Pink Poogle Toy

Screenshot of the PinkPT homepage viewed with Internet Explorer on February 2006

PinkPT (formally Pink Poogle Toy and PPT for short) is a commercial Neopets fansite which was founded by Kym Huynh and Alicia in February 2001. Now maintained by Kym Huynh and run by over 200 international volunteer staff, PinkPT is considered by many to be one of the better Neopets help sites and is the largest on the Internet comprising of news, editorials, Neopets cheats, solutions and articles. New content is added many times per week, and it hosts a multi-topic forum where Neopets users come together to interact and share their ideas. Additionally, PinkPT runs it's own talk show called "The PPT Show" and is the home of the first Neopets band "The Pink Poogle Toys".

Besides being a Neopets help website, it has expanded into a community which has branched out to include many different topics, containing sub-sites dedicated to other topics, like Marapets and Subeta.

Kym Huynh

Kym Huynh, born in July 6, 1984, of Adelaide, South Australia started PinkPT in 2001 at the age of 17. He studied law and commerce at the University of Melbourne and graduated 30th Oct 2008.

Corporate Relationships

PinkPT maintains friendly relations with the Neopets staff, particularly Adam Powell, Donna Williams (who have accounts on the PPT Forum) and the friendly Neopets programmer, Mr. Insane. Members of the PinkPT community are often given previews of new developments at Neopets and their opinions on how the game can be improved are at times implemented on the Neopets website itself. (The implementation of the captcha system in the officially Neopian shops is just one example although it was later removed.) There have also been friendly banter between both sites with the Pink Poogle Toy's description on Neopets changed to "This lovely pink poogle moans about banner ads and frozen accounts when you squeeze it! :P." This pokes fun at the popular Neopets fansite Pink Poogle Toy, which has a reputation for its users expressing their displeasure about these aspects of the game on its forums. There are many more references of PinkPT on the official Neopets website itself.

History

Year 2001

Screenshot of PinkPT's first layout

Started in February of 2001 by Yukio and Alicia {a young woman he knew over the internet}, the fan site started with a meagre 2 visitors per day and displayed answers to a small fraction of the Neopets games (notably Poogle Solitaire and Cliffhanger). As the content grew with each day, word went around and over 200 hits per day were being recorded by the end of February.

Alicia then created the oekaki, an online art board. Created on the servers of unixdaemons, the oekaki quickly became a popular feature on the site and grew into an online community with at least 2,000 pieces of artwork being created every day. Due to the popularity, Sako's oekaki was created alongside PPT Oekaki, to compliment to extremely talented artists that were emerging from the oekaki. Unfortunately, the oekaki grew to the extent that no host could host it any more as it was consuming a large amount of bandwidth (mainly due to the fact that the oekaki was image driven), nor could the owner of PinkPT afford it. Sadly, the oekaki was never re-created after unixdaemons emailed Yukio telling him that they can no longer host PPT's oekaki due to its "insane amount of generated traffic".

In March 2001, one month after opening, PPT was reaching visitors of up to 2000. It was also during this month Alicia decided to leave. She had her reasons of course, her life was busy as everyone's is, and that was a blow to me as she was the person that pushed me further, to help people. I couldn't have done so much without her behind and supporting me. 2 months down the track, she returned though and everything was once again set in motion :) Unfortunately, a further two months proved Alicia could not juggle her daily life with PPT so she resigned turning entire control of the website over to Yukio which was once considered by many to be PinkPT's worst move.

Near the end of April 2001, PPT was receiving 25,000 page views a day. In August, a representative from Peel Networks approached PPT with a deal: In exchange for hosting on servers, PPT would advertise their US based magazine company. The offer was instantly approved as PPT was beginning to experience host troubles with hosts such as Virtualave, Hypermart and GeoCities.

In September 2001, a new deep blue coloured layout created by Ben Williams from Hologram FX was implemented, in an attempt to make it look professional and create organization for the site much sought after as the content volume had grown to over 100 pages. By the end of 2001 PinkPT was receiving an average of 8,000 unique visitors per day.

Year 2002

Screenshot of PinkPT's second layout

In January 2002, Ben Williams of Hologram FX once again redesigned the PinkPT with a sky blue layout, said to be the epitome of the playful, cheery, mischievous and fun atmosphere the site.

