Unlike everybody else, I didn't start off with Neopets. I've never even been to their site (at least before I decided to start it all off with that line, hehe), in all honesty. I can't remember if my WASP class was the one that egged me on it, either (yeah, I'm not good with remembering if you haven't gathered already). But what I do remember is that it all started with Exonerate.
Exonerate is the name of the group blog my CL friends Rosa, Drea, Kara & Aya made and invited me to join. According to the Wayback Machine's earliest records of Exonerate, we started it in late November/early December of 2002 (oh man, I can't believe I've been blogging that long already). Rosa had installed Movable Type as our blogging platform, so there was no real need for me to learn HTML that early on (I think I just got into the internet as well a few months earlier). After a while (ok, more like a couple of weeks), however, I got agitated at being the only one out of all of us who didn't have her own site. I was too shy to ask Rosa to make me one, so I decided to ask both her and Drea to teach me.
The both of them directed me to Lissa Explains, which covered everything I needed to know about HTML at that time in order to start making my own site. I guess it also helped that I read my WASP book ahead and learned the HTML stuff before we covered it in class (geek much? lol). :P By January 31, I was ready to test my newfound "knowledge" out and made accounts at both DiaryLand and Pitas on the same day (which can be attested by my very first entries, heh) to customize with HTML.
I eventually moved my personal site over to my GeoCities account, with my DiaryLand account serving as my blogging platform of sorts (I called my entries to my site by using iframes; hey, they were all the shizz at the time!!). After a few months, I finally managed to figure out how to use CuteFTP and thought it was time to start applying for hosting somewhere. In the end I had two choices, but inevitably went with Rosa's hosting offer to me.
At Indiglow.org, I was back to using Movable Type for my blog. Everything was fine and dandy, Rosa was an awesome host and helped me with every question I had (yeah, I bothered her a lot :P). But then she started using b2 and I got jealous that she could use smilies (HAHA, stupidest reason everrr). I tried installing some smiley hacks for MT, but none of them wanted to cooperate with me. I didn't want to go all "MySQL please" on Rosa either. XD I guess it was by sheer luck that my RCSHS classmates decided to be all up on my site and start spreading it around at the same time. So I packed up and moved my site away from my classmates' prying eyes.
My move to a new host came with a catch, however. My dad had gotten me a pair of these amazing Chucks, but in return I wasn't allowed to use the internet for three (!!) months. I accepted (and told my host about the whole deal), thinking I could handle it, but of course I couldn't. XD I ended up sneaking behind my dad's back by going online in our computer lab at school. My host thought I wouldn't be updating AT ALL in that time, but I did (btw, I managed to install b2 and had smilies, yay), though she never even bothered to check my site out (not only did I manage to update, I just put up a new layout as well). So she was surprised when she got a random email from me (I invited her to join some networking site, lolz) and demanded I move out the next day since I, apparently, was just wasting her space.
It was a harsh blow, she never even allowed me to explain. She just said my site would be deleted, that's it. She did it a few days before my birthday, too, way to be shitty (notice how I don't even bother trying to remember her name, HA). So anyways, it had only been a month since the deal, so I was going to be siteless for two. I proceeded, then, to tell everyone who linked me to delete me from their lists because of the whole thing. And that's when Ellie came to save the day. :D
Ellie emailed me, telling me she'd be willing to host my site and wouldn't mind if I didn't open it until I fulfilled my deal with my dad (if that's not a testament to how awesome beyond words she is, then I don't know what is). I was ecstatic, of course--you have NO IDEA just how much I looked up to Ellie's graphic skills. It was to the point of idolizing, if I remember correctly, so if you think of it like meeting your fave band in the whole wide world, then that was how I felt.
And so I moved into Ellie's then domain, Vanilla-Twist.org. I didn't disappear off the face of the blogging world. I had a most amazing host, b2 & smilies, and I stayed happily there until I got my dad to get me Turbo-Geek.org. :)