I founded my Winx blog 11th June in 2011 so this year it’s going to be the 15th anniversary of my blog <3 Back in 2011 kids having their own Winx blogs and websites was a huge trend: there were tens of Finnish Winx blogs made by fans. I followed some of them and soon jumped on the band wagon and created my own one inspired by them.
I started with a popular free blog platform called Vuodatus. Unfortunately, Vuodatus got updated and writing in html got disabled, which turned my blog into a mess. Most of my pictures vanished and the codes stopped working. I started searching for a new and a better platform and found Blogger. I’m so happy I moved there since most of the other popular blog platforms have been shut down, but Blogger still exists and works very well!
I consider the time between 2010-2013 as the golden era of the Winx blogs in Finland. New blogs popped up monthly and people, the authors and the readers, were actively interacting with each other: they’re writing on each others’ guest books and leaving nice comments to the blogs. We founded Winx Clubs of our own, participated in different contests of the blogs, roleplayed, made Winx edits as gifts to each other… I really miss these days :’) <3
Later most of the blogs got shut down when the authors grew up and stopped liking Winx. Seeing one blog getting shut down after another made me sad. Mine was one of the last ones standing till 2014. Then I started high school and started studying for the entrance exams, and after that started studying in other schools/unis and became a stressed and busy adult and put my blog on hiatus since my life situation had changed so much.
In 2020 I came back to see if everything’s still okay with Blogger and my blog. Well, the Flashplayer had shut down so almost all of my page plugins had stopped working. Let me tell you, I couldn’t do any coding and I wasn’t good at editing pictures either, so I used to follow many blogs, where people posted their edits and codes (for example, for the update boxes) for you to use freely. Most of my pictures were from the other blogs, but when so many of the blog platforms (like Freewebs etc.) shut down, also most of the pictures vanished. There were also many websites where you could create glitter texts, glitter pics (Blingee), copy a code to get a fortune teller or a secret code, puzzles, virtual pets, polls, hug counters… Literally anything! But they were flash-based and stopped working. And when Blingee shut down, I lost all of my edits and comics (almost all of my edits were made via Blingee).
I also created my own Finnish Winx forum on a free forum platform, but the platform got shut down and got you re-directed to some shady quickie loan websites. The server of my guest book stopped working too. I also had many hug counters (you could click the picture to “give me a hug” and the amount of hugs received were shown in the picture) but their servers got closed too and they started re-directing you to even shadier websites… :S So I panicked a lot and started removing this kind of broken and re-directed links from my blog. Seeing my blog being so empty really let me down: no glitter pictures or texts, nor fun page plugins. It felt like all the time I’ve spent on updating my blog was done for nothing. I continued my hiatus. So I never stopped liking Winx but I partly gave up on hosting a blog.
The years have passed but after all I never stopped thinking about if I should re-start blogging. I missed doing something creative. I found an active Winx fan community on instagram a couple of years ago and created my own Winxstagram account, which turns 3 years old this year. I also started re-collecting Winx dolls and merch as an adult. Despite having an ig acc and enjoying photographing, I was missing my old blog and a more text focused platform.
2 years ago I found out that there’s a fan-created re-creation of the Winx Club Online website and the forum, which was my number one website when I was a kid. (I’ll make a whole post about this topic later!) Thanks to the people on the forums, I learnt a way to find so many of my lost pictures via internet archives. I spent a couple of years learning how to find lost websites and pictures, since at first it seemed like everything was gone. But last summer I found some of my old pics I thought I lost for ever, and after digging and digging even more deeply I started finding more important pics. I found out that people have restored the old flash games which were lost for years, and I started digging new alternatives for the other flash stuff I lost and I actually found a new website where you can make jigsaw puzzles for your website etc. And finally in the beginning of 2026 I’ve found enough stuff to start restoring my blog and I can proudly announce that my blog is active again! I’ve already restored the jigsaw puzzles, secret code makers, polls etc. and many flash plugins, my comics and many of the most important pictures. Some pages, like galleries, are still under construction since I haven’t found all of the pics so I’ll probably edit new ones and add them there. But the most important pages have been fixed now, and there will be lots of new material to come! :)
Btw, if you’re wondering why I even have the rules and “Don’t copy” banners everywhere, it’s because I want this blog to be like the blogs in my childhood and I appreciate the fun traditions there used to be. Everyone had the rules on their website, the golden list (for the nice people) and the wall of shame (where the trolls were listed on) etc.The most of the content of the blog were made by me when I was a child and I want to respect the younger me by keeping the content as it is :’) Also having a blog (overall) with different kinds of banners, update boxes and glitter pics feels like retro nowadays :D So if there’s something childish, it’s probably because the author WAS a kid. And I’m not a grey and severe adult now either XD
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