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| A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME Melodramatic.com : A Brief History of Time - By Sara Sioux
Melodramatic.com was born on September 30th, 1998. I'd had some success with a personal website hosted by my good friend Icey, and had built up a small audience of readers who were actually interested in my insane ramblings. I decided I needed my own domain so that I could branch out and start taking over the web.
I tried a lot of names before I decided on "Melodramatic". I don't remember my first choice. I chose "Melodramatic" because I was reading through old  stories and poems I had written, trying different obscure and moving vocabulary words, when I came across this. It's one of my favorite things I've ever written, and the definition of melodramatic describes me perfectly.
An old boyfriend of mine used to say "Thank god you didn't register absolutelythetruth.com, because your website would be boring."
When I first made the domain live, I just used it for myself, to write about personal life issues and emotions and all sorts of things that you would do on an online journal. I had my email address up there so I could get feedback from people, and eventually I learned some basic PHP and put a message board online.
The message board quickly became a hub of communication for all of my real world friends, as well as some random people who stumbled across the site. Pretty soon we were all refreshing the message board all day long, using it like a chat site. The modern day Melodramatic Wall is reminiscent of what the original message board was like.
Most of what I used to write about on original Melo was about a good friend of mine who died, named Crystal. She inspired all of the emotional heartfelt melodramatic writings that made the site as gothy and emo as it is today.
And then, in 2001,  another really good friend of mine and active poster on the message board died. His name was Dan, and the message board quickly became a memorial board of all of his friends and family posting their thoughts and feelings.
It was during this time that I realized that all of these people needed a place of their own to write. Some place to deal with Dan's death through writing and communication with friends, something that was more personal than the message board. It was then that I had the idea for custom user journals, and decided to make it a reality.
The first version took me about 4 weeks to write. It was really simple, no karma or top 5 or image uploads or anything crazy like that. I was so excited when I started seeing people register for accounts, that I put in an active users list to see who was online. And then the list just grew and grew and grew, until it was out of control and couldn't be displayed on every page anymore.
It was 2001 when user journals first went live. September 18th to be exact. Since then I have written and rewritten and thrown away and reimplemented so many crazy features. I started with no knowledge of database or PHP, and now I'm writing some of the most complex web application functions that exist on the Internet today.
It's wild how things evolve on their own, even when you don't expect them to. Melo became its own living breathing entity. Many people have come and gone over the years, members, developers, friends and enemies. The site has changed my life, and I'd like to think that it's changed the lives of others too.
I will live and die with this site. I will always put my life into making it the greatest thing on earth. It is my gift to humanity, my attempt to save the world, my efforts at doing something great.
I hope that you can grow to love and appreciate it as much as I have over the last 7 years. Jesus, 7 years. Melo is almost a cute little pre-teen now. Just starting to wear a training bra.
Here's to 7 more years of heaven on the web.
Much Love,
Sara Sioux
Feb 18, 2005
For more details on older versions of Melo, visit Archive.org, and do a search for melodramatic.com.
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Melodramatic.com (c) 1998-2007. Version 1.9. Almost version 2.0 but not quite. Site created by Sara Sioux.
Melo was created as a community for self expression, open communication, and ultimate personal freedom. It has since evolved into its own blend of madness and moodiness, and somehow turned into a living breathing beast of its own. Melo will make your day and break your heart. Welcome home.
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