lightsabre - 1999 to now
the history of Lightsabre extends far further back than its july 1999 launch date.  from the earliest days of quest for freedom, before there was an internet available to the public, through the newbold-hicks productions era and latterly the roleplaying era, there has been a desire to collate the many hundreds of original characters, planets, starships and locations into a working guide.  originally started as a roleplay book, the setnin sector guide, Lightsabre's various guides have grown and developed over the time of the site.

the original intro page for the guides, and the cover for the proposed setnin guide book.
The earliest websites begun by Louis and Mark were basic sites, run off AOL webspace, and limited by the software and technology available at the time.
Fanta War was the very first website set up by Louis and Mark, concentrating on general sci-fi and Star Trek in particular.  As a first attempt the site was very basic but set the tone for the news gathering and journalistic approach of later sites.
Launching in the same month as Fanta War came The Q Continuum, a site that was predominantly Star Trek based.  The screen above, taken from the first issue, concentrated heavily on rumours for the forthcoming Star Trek First Contact.

wirezone circa 1998
wirezone was the site that held many of the earliest stories currently found on Lightsabre.  jan lomona and the sirens of amagad debuted there in august 1998, as did a number of short jonathan hicks tales and louis turfreys dark star rising, the black armour and twin souls.  Here's an example of the wirezone layout for sirens.  the site used comic sans ms font and a blue water droplet background.
in july 1999 Lightsabre entered the star wars internet arena.  named by louis, despite others wanting the site to be named after an original creation, the name stuck and soon became synonymous with all things setnin.
below are a sampling of the site as it has progressed, including the fonts and colours used on the sites pages.  regrettably no images exist of the very first layout of the Lightsabre site.

Design 2

Sadly nothing remains of the original Lightsabre site layout, which launched in July 1999.  The original site layout design was red and blue with a menu bar at the top of the page and using Times New Roman as it's primary font.  This was soon altered to the logo above, which set a design pattern that would evolve over the coming months.  Lightsabre's first webmaster Louis Turfrey ran the site for eleven months until handing the reigns over to Mark Newbold in June 2000. 

Design 3

Darth Maul became the face of Lightsabre during 2000, as the site continued to develop and new stories were added.  Back then the site had a title page, an image that welcomed visitors to the site, but slow loading meant that eventually that would give way to taking readers directly to the news page.  Designed and laid out by Louis Turfrey, this design stayed with the site for a number of months and introduced two Lightsabre staples - Tempus Sans ITC and the star tile background..

Design 4
A big stylistic change for the site came about here as Lightsabre continued to expand.  By now, Jonathan Hicks was at full flow and Louis was designing new starships and design ideas.  The fluorescent green logo came to the forefront, turning up on most new pieces and banners, and the site started to be seen in other places, namely Bantha Tracks, Watto's Junkyard and theforce.net.  The guides were brimming to full and the word was getting out there - Lightsabre was here to stay.   It was around this time that the interviews section kicked off, with our inaugural chat with Kevin J Anderson.
With the new century now bedded in and anticipation gearing up for Attack of the Clones the site continued to flourish.  With Lightsabre being mainly text-based the site needed a more visual flourish, and so Lightsabre embarked upon a new venture - the Setnin Select.  Based on the official sites George Lucas Selects, this intended to show the Setnin Sector in all its glory and featured work by Louis, Jonathan Hicks, Mark  and Jason Brown.

Stylistically set, Lightsabre could continue to grow and develop, often changing the front image, as shown here in these pieces by Louis Turfrey.  During this period Lightsabre reached the top of the Bantha Tracks chart, which back in 2001 was a big deal.

Design 5
A major change occurred in 2002 with another Louis Turfrey design change.  Now the intro page was no more and the site was pointed directly to the news page.  By this point the New Underworld Age was in full flow, the Setnin Select was well defined and Lightsabre was reaching a larger number of viewers than ever before, winning fan awards and sites of the week.

Design 6
2003 and another stylistic change as the site made alterations to both font and background image, leaving both Times New Roman and Tempus Sans ITC behind for Tahoma.  Using a smaller frame and an image by Louis, Lightsabre had its most professional look.  With Jonathan and Paul deciding to pull away from the site the regularity of updates slowed down, but the stories continued to rack up, passing the 200 mark in 2004.  Lightsabre continued on the net in this fashion until September 2004 when the site took a temporary break to allow time for a total overhaul, redesign, rethink and domain change.
a temporary design for the site by Louis, the first to appear in the new webspace.  while not the finished article, this came closer, lettering and style-wise, to what was desired.  while no new stories or articles were added during this time, it was yet another step in the evolution of the site.

design 7
the most popular incarnation of Lightsabre.  with this design, arranged by louis and mark from artwork by dan biesel, Lightsabre really flew, adding new interviews every fortnight, continuing the setnin select, bringing new stories and increasing the guides and a first for the site - daily updates with not only setnin sector news but from the wider star wars universe.  with the addition in october 2005 of setnin radio the scene was set.

design 8
the current design of the site.  designed by louis from artwork again by dan biesel this opened 2006 with a fresh look and a new image.  continuing the interviews and adding the webmasters interviews section, completing the upload of all chronology sections and planning the first audio dramas for 18 years, the site continues to flourish and grow.