Early February 2002, marking PPT's first birthday, Mike joined, quickly learning the ins and outs of of PHP and MySQL to create In-Depth Battlepedia, providing in depth information and statistics to all Battledome related aspects on Neopets. In-Depth Battlepedia became an instant hit, quickly growing into a large site itself.

The site forums opened up to the general public and became an instant success with over 600 signups in one week. Bob quickly picked up administration of the forums, proving himself to be a good role model with a strong vocabulary, all the while guiding Yukio through many problems of the forums. Supporting Bob in helping run the forums smoothly were the friendly Michelle, who once sent in a sign saying "PPT rox my sox!", Janie, a model with two children, ChromeFox, a quasi-celebrity for her run-ins with the infamous Mari Jhane, and many other skillful mods. Forum hosting became a problem when sign ups increased, as the first host, PowWeb, was forced to cancel PPT's account from using too much bandwidth.

To solve this problem, PPT was approached by an admin at YaBB with an offer to host PPT's forums under the consideration it would change to the MySQL version. However, the host was unable to handle PPT's visitor load, and the account was frozen after one day. PPT then found a host called Aplus. However, all the membership information was inadvertently lost. Deciding to start fresh, the MySQL version of YaBB was once again used but due to false information about "unlimited system resources" claimed by Aplus, PPT forums were constantly down, unable to accommodate the growing fan base and visitor load. Once again reverting back to YaBB CGI in the hope that the forum problems would be solved, the forum once again went down after one week.

With the implementation of the news feature generously installed by NeoFan who worked with Neo-Net , updating became a simple task with a little click on a button. The PinkPT team was also joined by three charming ladies with wit to match, Amanda, Sarah and Silver.

With the tremendous growth in emails the site was receiving, robot_blumaroo offered to take care of all Neopet related questions. He stayed with PPT for approximately three months before opting out. The help link was then redirected to the forum help boards.

In April 2002, PPT was reaching visitors of up to 8,000 a day.

In July 2002, PPT was introduced to Sam. Skilled in many programming languages, he quickly became one of the team, sharing ideas, creating extra features and in many regards co-webmastering the entire site itself. His uncanny ability to fully grasp any concept explored and create left the entire team astounded with his deftness, precision and timely responses to any emergency.

In September 2002, NeLLa joined PPT as a guide writer, chosen over 200 applicants in the first 24 hours of the notice being posted. With guides such as Swarm and Evil Fuzzles from Beyond the Stars, her writing skills possessed a jovial quality, which was a major factor in deciding the final application.

Also in this month, Harry joined PPT to head the NeoDaq, a department providing information related to the Stock Market in Neopets. During this time, PPT's new host Aplus was experiencing troubles with handling In-Depth Battlepedia and forum. Because of constant down time and numerous forum restarts, Yukio approached Ted from SimGateway and bought hosting from DoubleHost.

Year 2003

The third year approached and with it many milestones. Everyone consolidated within the "PPT Empire" had their own individual story to tell, and while the year had many achievements, there was also a fair share of disturbances. There was great times of joy and friendship, and even times when friendships were tried and tested, some with favourable outcomes and some not so good, watching the backs of various members leave.

Once again many issues took place on the forums. A total revamp of the administration system at PPT occurred, with the administrators Janie and Bob leading the crew of Global Moderators and Moderators into a period of bug fixing. Unfortunately, an issue involving ChromeFox saw her demoted to a normal member, and a furious uproar took place within the Forums over the facts and points of "the case". In two months ChromeFox was came back into the PPT forum Crew as a moderator, and once again Forum life continuing as usual.

Nearing the end of January, Bob, the first employed forum admin for PPT (aka 'man-with-big-stick'), resigned. Although many were taken by surprise, the forum crew saw it coming. Bob had achieved his goals of a forum admin, changing the little forum it was into one of the largest, safest and most friendly forum in relation to Neopets. Many thanks and well wishes were given, and it is believed Bob had carved his name into the minds and hearts of the PPT members, whose legacy still remains.

