Once Upon A Time...
Long ago, before social media took over the internet, personal websites were everywhere. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, places like GeoCities gave ordinary people their own little corner of the web—a place they could decorate with themed web sets, graphics, animations, guestbooks, and anything else that caught their fancy.
Virtual pets and adoptions were especially popular. People created pages for their little cyber pets, joined webrings, visited one another's websites, and left messages in guestbooks and, later, tagboards. Following links from one site to another could lead you through an entire community of personal webpages.
One of my favorite places was The Mousepad, a website created by a graphic artist known as Vikimouse. That was where I first discovered her adorable little mice that could be adopted, along with all sorts of accessories that could be used to create mouse houses of your own. Before long, I discovered entire mouse towns and communities scattered across the web.
I adopted my own little mouse family, the Niblets, who became residents of Vikiville—a thriving community filled with mouse houses and businesses belonging to other website owners. You could actually travel down the virtual streets, clicking from house to house, visiting neighbors and leaving messages along the way.
Eventually, The Mousepad disappeared. GeoCities followed in 2009, and many of those little mouse houses vanished with them.
But I never forgot.
Vikimouse and her wonderful graphics were part of what inspired me to learn Paint Shop Pro and helped begin my love of country-style web graphics. Years later, nostalgia sent me digging through my old flash drives, where many of those tiny pieces of the old web were still waiting for me.
And so, Cheddarville was born.
Cheddarville is my little tribute to Vikimouse, Vikiville, and all those wonderful mouse houses that once dotted the internet. It's a place for my little mice to live again—and for me to remember an internet where visiting someone's website really did feel a little like stopping by their home.
If you'd like to visit, Missy Mouse is waiting to show you around. Click below.
A little note from Jen: Cheddarville is graphic-intensive and may take a moment to load. Because the town is built from individually placed graphics, it is best viewed on a desktop or laptop and is not designed for mobile devices.
The graphics used within this website are copyrighted to various graphic artists and are not public domain, nor are they available for download from this site. Please visit the links provided if available. Cheddarville's Town Buildings © Caboose Designs.
