Pixelgirl Presents
I have been messing about with a personal website for 10+ years now it seems. Early versions of sites that I would make were just to learn more about it and see what was possible. I used to love to make little hidden links and things all over the sites and just play with ideas. In the beginning the only people that would go to the site was family and friends I told about it.
As time went on I decided that I wanted to try and generate some traffic to my site and so I started working on a new version of the site that was more of a portfolio than a toy site. I added design work that I had done and photography and things like this and as time went on I realized that a great way to bring some people into the site would be to make some of my designs available as downloadable desktops for visitors to download. After setting this up and adding a dozen or so desktops it hit me that I had to find a way to get the word out that these were here for people to find and download so I began to search around and came across a few sites that could help me out with this. I added a link section to my site and started to trade links with all sorts of other desktop wallpaper sites. This is back when website badges were all the rage, you know, the tiny little gifs that were often animated images.
So traffic started to trickle in and I saw the statistics start to climb and by the end of the twistedsun.net days and still today actually, 15-20 thousand visitors a month which may not be a lot in comparison to some but I was always happy to see so many people enjoyed the things I was posting.
At any rate, way back in the beginning there was a few sites that really did help bring me to this sort of recognition and traffic and one of them is Pixelgirl Presents. Her site was really young at the point when I started sending images over for her to post and through time this was what really started to bring me in more visitors to the site and I am and always will be grateful to this site and others that helped me get where I am today. So if you have some time head over and check the site out, there are countless of great desktops to be found there after years of building this database of images there. If you dig back through to the earlier ones you may be able to find some classic twistedsun desktops.
Sorry for rambling on and on here, I just thought that some of you may be interested in a little bit of the history about how I got the site going. Maybe I can find some of the old versions of the site to post sometime… hmmm.. there was one that I always liked a lot but I wonder if I could find it.
As a bonus for checking out pixelgirlpresents.com you will be able to find an exclusive image from me that has been posted as a featured desktop so take a look! The image above is the photo that you can find there now which is one of my very favorites from this series. I have a couple variations on the subject that I will post here sometime as well but in the mean time head over and check it out!
Thanks for all the awesome photos! I’m glad I was introduced to your blog from pixelgirl :)
I’ve been visiting Pixelgirlpresents for several years now. I think that’s how I found old twistedsun :)
Keep up the great work John !
Thanks guys, its nice to know that and hear from people that found me through pixelgirl, really a good resource for great images and I’m loving her shop too!
I found your site through Pixelgirl. Her site is great, and yours is also exceptional. Excellent photography work. I immediately bookmarked your site and will visit weekly to see what’s new.
PS- Thank you for providing such nice, high quality wallpapers. “Green Eggs” is currently my desktop.
thanks for the comment mark, glad you found your way here, welcome!
well, about your camera… that’s the camera that my father has since i was born, in 1986, and he still has it like new, he bought that camera specially to that day. So you are lucky and me too!