Goodbye, PokeDS~

In 2005, I started a Pokemon guild on Neopets called The Pokemon Land Guild. I'd go on to make a website for this guild, which would mark the start of my Pokemon fansite journey. In 2007, I decided that PLG had outgrown its origins as a Neopets guild website, and thus I renamed the site to "Shadow of the Desert". And in 2010, I decided to make the name of the site snappier and renamed "Shadow of the Desert" to "Pokemon Desert Shadow" or "PokeDS" for short.

In the time between 2010 and 2012, PokeDS had gone through a lot of changes. I remember I wanted to add a Pokemon tracker to the site though that project had never quite materialized. I think I rewrote PokeDS from scratch 3 times. I remember when PokeDS was most active, we'd often hang out in the chatrooms with several users online at a time. I remember we'd get into poking wars. And we'd start up silly little threads and come up with cutesy ideas for features to add to the site.

Now it's 2017, and it's been 12 years since I first started that little site called the Pokemon Land Guild. My life today looks a lot different than it did in those years. Back then, I was mostly just a kid who had a strange obsession with Pokemon, and a peculiar interest in web development. Now I've grown up into an adult with a job and maintaining PokeDS just doesn't quite make as much sense in my life as it used to.

To everyone visiting this page: I know some of you have been with the site since those very early days when we called ourselves "PLG". And I know many others of you found the site in its later days. There are many of you I remember well, and I remember the friends I had made through the site. I have to say... To everyone who's ever visited PokeDS, thanks. I have a lot of fond memories of interacting with visitors on PokeDS, and the site wouldn't have been what it was without you. I hope you all have wonderful days~

Sincerely,

Tiff AKA shadowfiles

P.S. I left a chatbox here in case anyone wants to chat or leave any comments. If you want to stay in touch, feel free to drop me a line at zhangtiff@gmail.com