After much deliberation, Bob handed his reigns over to Big Jim (British like Bob). Handling the affairs of the forum alongside the now longest running admin at PPT, Janie, the duo have paved and strengthened the way Bob and Janie started with the help out the global moderators, moderators and members. As of April 4 2003, the forum line up was as follows...

• Forum Administrators
  • Janie
  • Jim
• Global Moderators
  • CoolKau
  • Fiddelysquat
  • Kagome
  • Michelle_Belly
  • V3n0m0us
• Moderators
  • Airglo
  • atamand,
  • Bno
  • Charisma
  • CheezieHotti
  • ChromeFox
  • Count Von Roo
  • CragHack
  • CSK
  • Cyanna
  • FaerieGirl
  • Hunter Lupe
  • Infernobanjo
  • Lina Blade
  • MarcoBMG
  • Magax
  • Marching Duck
  • Mina
  • Neko
  • Nshade
  • Platypus
  • Raiden
  • Sam
  • Shy Divine Dragy
  • Stephy
  • Stodder
  • Werepup
  • White_Wolf
  • Winnerliu

The year also began a string of Forum competitions, and fads such as "lets-all-post-wav-files-of-our-voices" to "let's-make-silly-movies-of-each-other". The first ever large-scale forum competition began late 2002 and was dubbed the "PPTBIES". Modelled after the real life Logie Awards, the forum members old and new stepped up to claim awards. The winners were as follows...

• Most Valuable Person - Shoyru_Lover
• Outstanding Contribution - JanieJanie
• Most Influential - JanieJanie
• Best Moderator - Chromefox
• Best Female Member - Fiddleysquat
• Best Male Member - CoolKau and Bob
• Click That Topic - MichelleTheGoth
• Best Newcomer - Hunter Lupe
• Most Helpful - Cyanna
• Funniest Member - FiddelySquat
• Happiest Member - Sonchynne
• Most Generous - V3n0m0us
• Best Artist - Stephy
• Best Avatar - Stephy
• Good Grammar - Knitting Knut
• Bad Grammar - Yuvs
• President - Chromefox
• JailBird - MichelleTheGoth

Now considered an annual event, it led to other creations such as PPT Survivor (which still is in progression), Mina's MMAC (Mina's Monthly Art Contest) and Hunter Lupe's PPT Staff Sacrificers, which saw all male PPT members voted out first.

Early 2003 saw Hunter Lupe heading the new department at PPT called the In-Depth NeoQuest Guide. Growing very quickly, it is now one of the largest detailed NeoQuest sites on the internet, which contain complete walkthroughs and maps of the entire game. This department was created in anticipation of NeoQuest 2, which many people believe will take a long time before the actual game is released.

March 2003 saw the Work Shop department open at PPT. Encompassing tutorials on how to make models of various Neopets aspects; the idea quickly took on and received overwhelming support and good responses from the Neopets community. It is still currently being established and built.

Screenshot of PinkPT's third layout

During March 2003, the design of PinkPT was changed again. Opting out of the generic "blue" look all other sites seemed to now possess, PPT redesigned it's layout into a bold red, this time with the logo of the PPT Crew drawn by Mina as it's welcoming image. Once again designed by Hologram FX, the new layout expressed a cleaner and professional version of PPT. During this time, the first ever member to reach 10,000 posts was ChromeFox, a huge accomplishment considering the next biggest poster was behind by a few thousand posts.

Alongside all these new changes, came new staff. Magenta, Alex, Mermaid Hil and Swedevil joined the News Crew while PPT adopted the talents of Mina Kim and Lina Blade as artists. Stephy soon joined as the graphics artist at PPT, designing banners and buttons for various purposes. What PPT didn't anticipate this time however, was the range of talents it was now adopting. It seemed each staff member at PPT had more than one single talent. Magenta, while posting excellent news also was very well versed in graphic design, while Stephy, who was originally founded as a forum moderator was soon found to also be an incredible graphics artist. Hunter Lupe, who was also modding the forums was soon discovered to be a phenomenal scripter and after critically looking at the staff again, PPT soon found that each staff member was directly contributing to more than one aspect at PPT! As a result, the PPT forums started taking on a more otaku-ish path, everyone lapping up the design atmosphere fueled by Stephy's creations and Mina's art contests.

