly because of the layout. I started to see a pattern between my sections: anime Ami(blue-eyed goddess), manga SMerc (snow angel), manga Ami (entertainment center); I decided to make the site page an anime SMercury design. The design was based on SMercury's "Shine Aqua Illusion" attack from the R Movie:

This opening layout turned out to be on the best I made (if I say so myself). I really like it, but I could never find a good follow-up layout to make it even better. After the first creation, this section was basically dead.

For a short time after this, .:innocence:. was hosted on a server (I forget the name) and I moved most of my files there. Unfortunately, she closed down her site and I lost some things - which I had to redo.

School arrived and I made a new layout using an official Bandai calendar picture of Ami. I had my first links to the "frame-less" layout pages and I was dedicated to completing them. However, that would not happen.

PGSM happened in 2003-04. I grew really interested in this and decided to make my first '04 layout to Ami's actress, Hama Chisaki. I spent a lot of my time downloading episodes and getting a feel for the show, that I almost completely forgot about .:innocence:.. This 2004 being my junior year in high school, I didn't have much time to work as much as I did on .:innocence:. like I wanted. I even got a job after-school which further stunted it's growth. A combination of school, work, and PGSM left .:innocence:. completely dead at the start of 2004. I made the new layout, yes, but very little information was added. .:innocence:. lost a lot of hits during this period, and I grew disinterested in continuing this site.

Not much for '04, eh? 2005 came around and visited .:innocence:. for the first time in about a year - I wasn't very happy. My ratings and hits for the day had dropped tremendously, and I grew so tired of staring at that layout; I had to do something. When Summer came, I began to once again fix .:innocence:. and bring it back to its "glory" days. My first objective was to finish my "site domain" section and get that running. I finally was able to make a follow-up page to the original that gave it some justice. I added a lot of sections to other pages and even gave decent credits.

During June, I bought http://innocent-ami.com at GotWebsiteHosting.com for $2.95 a month. My domain was registered at a Got-domains.com and I was set to have my first *real* server.

My next layout - a temporary one - featured Hama Chisaki as well. I started working a new "live-action mercury" section to add to the page and finished a few spots in the others. My multimedia archives grew and I created the layout that you see now. I wanted to celebrate the little success .:innocence:. has had over the past 5 years and used an older layout picture for my design. Thus, the .:innocence:. you see today was born. Happy 5-year Anniversary!