Pokémon Fan Universe

Pokémon Fan Universe was a fan site owned by Shining Arcanine. It was started on November 13, 1999. It was run by Shining Arcanine alone, until he shut it down in late 2008.

History

Pokémon Fan Universe was first hosted on Homestead, where it had little content and didn't have much popularity.

After a 18-month period of inactivity due to exhaustion, Shining Arcanine eventually met individuals such as Meowth346 and Pojo staff members who gave him advice. One particular Pojo staff member wrote a Digimon site, showing him what hard work can do over a summer, while Meowth346 showed him how to code webpages in HTML and CSS.

In October 2002, Pokémon Fan Universe was published on AlwaysWebHosting, having been completely recoded by hand. The Pokédex was still being coded by hand in HTML at the time. Meowth346 suggested implementing the Pokédex in PHP to Shining Arcanine, and helped him do so.

Faced with rising bandwidth cost, Pokémon Fan Universe moved to The Forum Host, which offered free web hosting in exchange for a text advertisement. The host went under a few months later and was taken over.

In December 2003, Pokémon Fan Universe was moved to 1&1, who were offering free 3-year hosting packages. Unfortunately, 1&1's servers were insufficient to serve Pokémon Fan Universe's visitors so, in January 2004, Pokémon Fan Universe switched to a web host that was created for the sole purpose of giving away cheap webhosting. It later evolved into A Small Orange Software, and provided Pokémon Fan Universe with inexpensive - if at times unreliable - hosting until its closure.

In December 2008, Pokémon Fan Universe closed down due to Shining Arcanine having real-life commitments.

This article is a part of Project Fandom, a Bulbapedia Project that aims to write comprehensive articles on every aspect of the Pokémon Fandom.