This account right here: is now 6 years old....now I really feel like a senior.  It's amazing to see how much it's changed as the years go by. For the good.  Mind you. Despite the complaints of some people about DA's features you can do so many amazing things with DA that you never could before.

Taking a look back in time:

Badges- back then almost none existent. You only got a badge if DA staff themselves deemed you worthy of it. Or someone bought you some cake.

There were no such things as llamas. and with no llamas no llama accessories.

- They didn't exist. If you wanted to buy on DA you paid in cash via Paypal and you couldn't donate to other users. You could buy yourself a premium account or you could not. You could buy prints or a fella plush. And at the time the DA shop didn't have too much to offer as a selection either.

Premium memberships- in general it didn't mean crap back then. Not really at least as you didn't have jack to customize your page with and the page customization options didn't exist yet. The standard DA page for none premium members that you get when you create a new account now used to be amazing back then. From my knowledge I believe the only benefits of a premium account were the :thumb: option to display deviations in journals and comments, bragging rights and journal skins which were still a new thing. As skinning it'self was a fairly foreign subject and no one thought to make tutorials to cheat with it yet. So you were a happy compu geek or you were a sad deviant wishing you about graphic design.

Groups:

Before "PLZ" accounts which were also non-existent, there were no such thing as official "groups". DA did not have a group option or a super group option. There was also no way to affiliate. Groups were made by starting a new DA account and were run by a single brave soul who had to handle just about EVERYTHING. You joined the group by becoming a watcher and leaving a comment to join and were then placed in a section either in a journal or likewise with the :icon: option under a list that said "members" <- which was I imagine a difficult thing to keep track of. Deviations were submitted to a group in one of two ways- they would have a favs section highlighting the work you wanted submitted or you had to leave a note to the "group" aka the founder's DA page with the deviation titled "submission to the group". The founder would then take your deviation, save it to their desktop and reupload it in their gallery (or the "group"'s gallery) with a link to the original. " do not fave this deviation here, please go to the original on the artist's page and fave it there. Thank you." I will say, groups back then seemed to be a bit more active. DA was flowing with art contests then but you didn't really get anything for them besides bragging rights or free art.

Pages:

As I said before DA had little to no page customization. You certainly couldn't move the pieces of the page where you wanted and the Deviantart ID was none existent. If you wanted a DA ID you made one yourself. I forget the deviant who started the trend but it was just that, a trend that you would stick in your webcam box or show as your best deviation.  There were no slideshow options...that's fairly new. And back then DA was a lot less green and a lot more grey. The main page was a light grey with the DA bar being dark grey with a grey toned logo. There was no bar running at the top to showcase links around DA (such as the chat/groups/stash/prints etc) and there were no bar at the bottom showing deviations.

Stamps: Did not exist.

Stash: Did not exist. We had DA PORTFOLIO

Which is still around but no one uses....I think that's probably a good thing as the only point of DA Portfolio is to create a professional portfolio that is used by DA to show case and network works to actual artist and actual companies that pass by DA looking for artist. It's by no means a place for your sonic OCs.

Front page:
Only existed to display two things "DAILY DEVIATIONS" and "POPULAR WORKS". Popular works were based solely on page views per deviation which used to be a very hard thing to get back then as there were thousands less people on DA and more actual artists. So if you were popular you damned well deserved it because you were amazing. And Daily D's got the spotlight they actually deserved.

Emotes: the only emotes that existed were the ones in the list that pops up when you click it while making comments. Back then a new emote went straight to that list if DA staff liked it and many of those emotes were created by DA artists and from there kept growing every week to the list you see now. Eventually DA stopped adding to the list. I think that's another reason why "PLZ" accounts become so popular. Because of that.  The newest and coolest emote back then was the "Big grin" which turned the smile from this to this as animated gif emotes were new...and shiny.

Deviations:

On DA there were two types of deviations. Actual art or writing.  Digital art existed but was still a new subject as people still used Paint and the like. Bases did not exists either. Writing was actually a fairly popular subject. Animations were pretty non existent as DA couldn't handle flash.  You could not write a critique. There was no stash, as I said and uploading was a major pain in the ass as it was SLOW AS F***, especially for big deviations. Back then there wasn't a zoom in option but a "Preview" image for the deviation that was used instead which was usually the smaller version. Most people had to say "click for pic" or "download for full view plz" to see the whole thing.  

Muro: obviously did not exist.

News:
Most people would blog in the form of News articles as Journals were kept only on your user page and were sent out only to your watchers. If you wanted to spread your word you blogged via the News. Which was intensely popular and was a good place to announce everything from Commissions, dev meets, convention info and art contests to issues around the world.  It was very popular for people to make "features" articles to show case their favorite deviation from awesome artists in different categories from all over DA. The only thing was, the News was about one thing only, writing. You could not customize it unless you were DA staff. So that's when DA came up with public journals as skinning became more popular....I miss the news. ..also in journals people actually cared about your "mood" settings which were always displayed for the world to see.

Chat/forums:
They haven't changed...probably because little fucks are given about them but like starting a group you needed permission to host a chat.

Memes- at the time were almost nonexistent and new...the only sort of memes were pretty much art memes users made which were popular but actually good back then.. or shoop da whoop. It wasn't until 2010 DA got it's first real popular meme and everyone everywhere was turned into a Mudkip. And memes grew from there.


And there you have it.

Popular things at the time:

Pokemans- never goes out of style.
Yugimons- the original
Sailor Moon.
Sonic
Kingdom Hearts...2 was a huge deal for years
Harry Potter

ORIGINAL WORK- people were all about OCs instead of Fanart. Not that I have anything against fanart because I love it but it wasn't as common. Original work was.

Traditional art: was everywhere.

Photoshop- was for the rare, rich, smancy, digital artists who could afford it. Not many people owned tablets. Lack of Scanners and broken Scanners were the #1 reason for in activity.

Thanking people for Favs-
Was nothing to be pissed about it was just common courtesy.

There were also a lot less Porn as DA was about ART. And it wasn't cool to show your naked vag on the front page for views either. You'd be flamed to death for it and neither would DA showcase it as they actually cared about the front page and DA content back then. Your unsightly and unrealistic fetishes would also be flamed...I blame 4 chan for their existence.