I wrote my first line of HTML on Microsoft Notepad in 2004 and fell head-over-heels for how magical it all felt. The problem I was solving in 2004? My Neopets shop page wasn't pretty enough. I was 12 years old.

I spent a couple days working up the courage to convince my parents to put their credit card information into form on a website and buy me a domain name. They did. And my first website was born. I learned everything—HTML/CSS, creating graphics in Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop, and getting my website live—by reading posts written by kids my age. Soon I started writing my own posts sharing my knowledge, my pitfalls, cool experiments.