About

In the Beginning

The 'Fancy Rats' website was co-founded in May 2000 by Angela and her brother Darren. The idea being to provide information and resources to rat owners. It was hoped that the site would eventually help create a UK based, online community of fellow rat lovers.

Over the next few months the website was created. Angela, who at the time had been keeping rats for 4 years, used her knowledge and experience of rats to provide the content. Whilst Darren, a graphic designer, set about constructing the site.

Then on the 5 November 2000 the website was officially launched, or rather it was put online in the hope that people would visit. And visit they did....

How 'Fancy Rats' Has Developed

The first version of 'Fancy Rats' was a static HTML site, its pages being hosted on free webspace. A lot of the features which you see today were conceived in these early days, but all were painstakingly updated by hand. The overall design of the site was the same then as it is today.

In March 2001 the domain name fancy-rats.co.uk was obtained, although it was not used until later that year in August when the site was moved to more reliable, paid hosting.

Then on the 16 February 2002, after over a year in development, a new version of the site was implemented. This involved the site being completely re-developed to make extensive use of PHP (scripting language) and a database backend. This made the site much more dynamic, improving the functionality of a lot of the services and features, whilst also making it easier and faster to update the site.

Also at this time a forum solution was finally found that would provide the long promised Message Board. With this the original dream finally began to come to fruition and a community started to grow.

Of course throughout this time the site has seen the addition of many new features and has had several minor reorganisations. As well as being constantly updated with all of the things that have been sent by the ever increasing number of visitors. Including information and pictures about your rats, numerous 'E-Pal' registrations, obituaries and of course what seems like millions of 'Rat Name' suggestions (no one could ever have predicated its popularity!).

Spring Clean

May 2003 saw 'Fancy Rats' get its first design make over. The changes weren't dramatic, but were geared more towards improving readability of the user interface. We also decided to freshen up our logo. The 'Friends' section also became what is now 'Community' and was refocussed entirely on our forums to allow our members more control over the things that mattered to them.

The Future

Who knows what the future may hold for 'Fancy Rats'... but one thing is for sure if it continues to develop as it has done then we will be happy.