This is like the only way I'm going to be able to save the 'what is dyo-ecksdee' document. I had to fetch it off of google's cache. >_>
So, now, for your viewing pleasure: <lj-cut text="What exactly is dyo-ecksdee, anyway?">
So, if you’re here, I guess you’re just trying to find out what we’re all about, huh? All you see are random blog posts everywhere, and nothing makes any sense. Well, if you want to get a little inside scoop about me and what dyo-ecksdee originally evolved from, and all the good and bad I’ve gone through just to get my precious little site this far, then read on.
Hm… let’s see here, now. Time to go into the past a bit. Well, more than a bit. Let’s go years back in time…
[This article dedicated to Daniel McGovern, my old friend. If you ever manage to find this, I just want to say I wish you’re still out there, and I’m glad you’ve changed.] (Of course, I just heard a rumor that you’d changed, but anyways, if you did, I’m glad.)
Let’s go back to about 1998 to begin, I guess.
Well, back then, I was mainly on Yahoo. My username was ‘donawill’. >_> First 4 letters of my last name are ‘dona,’ first 4 letters of my first name are ‘will.’ People thought I was a girl named Donna, but I didn’t care. :/
Anyway, one day I ran into this bulletin board stuff. I guess it was basically just a place for people to create ‘topics,’ and then post replies to them. Basically, literally a discussion system similar to posting stuff on a literal real-life ‘bulletin board,’ and putting little sticky-note replies on it. So, intrigued by this, using a free bulletin board host called ezBoard, I opened a board called ‘Kidsworld.’
Corny name, I know, but I was only about 6-8 or something, I guess. I’m getting too old.
So, I grabbed some of my friends off of Yahoo Messenger and told them about the site, and told them if they registered they could be moderators (like every single little noob does when they first get their own website. Everyone does it at some time in their life.) Then I told them to tell their friends, and soon, the community flourished. I dunno, but we had… hm, maybe 30-40 members. Good times, good times.
Then, I fantasized about getting a domain name for the site. (Also, another thing every little noob does.) So, I went to www.kidsworld.com (note this is before I learned about whois, I was only about 7 years old. ;-;) and, lo and behold, it was registered. I (probably) cried, and then moved on, thought of KidsPlace, and then tried that. As far as I can remember right now (I am so senile), it wasn’t registered. Yay. So, I quickly changed the name of the forum to KidsPlace, and then asked my mom if I could get a domain name.
She said no.
Well, maybe she did, I can’t remember, but I guess it was probably something about us not really understanding how to register domain names, and such. Who knows… well, I did back then. :/
So, slowly, I lost interest in the site, and then soon, pretty much forgot about it altogether. :/
I guess that was all locked away in the back of my mind.
Now…
Let’s fast-forward a couple years.
About 2002, I was a member of a Bionicle fan site called BZCommunity (now named BZPower). Somewhere on a Completely Off-Topic forum, I guess, I found a link to a website called Blogger. Intrigued by the simple-seeming weblog, or blog as it is widely called now, that can be used as a simple online journal, I quickly clicked on the signup button, and in about 10 minutes, mes5u5’s Blog was created. (mes5u5 was a name of mine waaaay back when. If you remember that, you’re quite, quite old… if you remember mes4v4 (which none of you should, heaven forbid), then you’re even older.)
Then, I saw a little button that said ‘group’ or something like that. Intrigued (again) by the fact that I could add multiple people to be able to post on it, I contacted a few of my friends, including Ivan (also known as ‘SCG Kanohi Akaku’, someone I haven’t seen since late 2003), and some other people that I can’t remember because it was so long ago. (I think I was about 9 or 10 in 2002. Can’t remember, obviously getting senile.) By the end of that day, I had about 5 people on the site, all posting and stuff. Then, I realized that ‘mes5u5’s Blog’ wasn’t just my blog anymore, and that I’d have to give it a better name.
Thus, RealLifeBionicle (RLB, for those of you that remember it), named because we’d be posting about our lives, and Bionicle stuff, was born.
(Dan Podnos would remember it, I think, he was another admin I brought in near the time of its death, but I’ll get to that later. Oh, I think Radial (goes on the chat here, normally on weekdays from maybe 4 am to 7 am) would remember it too.)
We went through many urls… This was a long time ago, so gimme a couple minutes to think.
The first one, I think, was mes5u5.blogspot.com. Then, I guess, was reallifebionicle.blogspot.com. After that, I guess, though, I didn’t really like the ‘blogspot’ part. The good thing about blogspot is that there weren’t many ads- just one little banner at the top of the page. But, foolish me, I found a site called CJB, and soon got the address reallifebionicle.cjb.net. Yay. Then, I found another site that didn’t have all those annoying popup ads (I hate popups. >_< ) called AZHQ, and registered there. Then, from then on, it was rlb.azhq.net, with the hosting backed by Angelfire instead of blogspot.
RLB lasted until a couple months after I started 6th grade, so that was about a good year or so, I guess.
Then… well, I guess I just forgot about it.
As of somewhere near January 2003, RealLifeBionicle was forgotten by all.
Then… well, near spring break (April 2003), my creative juices started flowing again.
Anyone here remember Kulnek?
He was the original reason that I started the Lifecast.
It’s a very long story, but I’ll make it short and sweet.
He was gonna commit suicide.
And, I, just another random stranger that he didn’t know other than chatting on AIM for a while, talked him out of it.
Yes, I saved a person that I didn’t even know’s life.
And I was proud.
I also had another friend, named Mahalis. Anyone remember him? He comes on the chat occasionally (well, whenever I can bring up the courage to ask him to come on, which isn’t often.).
