Albia 2000


 * Web address: www.albia2000.com (down, archived)
 * Webmaster: Ali
 * Contributors/Staff:
 * Ran from/to dates: 17 February 1998 - 20 June 2013

History
Albia 2000 was originally designed for one purpose: to keep tabs on the progress of Creatures 2 while it was in development, and nothing more. It launched in Febuary of 1998, consisting of just a couple of pages showing screenshots and information for the then-pending sequel.

Within a month or two, founder Ali found himself creating objects for Creatures 1. Albia 2000 was properly launched on May 10th, 1998, and along with Creatures 2 information, it included many unique features, including a collection of new and original COBs, "Who's who at agc", "The Toby Simpson Shrine", "Create your own story", the Essex Norns, the interviews with community members, and more.

By August of that year, A2k had a minor revamp that was meant to give the site a more fun look. Even more features were added to the growing web site and by the end of the year, Albia 2000 was among the top Creatures fansites to be listed in the official Creatures 2 strategy guide. Around this time, it also moved from its AOL host to a new address at albia2000.demon.co.uk. A2k stayed with Demon for just a couple of months, but was forced to relocate due to bandwidth being used so quickly.

While at Demon, A2k went with a more subtle logo and design: "It was very blue! And.... erm.... quite boring!" {Source?} With C2 now available to the masses, A2k hosted many amazing and related downloads. It had grown in popularity, despite the odd layout (which some claim was "the worst of the lot!"). Albia 2000 was also regularly updated during that time, and an effort was made to ensure new content was added every Saturday.

A2k eventually switched to Force 9 in early 1999, where it remained for a good amount of time and developed its first notorious "green" color scheme. The site was also, at this point, updated at least twice a week, on a Wednesday and Saturday, usually with new as downloads, features, or interviews. A2k changed slightly for the Summer of 1999; its most noticeable addition was a better navigational bar.

In September/October 1999, a major site redesign followed the web site's switch to it's own domain name at www.albia2000.co.uk, where it has since remained (albia2000.com was eventually added later on). New features included regular updates from a web cam, community news and, most importantly, the designing of several major downloads including Montu and the Tree project!

A revamp happened in early 2000 saw the site with a Flash layout, accompanied by a "really odd swirly new logo." Montu and Spriglysium Nebula (an upgrade to the Yggsdrasil tree in C2) were released in August, 2000. Another major revamp saw the site return to a blue color scheme heavily themed towards Creatures 3; "space Norns" decorated the main page and logo.

The site closed briefly for a couple of months at the end of the year, but sprung back to life in early 2001 with a revamp to a space-themed C3/DS design, and regular news posted by several different people. Another redesign prepared for the releases of Creatures Adventures, Creatures Playground and Docking Station, bringing back fun, light colours to the site. The site also began featuring downloads for Docking Station.

In May of 2003, A2k redesigned to a funky green style and brought in many new features, as well as some older ones. Over the next year, A2k saw a move to a PHP content system, saw the popular release of Ostrova and the Yeren Grendels in the new third-party mall, the Chaos Store, and the release of many cool free add-ons (such as the Ecology Kit).

Sadly, during the latter half of the 2000s, the site fell into disrepair and was home to the world's most diverse population of spam-bots, in place of what was a thriving community of people. On 24th of August 2010 it was discovered by the user Lembamjunior that if one were to search for the website using a search engine, such as Google, clicking the link to A2K would cause a pop-up containing a virus message, claiming that the user's computer is infected with viruses, and prompting to perform a free "virus scan". Allowing the software to scan the computer would result in it becoming infected. The issue resolved itself in late 2010, but the website had already been all but abandoned.

As of June 20 2013, all areas of the site appear to be completely non-functional, although the domain is still registered. In 2016, Ali made a post on his Chaos Created blog talking about reigniting his Creatures passion in some form. However, as of 2019 nothing has yet been announced.

Interesting Facts

 * Won joint second in the Golden Shee Awards, tying with CreaturesLife.net

Web Address History

 * www.albia2000.com (current) -Broken
 * www.albia2000.co.uk (old) -Broken
 * www.albia2000.f9.co.uk (old) -Broken
 * albia2000.demon.co.uk (older)-Broken
 * members.aol.com/albia2000/creatures/index.html (ancient) -Broken

Related links

 * Ali's Chaos Store