Written by Neon Chaos.
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webmaster [at] soahcity.com
Though if you have a general question or items to submit, it’s best you travel to our forums.
On a dark and stormy day when everyone believed the world was about to end, December 31, 1999 to be correct, Neon Chaos (that’s me) opened up a new web site, Total Neon Network – the first incantation of SoaH. Before then, I had made a small Sonic site called Sonic Adventure: Total Neon that was on some free web hosting site that no one really visited. I saw that a Sega site, Sega-Zone, was accepting web sites for hosting and since they didn’t have a Sonic site, I applied for it and got the deal. With their traffic and more freedom to offer bigger downloads, the site was a hit. Later on (sometime in the late May 2000), Sonique wanted to know if we could merger sites together. She owned a Sonic web site called Perfect Chaos and she already worked on the SatAM video section for the Total Neon Network. It took a few weeks to get everything ready and to make up a new name for the web site. Finally, on Tuesday, June 20, 2000, Shadow of Light was created. Taking the words light and shadow that appeared on the Sonic Adventure 2 E3 Promo Trailer I created the name, Shadow of Light
Shadow of Light lived a good life, hosting some other sites as well, until the Game-Fan Network’s got shut down, taking Shadow of Light down too (we were hosted on Sega-Zone which in turn was hosted on Game-Fan). All of the webmasters went their own ways. I created Shadow of Sonic on Fortune City.
After awhile I got sick of them. Since I had gotten some money from my part-time holiday job, in the year 2000, I bought my own domain. So, Close to the Ground opened up on January 24, 2001 and was hosted by Webhost.FM. The site also featured Homework Jam, a mini-site with links to helpful web sites, and Close Your Eyes, my personal web site with all my works.
Then I come across PlanetDreamcast, a Sega site accepting hosting for Sega related sites and guess what? They didn’t have a Sonic site. On April 28, 2001 Close to the Ground moved to a new server at PlanetDreamcast and changed it’s name to Shadow of a Hedgehog (SoaH for short) at their request since Close to the Ground wasn’t Sonic related. The File Planet server allowed the use to have very large files, such as movies and music. With that, SoaH became the largest host in Sonic downloads.
In 2006, Game Spy had their sites moved to a different domain name, so I started using http://sonic.planets.gamespy.com/ instead of planetdream.com/sonic/ and they allowed us to have PHP support. However, on December 31, 2006 – SoaH’s 7th Birthday – we decided it was time to move on on out onto our own domain at soahcity.com.
And now you know how this site, and many others, came to be (if you cared in the first place). On every New Years Eve, we celebrate the site’s anniversary.