He was the second-most respected moderator on BZPower (I’d assume Torhu being the first), and also the leading 3D designer. He did all kinds of stuff- he made 3D Bionicle models for avatars and banners, ran (and still does run today) a forum named BAHR, wrote fanfics, and all kinds of stuff. (Check out some of his 3D work at his deviantArt page.) I was quite impressed by BAHR, which used the Invision Board technology. Intrigued by this, I asked him if I could host an Invision Board forum on his space. After extremely constant nagging by me (and I mean EXTREMELY constant nagging), he said yes.
dyo Lifecast was born.
Our mission was simple at first. We’d welcome teens and tweens in, and ask them about their life, helping them with any emotional, mental, or physical (that seems like it might be a little hard, though, seeming that this is just the web) help they’d need. We wanted to become the largest teen website there was.
Things came pouring in…
One I remember. Person A’s friend, Person B, had a girlfriend, Person c. Person B and Person C had, well, gotten a little frisky, and now she was pregnant. She didn’t want anyone to find out, so she commited suicide (as far as I can remember.) Then, Person B, obviously upset about her suicide, also thought about commiting suicide. So, Person A was obviously emotionally distraught, and, well, came to us. So, we helped him.
Can’t remember much. I can’t really remember much.
Kulnek, though, well, he was special. I saved his life. And, well, he was actually the reason I started the Lifecast, because, well, I thought that if I could help one person, I could help everyone else too. So, be this as it was a bad decision, now that I look back at it, told him about this and offered him a position as admin.
Yes, that was a bad decision.
But more about that later.
dyo Lifecast prospered. So much, that we even had to change its name because, well, dyo Lifecast was getting a bit old.
Ario was thus born.
And, well, it lasted for a couple more months. It never lasted, though. Wouldn’t last to July.
All because of Kulnek.
Since, well, I would become a teenager in just a couple years, I made the site’s motto ‘the #1 place for teens.’ Obviously, I meant tweens in that too, but Kulnek didn’t see that, thus banning me from the site for no reason.
He didn’t turn out too well.
He’d led the “tehs”, an elitist group. Some of them still exist, though I think they’re disbanded now.
And now, he was trying to bring down, in a few short days, what I had taken months to bring to what it was.
So, eventually, it turned into a rotten wasteland. Mahalis and I, well, eventually decided to shut it down.
As far as I know, that message that says it’s closed is still there.
Now, let’s fast-forward to September 2003.
I’d just gotten over Ario’s death.
And I wanted something new.
Something fresh.
Something… funny.
I began drawing little things in my notebook in study hall. The original plan was, well, for me to start a website with 3 friends of mine.
Those friends were Sam (Yotanua), Rob (Elzaban), and Zac (Katori).
That website’s name was ecksdee.
That website, again, ran on blogger.
It had a pretty logo. 
We put a couple test posts up, and then the website went public at ecksdee.blogspot.com.
So, now, fast-forward to about November. ecksdee had many members by now, coming in a couple per week. Not many stayed, but the ones that did mattered. And, by now, I had to start planning what we wanted to do for 2004.
I envisioned ‘XDNY,’ a sort of convention for ecksdee members, held in NY. (I still want to do this some day.)
I envisioned us having a domain name.
By now, I’d long stopped being a noob, and had been a respectable member of the Internet society for a long time.
So, I went to ecksdee.com.
It wasn’t registered.
Then, I saw an ad in PC Magazine (yes, I’ve subscribed to it for a couple years now… and nowadays, sometimes I don’t just look at the pretty pictures and actually read some of the articles. 
) for a hosting service called 1&1.
They had a thing, where if you signed up before January 1, you’d get your hosting free for 3 years.
I literally jumped at the chance.
With my mom’s help, I got the hosting all registered.
Then, after much waiting, my mom finally OK’d the domain name.
So, I went to register it.
It had been registered by some person who had nothing other than a little ‘XD’ on it. Well, a big ‘XD.’
I was furiated.
I cried, and then I moved on, brought the admins into a little group chat on AIM and discussed what new names we could think of.
I thought of ‘ecksdee place,’ and everyone, including myself, thought that sucked.
Then… I thought about dyo.
What if I brought dyo back?
Kato thought it was a bad idea. He thought Kulnek would find us and wreak havoc.
I decided it was a risk I was willing to take.
So, after working on the layout and the logos and stuff, at about 10:12 pm on December 31, 2003, dyo-ecksdee was born.
Since then, we’ve gone through many changes- we’ve changed software about 3 times, had many members join, and leave, including yotanua and elzaban, and, well, 1 and a half years later, we’re still standing.
Talk about that for good luck, huh?
But, unfortunately, the luck wasn’t always good.
On the morning of June 29, 2005, something happened- everything was mysteriously deleted from the site. Very mysteriously, and, well, it wasn’t a good thing.
However, later that very night, the admins met up and decided to do something. A quick response was made, and by the end of the night, they had WordPress up and running, which they had used before but then scrapped for Drupal, a full CMS. They decided it was best just to go back to our roots- pure blogging. We didn’t need any special things, we just wanted to blog, and we did just that.
And, on July 2, 2005 at 12:01 Midnight, just 4 days after the initial server crash occured, the new website was finally unveiled to the world.
So, that’s basically it. Our mission is still to one day become the largest website for teens in the world. And, of course, you can help with that by registering if you’re not already registered. Register, and fill out the profile form by going to the backend and clicking Users.
And, if you have any questions I didn’t answer here, post them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them.
So, for now, this is it…</lj-cut>
