I completely redesigned the front page like I said. Now there's two columns, one for the news like before and another side column on the right for quick-glance updates. I'm going to stick more stuff there later, but for now I think it looks way better and more interesting than the old front page with just the news articles. (I know the welcome message at the moment sucks but I promise I will revise it to something much more compelling later!)

I also increased the font size of the entire site since the 11px size was a bit too small. Now you don't have to strain your eyes just to read the text! :D It's going to take a bit of getting used to since the almost the entire history of this site has been in the old font.

Additionally, I got rid of all the unnecessary scripts that Joomla attached by default (there were about 5 or so... it was pretty bad) so the site *hopefully* should be loading a lot faster.

Also a new Clefable image:

So I've been on a roll with these, with Azelf, Teddiursa, and Nidoking being the latest to come down the pipe:

(The Nidoking is a slightly modified pose from the FRLG sprite, with his mouth opened instead of closed and some proportion adjustments. Nidoking's FRLG sprite has always caught my eye as one of the most well-made poses ever... he just looks so damn epic!)

From now on I'll start posting an image of the new art to make the homepage look better, since right now it's just a bunch of uninteresting text. I'm also thinking about spicing up the homepage with a Latest Art (or just Latest Stuff) section and maybe some interactive things like polls and stuff. I'm not really sure.

If you have a website and would like to affiliate, I finally put up the official Affiliate with Us page!

Oh, and I would like to give a nudge to the visitors of this site to visit the forums! We have a super nice community that would just be that much better if you would be so kind as to bless us with your presence! :D

And also, in darker and more depressing news (also known as the shambles that is my personal life... heh), today is the last day of Spring Break. Notice how I managed to update 4 times in the first week of April? Well that probably isn't likely to ever happen again soon. I've been telling myself since Wednesday that I would start on my Calculus and Statistics homework since I literally did nothing the week before I got off (the justification for that being I would just do it during Spring Break), but it hasn't happened yet and it's already Sunday. So it's time for me to seriously buckle down, swallow the bitter pill of productivity, and just get the work done. :(

Some upcoming stuff I have lined up: An about me/the site page, more art, and some HTML/CSS tutorials! Yep, I gotta get that webmaster section kick started again!

And finally, happy Easter guys!

So yesterday I finally decided to get up and update the forums to the latest MyBB version. In the documentation it said that I should probably run a backup before proceeding, and since I have yet to make a backup of the forums, I decided to do it. However, there must have been something wrong with backing up MyBB through the AdminCP because when I tried to download the backup file, the download never started (it just kept on loading forever) so I just canceled it.

It turns out that this failed attempt at making a backup messed up the database. And unfortunately because of the limitations placed on me by my host, I can't fix it myself (because everytime I try to run an SQL query to fix the table I always lose connection with the database). So basically I filed a support ticket asking for my host to fix it for me since they can obviously bypass their own limitations.

Hopefully they'll response soon and the forums will be up and running again in no time. Right now they're closed not because I shut them down but because the system automatically did it by itself. Weird, but I just left it that way since right now you can't do anything besides view the index. There shouldn't be any data loss and if there is I still have a copy of the forums from a month ago when I backed up the entire site and my host provides weekly backups. And when I said I never made a backup of the forums I meant through the MyBB software itself rather than just through a general site backup. I'm not really sure if there even is a difference between the two (if there isn't then I shouldn't have even bothered with this backup) but I wanted to run a backup through the MyBB software just in case. Turns out I really shouldn't have. >_>

tl;dr: I tried to run a backup of the forums which ironically caused the forums to crash.

EDIT: Never mind, disregard this. I got a reply from my host and the forums are back up!

Whew. Okay first and foremost, and most importantly, I finally got that art tutorial done! I spent a large chunk of the last three days on it, and as a consequence, it's ridiculously long and perhaps a bit too indepth. However, I'm really proud of it because it's been a while since I've made such a long, content-heavy guide. Actually it's so long and littered with so many images (maybe nauseatingly so... lol) that I might split it into multiple pages. The guide is tailored toward Paint Tool SAI, although it still gives a lot of general art tips that I feel may be helpful to a few people! Also as a bonus it's full of diagrams with samples of my crappy handwriting (straight from the tablet)... Woohoo! :D

I've also put up a new Skarmory and Pikachu (from the tutorial) image for the Original Pokemon Art gallery. You may notice that the Skarmory pose looks a bit familiar.. that's because I took it from the Black/White sprite.

Kind of like a reverse pixel-over. :D Back in the day when I still sprited, I always had a "make pixel over sprites of ALL the Sugimori art" project in mind. I sort of scrapped that idea (although it may be revived some day!) but you guys may see a "make large size Pokemon art of ALL the Pokemon sprites"... who knows? I have too many ideas and way too little time!

And speaking of spriting, I will one day revise the Spriting Guide. I still like it the way it is now, but it's so old and outdated that reading it makes me cringe a little (makes me a bit nostalgic of 12 year old me though!).

Anyway, that's it. Hope you guys appreciate this update since I have been working super hard on the site!