the red crown around your door

I taught myself how to code in 2002 in the process of running a blog. Back in the day the options for blogs basically meant that you needed to code your own layout, so I found what tutorials existed at the time and figured out what I could of HTML and CSS. From there, it wasn't long before I was making websites of my own.

At the time I was mostly focused on making art and other original projects, but a few years later I opened my first fansite, a huge website for the Pokémon games, which helped me learn a lot about coding. Soon after I discovered fanlistings and JRPGs, and the two have played a big role in my webdesign career ever since. While I briefly had a domain back in 2002, it wasn't until 2007 that I secured my own hosting and started running this collective.

redcrown.net was registered in 2009, but it wasn't until the spring of 2013 that I started using it as my collective. I originally registered this domain for the purpose of hosting my Ivalice-related websites, but when I realized ivalice.org was available, I swapped them out. The name "red crown" comes from the theme song of Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Cosmos/Chaos/The Messenger, but it's generic enough to work on its own, which is why I kept it. (The summary here is that I am a huge nerd for Final Fantasy, if my collective hasn't tipped you off already. Also, there is nothing more "me" than an obscure reference to FF music.)

I use Larissa as my handle, and you can contact me here.

current layout

So it's been a minute since the last layout, and by "minute" I mean... Okay, so it's been seven years. These things happen. I actually have been working on a new design for years, but I either had to entirely scrap the layout or fell out of interest with the subject matter I was using.

Which is why it's ridiculous it took me so long to think of the subject of this one. I started playing Final Fantasy XIV in 2019, just after Shadowbringers came out, and I've been enamoured ever since. The catboy pictured above is not my first Warrior of Light, but he is my favorite and the one I spend most of my time on, so he gets the spotlight.

In case you're not familiar with the symbols used for the navigation in this layout, each one indicates a job. In FFXIV you can play every different job on the same character, so it stands to reason that mine's a multiclasser. In order from left to right, it's Red Mage, Dark Knight, White Mage, and Culinarian, all of which are my character's primary classes in his story. (Though not necessarily to play — I far prefer Gunbreaker to Dark Knight.)

Also, yes, my red mage outfit is green. Look, it's hard to put an orange catboy in red... You can see more of his outfits on Eorzea Collection, along with my other characters. Because of course I have more characters.

Coding-wise, I ripped most of the design from the last layout. I like how it lays out my sites. I did have to recode half of it because I have no idea how I did it the first time. Don't take seven-year breaks, is the moral of this story.

Resources used in the layout are by FEEL (defunct) and subtlepatterns.

previous layouts

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