From humble beginnings, our staff first launched Destiny Islands back in August 2007 as a Kingdom Hearts fansite passion project. Over the years the site has taken on many changes.
But this summer of 2024 might see one of our biggest changes yet – and ironically enough, it’s barely a change at all.
If you ever used our website back between 2010-2016 you might remember we had a typical theme that worked great for its era. Here’s an archive of it.
The only problem was that this design was originally built & coded in mid-2010, back when responsive web design was just becoming a thing. Heck, even smartphones were just becoming a thing.
But that theme worked well, and Destiny Islands flourished under that desktop-focused website design – so we ran that theme into the ground.
Eventually we realized we needed to get with the times and get the site working on mobile.
We tested a lot of theme ideas to fill the void, with various changes of themes for v5 and v6, but ultimately we agreed that our previous DI v4 design was some of our best work.
So over this summer we put our heads together to give DestinyIslands.com a fresh coat of paint – well, “fresh” in the sense of taking a 2010-era website design and prettying it up. But this time we really went all out by adding unique JavaScript for UX improvements, clearer page design elements like responsive tables, improved typography, sleeker color choices, and lots of other little things.
This has lead to a theme with a user experience that feels great on all devices.
There’s a lot more work still to be done, and the site still has dozens of pages that we’re actively working to improve upon and build out.
But this blog post is an announcement (and celebration!) of our v7.0 theme launch. Consider it the new UI/UX baseline for the future of Destiny Islands.
Our DI v7 theme is the story of one team’s hard work, perseverance, vision, determination, and sweat.
We hope you enjoy.