While these new developments were taking place, more sombre issues were occurring outside of PPT. Late 2002 to early 2003 saw what would take place in what is commonly known as the "Fan Site Wars". Many new Neopets related fan sites quickly sprang up and due to more than one website's immature attitude towards the entire game and taking the game way too seriously, a series of attacks on other websites, accusations, hackings, slander and libel quickly took place. PPT attempted to stay away from this as much as possible, only standing up for itself when the other website in question made a direct false statement against PPT. After the incident was finally resolved and a tentative 'peace agreement' was made between the other websites, PPT once again distanced itself from those websites for it did not wish to be a party to such events if they should occur again. PPT was created for the fans, and that's the way it will always be. It decided never to take part in any petty politics, which should never take place between fan sites. Just when everyone started breathing again, another round of rumours began circulating, while many of them were unfounded. However this time, the threat came from Neopets itself. Many fan sites found themselves under threat of having their websites removed unless they were in line with the Terms and Conditions set forth under Neopets. PPT went offline for a period of four days coincidently during this time, which started a fresh batch of rumours that PPT was removed which was untrue. However, PPT once again opened up after its short down time and put a definite stop to the rumours.

In April 2003, forum moderator werepup, fresh from a trip to Spain, joined the main PPT site as the newest webmistress of PPT. Dubbed Elle by the crew, Elle has given PPT the much needed female touch, as PPT was beginning to become too male orientated due to the over abundance of testosterone which was flying around everywhere.

Well there you have it. The third year so far has had many triumphs and tribulations while also its fair share of small problems, which were easily taken care of. I, Yukio, could not have taken PPT this without with the dedication and support of so many people. The forum mods, and GMs, the admins, the separate help of individual people, to list them all here would take forever. However some do stand out in my mind and I would like to take this opportunity to thank certain people: Janie and Bob for always being my "second parents" even though they didn't mean to; Elle for always being there to help out whenever she could; Jim, for spending countless hours talking about nothing with me; Sam, Hunter and Mike, the programming whiz kids with a "all-for-one-and-one-for-all" attitude; the news crew Magenta and Alexa, for being the anchor of the team, and CSK, V3n0m0us, Stephy, MichelleTheGoth, Mina, Lina, Pheny, Charisma, Cheezie and Michelle for just those random fun and crazy talks which seems prevalent among the PPT members. Lastly, Cyanna. While we hardly ever talk, you've always struck me as a very sensible, kind and fair person.

Year 2004

This is the year known amongst the PPT populace as The Great Reset. The forum databases crashed and everything was lost on April of 2004. Since then, the community has rebuilt itself, and nearly all 10,000 members who were part of the forums before the crash joined again, many under different names.

Year 2005

Screenshot of the PinkPT homepage viewed with Internet Explorer on November 2005

September 2005 saw the overhaul of PPT. With over 1,400 pages of content, the site re-organized its many scattered links on the front page into self contained categories to make the site user friendly. PPT additionally made a vow to itself to serve the visitors, by getting rid of all the pop up advertising and download prompts that once plagued the site. This was eventually realized in 2005, when PPT moved off the wh000t networks which was run by Yukio's friend at World of Britney. Although PPT still contains banner advertisements, the days of intrusive advertising were officially over.

With another redesign by Ben Williams of HologramFX, PPT now exuded a confidence in its bright colours. The forums grew to new heights, breaking its record of most users online (since the forum reset) of 149 on September 12, 2005, during the early days of the Lost Desert Plot. This online record has since been broken, but it became apparent the Neopets users were using PPT as a source of information before it became publicly available, which was totally fine by the PPTers.

Image Adam Powell created making fun of the PPTers

PPT also saw programmers of The Neopets Team posting on the forums to interact with Neopets players, even Donna Williams and Adam Powell. This would eventuate to Neopets changing the description of the Pink Poogle Toy on Neopets to "This lovely pink poogle moans about banner ads and frozen accounts when you squeeze it! :P". In fact, Adam Powell wrote "Detention for PPTForum!" on an image of the discovered NeoSchools area when members of the PPT Forum announced it before it was announced by Neopets themselves.

