The History Of llamalist

10 years ago was when I first joined deviantART as CoolKaius, a username I've had since I was 10. I always liked the emote, especially back then. I would use it as my mood in my journals when that was still a feature. I drew llama town being blown up in one of my old comics. The idea of a llama emote flying from the force of an explosion with its body not moving was always so funny to me.

8 years ago I was still in high school. I was a member of deviantART for two years back then. My interest in the site persisted because my idenity as an artist grew so much during that time. On April 1st, 2010 I was only able to get online for a short time. We didn't have internet at home. I returned the llamas I got because it seemed appropriate to do so. I didn't question it because it was their April Fool's joke.



On December 8th, 2010 I made llamalist. I was super surprised and relieved that such a good name wasn't taken. Tons of llama trading lists and accounts popped up everywhere. The craze was real. I began listing all of those projects in my journal. Here is the earliest recorded version of llamalist. You can see that I valued putting all the information on one viewable page. I didn't want anyone to miss anything. Remnants of an older deviantART are all over the page as well, both the site and web culture.


It took years for me to realize that organization is important. Many years of revisions have made the account's profile and journals what it is today.

The next recording includes a journal skin, but no core membership because there used to be promotional journal skins for movies and whatnot. During those promotions skins were free for everybody. You can see small changes in the page, but nothing much. Back then you could be 111 years old! I miss those days.

I finally started to find other people's llama projects to share. I became an admin of TheLlamaTraders before ever starting my own group. Back then the webcam widget was just a chance to showcase a random image from another site. It was useful because you couldn't put deviations in your journals/profile without a membership.

MOAR PLZ ACCOUNTS. MOAR GROUPS.

The black bar above the journal was the ad that accompanied free skins. The "click here to give me a llama" image is still on the page despite being put up 4 years ago. That was when I discovered the Llama Giver Button Creator. I finally made my own icon. That awesome badge that's always available only used to be true. :c

I started getting gift art. It was featured on the front page for so long before I cleaned up the whole page. I could no longer fit all the plz accounts in one widget.

The earliest days of my coding style started to emerge. My use of big text being what I'm referring to. I finally started to organize the information as it grew. I always thought "˩ℓαмα" looked cool when I copy/pasted it from someone else.

The journal is mostly the same, but I found more information for it. I'm collecting more and more cake badges. The Badges Hall Of Fame started when I figured out that some people gave a ton of llamas.

My name is now "drama llama", a popular phrase and I live in Antartica. The information has finally been separated into different journals. A very important update indeed.

The addition of dA's activity widget. Many people hated it because they feared dA was becoming more like Twitter or Facebook. Also: LOOK AT WHAT SPYED SAID. HYPE HYPE HYPE!!! Empty promises.

The only reason I got a core membership for llamalist was because of a buy one, get one free deal. I was already paying for core on my main account. You can see llama-list is now on the page. The layout is mostly similar to my most recent core membership layout, only more cluttered.

I still have the poll and custom widget, but no core because dA usually kept your core widgets until you edited the page again. Pretty sure they fixed that though. That or I was in the middle of backing up the core and non-core code when it recorded the page.

I hope you enjoyed my rambling about old dA. I've seen the site go through so many changes over 10 years.