When your hearts touch

Like many others, I originally started making websites through the use of pagebuilders (those drag and drop types à la Geocities/Homestead), but when I was lucky enough to get hosted in 2002, I started to get more serious about learning HTML. A few years later, a friend of mine offered to buy me a domain, which I was ecstatic about because many of my friends had one and I wanted to be one of the cool kids. That's how shiroi-tsuki.net came to be, which was purchased in March 2005. Nymphae.net is my second domain, and the continuation of shiroi-tsuki.net, which I had to give up due to some circumstances (which I can't quite recall right now). It was purchased on April 2nd, 2009 through GoDaddy and originally hosted by my friend arashi of the now defunct zangetsu.org. I have moved several times since then, but I am now happily registered with Namecheap and graciously hosted by Lethe, ilu. ♥

What's in a name

When it became apparent that I would have to purchase a new domain name, I had to do one of the most difficult things for me: picking a name. I knew that I no longer wanted to have something Japanese — despite still enjoying both anime and manga (even up to this day), I wanted something more neutral for my new home. In the end, I made a list of flower references and the winner from that list was nymphaea.net, which is the Latin name for waterlilies. Unfortunately, the domain was already taken with all extensions, but knowledge of Latin helped me remember I could remove the last -a and still have an actual word, which solved the problem! In the end, nymphae is a reference to two things: 1) the waterlily plant and 2) the Nymphs from Greek mythology. Now that some time has passed, I actually find myself preferring the current name over nymphaea, so I'm very happy with the result. ♥

"Hold it!" you might say, as waterlilies and lotuses are not the same, and the network name is the "Blooming Lotus Network"? Well, that's just because I like the actual sound of "lotus" better than "waterlily", heh. The "blooming" part comes from the concept of blooming flowers, but then for websites, so it's sort of like the birth of new websites after long years of waiting. I have a thing for cliché and unoriginal names, what can I say.

Current design

Although version 02 was made in November 2015, it was so simple that I don't actually count it as an actual design — this layout is thus the first "decent" layout I've made in a little over two years as of writing this blurb (September 2016). A lot has changed while I had been inactive, such as the introduction of new codes and styles, but in the end the only nifty new things I got to incorporate are Google Fonts (at least it's become much easier to display pretty fonts nowadays!) and text shadows! I'm not sure whether it succeeded, but I tried to recreate the feeling of the fireflies that were in the original image. Design-wise I feel it's also still quite similar to works I've made in the past, as there's not much in terms of image editing, but I've tried to at least add some graphics throughout the site (e.g. images and backgrounds here and there) so it's hopefully a little less boring. As for the choice of image, it's mostly coincidental, as I went through a variety of series and images before I stumbled upon this one. Natsume Yuujinchou's manga took a bit for me to warm up to due to its distinct artwork (I enjoyed the anime on my first try, though!), but Hotarubi no Mori e was love at first read, so I'm happy I get to feature both lovely series through this one particular image. The text used in the headings are also quotes from the Natsume Yuujinchou series, though some were slightly edited for length. Credits for this layout go to Subtle Patterns for the background pattern used!