2005 also saw PPT open its doors to other Neopets fan sites. With the advent of all the new Neopets fan sites, PPT welcomed them by creating a large link database for everyone to join. The neolinks page listed some of the more prominent websites, but was always open to accept links to and from sites that clearly have shown a lot of effort in them.

In 2005, the PPT top sites, which opened and then closed due to hosting problems, re-opened. It's now the largest Neopets-related topsite in the world and is listed as one of the largest hosted topsites on iTopsites.

The PPT Oekaki flourished to new heights during 2005, making it one of the largest oekakis available. Now on its own dedicated server, the population has once again grown, and on March 3, 2006 had over 20,000 individual pieces of artwork created on it.

Also in 2005, PPT expanded its Neopets Help Program by posting Neopets news, and by adding the Neodex, Neopets-Layouts Graphics Department and the avatar catalo.

Year 2006

Screenshot of the PinkPT homepage viewed with Internet Explorer on February 2006

On March 2, 2006, a new website layout was created by Ben of HologramFX, replacing the previous layout which started to become cluttered due to the amount of content on the site, solved in the new design which categorized everything into distinguishable areas.

With the redesign of PPT finished, Yukio began to focus on creating a PPT news team for unreleased Neopets news, a comprehensive pre-template layouts section for users to have on their User Lookup, promoting the Avatar Catalog , and promoting the NeoDex and turning it into the most comprehensive place online source for all Neopets information. Eventually, he hoped the NeoDex to also be used by The Neopets Team for reference purposes for their work in addition to anyone who wanted to learn a little bit more about Neopets. Yukio also saw the potential to turn the entire site into an entertainment network, and eventually leverage the site traffic into other areas of his work.

During the appearance of the new design the "Write An Article Contest" begun to take full effect . Two months after its creation people were sending in many entries to Yukio, who quoted he had over 800 emails in his inbox waiting to be replied to in addition to over 60 contest entries to look at, add to PPT and judge on on March 4, 2006.

Another redesign was made yet again by HologramFX on August 13, 2006, making the previous pink colour purpler and reordering the categories the layout again. On August 15, the ‘’PPT Promenade’’ opened up for Neopets users to buy from. The PPT Promenade was a "mall" (collection of user shops) owned and maintained by users of PinkPT. The Your Neopet Dailies was also created on (need date), and contained several quick links, features, and many other things a user would daily do.

Milestones

• February 1, 2001: PPT is created.
• May 30, 2004: The day known as "The Great Reset" - which was the day everything on PPT was lost - mainly involving the forum.
• Thursday, June 01, 2006: PPT Breaks the 300 subscribers barrier to its feed including email subscriptions.
• Friday, June 02, 2006: PPT Forum breaks its most online users record - 178 on 02 Jun 2006 03:43 am.

Departments

Avatar Catalog

The Avatar Catalog is a premier source for all the Neopets avatars! Allowing users to register unique accounts, users an kept abreast of which avatars they have and which they do not by saving checklists that will remember what has been marked as "achieved" and has not.

In-depth Battlepedia

Main Article: In-Depth Battlepedia

The IDB is the world's most renowned source for Neopets Battledome information.

In-depth NeoQuest

Main Article: In-Depth NeoQuest

The IDNQ the first complete NeoQuest information site and remains the most comprehensive on the Internet for both NQI and NQII.

NeoDex

Main Article: Neodex:About

The NeoDex is the online wiki Neopets encyclopaedia and is the largest of its kind online.

NeoPool

Main Article: NeoPool

Added May 19, 2006, the Neopool was created to offer Neopians a more rounded visitor experience. Created to fill a void left upon the closure of Neocolours, the Neopool is the first in its kind to allow users to vote and rank Neopet species/colour combinations.

Trophy Catalog

Added May 31, 2006, the Trophy Catalog provides visitors with a checklist for all of Neopets' trophies, again a fansite first.

Other Features

Pink Ink

PinkPT's newspaper, which contains articles, stories and art pertaining to PPT, Neopets and other topics. It began in summer 2003, but the first issues were lost in the reset in 2004. Pink Ink returned on October 31, 2004.

Podcast

PinkPT produces a podcast called "The PPT Show." The first show launched on August 23, 2005. The show features discussion about the game Neopets but also features the latest additions to Neopets from the corporate world and how it affects its users. Show episodes are released weekly and the podcast is one of the largest Neopets podcasts in existence.

