The ultimate Aaliyah fan site, AaliyahOnline.com, launches it's official DOT.COM domain. Various fan page admins come together and merge all of their sites into one big fanpage and work together providing magazine articles, fan facts, photography and so much more into one place.
The very first theme was a pink and white Japanese Anime theme style with a Japanese anime of Aaliyah as the intro (fan) art. I remember many fans were not happy with the art because it absolutely looked nothing like Aaliyah (at all; not even a little). They tagged their images with a Japanese calligraphy. See examples below: When the page first launched there WERE indeed some haters but eventually it slowly got the love it deserved.
The main administrators of the site was Dragon One (who owned the website Strictly Aaliyah), and Cheree (Owner of Angely Aaliyah).
Jay (Owner of 100% Aaliyah) was apart of the team starting out but left and reformed their website under the name "AccessAaliyah.com" with watermarks changing form "100% Aaliyah" to "axa".
There's no doubt in my mind that during Aaliyah's down time she visited this fan site and I am sure she was very impressed and honored. This fan site actually looked better than her official site and had more material to offer fans. I also loved that it supported other Aaliyah fan sites and affiliates; something so rare today as most fan pages gatekeep resources and hide credit to fellow peers they collect material from.
When Aaliyah died, the website had temporarily closed. I can't remember if it was just for a few hours or the entire day. I do remember when I learned Aaliyah died, I went straight to AO and it was just an all black page confirming that she did indeed pass away with a link to just the message board (temporarily). When the site came back up it was redesigned as more of a tribute (on the intro splash page) before you got to the main page.
People from all over FLOODED the message boards and website in general just to share their grievances, fan encounters, give support etc. and there was just an overwhelming amount of traffic that AO had a hard time keeping up. So much so they started asking fans for help (donations) to keep the site active. The administrator (Quinn) was even paying out of his own pocket and shared with the message board that he was having a difficult time paying his own bills and cost of living.
In late 2003, it was announced that AO would officially be shutting it's doors. They felt the site was encouraging unhealthy behaviors, “emulating her life to an unhealthy degree… idolatry… jealousy, undesirable living situations, greed, and corruption”, and chose to shut it down by December 31, 2003.
Angry whispers started to circulate that the donations were a front and that the admin had pocketed the money. However, per AOs closing statement "AO Donations will be returned via Certified Mail on 12/22/03 or electronically (the Pay Pal donations) on or about the week of 12/22/03". No official complaints or legal actions were ever made against Quinn in relation to any missing funds and the rumors of "stolen donations" was squashed.
Fans then started to flood the official Aaliyah.com message forums to the point it had to shut down the message boards due to high traffic to the site (side note: I was a moderator of the official Aaliyah message board and my username there was "Strawliyah" and always represented "Aaliyah Unleashed" [formally known as Aaliyah'z World] in my signatures).
Between 2003 and 2015, social media changed the game. Platforms like Facebook, Tumblr, and then later Instagram and Twitter (X) made it easy for fans to connect; no coding, no effort, just click and post.
Dotcom fan sites started fading anyway, especially if they weren’t mobile-friendly. AO was ahead of its time, and fans tried to keep that spirit alive with sites like ForeverAaliyah.net and even AOM.com (which was actually a FAN site of the AO fan site called Aaliyah Online Members), but crashes and tech issues made it hard and fans got frustrated.
Today, if it’s not fast, mobile, and app-ready, people just scroll past. Attention spans are short, and social media wins by making everything instant. Now? You don’t need talent, a degree, or design skills. Just download an app, pick a filter, and boom, a pro-looking banner or AI-made video in seconds. Fast, easy, mobile; that’s what wins attention today and many people thrive and make money off AI content with little to no designing skills like it was back in the early 2000's when AO was active.