Custom Shields

PPT's Custom Shields are created by Mike, a veteran Neopian who ran with Ad0 back in the days of the great Neopian hackers. Proving immensely popular, custom shields are able to be requested by PPT visitors for creation.

The forum community

One of the more popular areas of PinkPT is the large community hosted on the phpBB forum. Within its walls, PinkPTers (a person who often visit PinkPT) converse about all things Neopets and many other topics. PinkPTers have been described as hard-working, fun-loving insane people, much as PinkPT is meant to be. With the help of the forum, a lot of content, and a great community, PinkPT has developed their own little slice of online culture.

Currently under the eye of the three administrators. Jim, the weird guy, handles the disciplinary side of things. Hunter Lupe handles the technical side of it. Runevalkyrie is more a watchful eye over the staff, as many things have gone wrong in its past.

The "One Black Meowclops Pen" experiment

The OBMP experiment was started by PinkPT user jrtman who was inspired by Kyle MacDonald's very successful One Red Paperclip experiment in which he started with a single red paperclip which he traded up until he received a house. Jrtman created the OBMP experiment to see if he could recreate ORP in the world of Neopets. A small webpage for the experiment was put up on his pet PrinceGrizzly's petpage explaining the experiment and listing the usernames of every person who contributed to it. The mission was to start with a single Black Meowclops Pen (worth around 2k Neopoints at the time) and continue to trade for slightly better things until the goal of a complete Secret Laboratory Map set (9 pieces) was reached successfully. The experiment was closed on July 16, 2006, due to lack of interest, and the final item, a Disco Petpet Paint Brush, was donated to the Money Tree.

Enemies

Despite the fact that PinkPT has such a wide fan base, it has also ranked up a number of enemies. As the largest Neopets fan site, many runners of other sites claimed that PinkPT is a site that encourages a multitude of problems, including spyware, viruses and hardcore pornography. Of course, this is not true. Though the websites sports a number of advertisements, the management makes sure that no illegal content makes its way onto the computer. Not only do other sites have grudges, but many older members of the community also return to antagonize the forums. Still, with over 4,000 members, PinkPT could be considered the largest fan site for Neopets.

Mascots

The most noted celebrity on PinkPT is the chicken, Arrow. In the beginning, it started out as an Emoticon, but this chicken has been officially raised to the 'mascot' of PPT. At the top of the forum, one can see the banner. There is a picture of Arrow, painted by the resident artist, the wonderful Yoshi. In various forms, during the holiday seasons, one can see Arrow in such forms as the roast chicken during Thanksgiving, and a Cupid arrow, during St. Valentine's Day Influences

The Pink Poogle Toy item on Neopets has had its description changed to "This lovely pink poogle moans about banner ads and frozen accounts when you squeeze it! :P", a playful reference to the members of PPT forums, many of whom frequently complain about various aspects of Neopets. A plushie featuring Arrow exists on Subeta, saying in its description: “Aww, it's a cuddly stuffed version of the PPT mascot!”.

A lesser-known mascot of PinkPT is the Oekaki community's mascot, Squishy - a peach-coloured blob sporting a black hat with the initials 'PPT' on its rim. Though it isn't clear exactly who or what Squishy is, this cheery rotund creature has a taste for muffins and has an ever-increasing collection of assorted hats and headwear. Squishy was the winning entry of a mascot contest held on the oekaki back in 2004, and was created by the current oekaki admin Gfaerie.

PinkPT's lost layout

Screenshot of PinkPT's fourth layout

PinkPT had a fourth layout, a pink one that briefly appeared for a few days before being taken down. It made a brief re-appearance during a template switching system Hunter installed but after an unfortunate server reset where a lot of data was lost including, all the forum files and databases, this template never re-appeared.

Trivia

• A former department, Neopets-Layouts, offering graphics and templates for Neopians started in (need date) was merged into PPT's main site on Tuesday, May 30, 2006 due to quality control issues. It was also used to complement the recently added custom shields section headed by Mike, a friend of Ad0, who is famous in Neopian folklore for hacking Neopets.

External links

• PinkPT
• PinkPT Forums