What's The Backstory Of Hipforums?

Hippy.com is going to be 20 years old on the Fourth of July.

She was born in Amsterdam after being thought of on the island of Anguilla.

While created offline, we used an Internet Cafe in Amsterdam to upload the beginnings of what has become HipForums.

Originally created in HTML, it has gone through a few upgrades over the years

 

There was no login, no registration, no mods.
No YouTube, Google, Facebook, WikiPedia, etc. The best source of information I could find in those days was B.J. Pinchbeck's Homework Helper which was started by a 9 year old kid and his dad and was just a list of web sites, it's still active.

There was no way to stop others from using your user name. I used to sign on as Me (highly original), but then others started doing the same thing so I included "again" and never changed it.

Skip, and others I presume, ran it at their cost as there was no way to contribute money to the cause and no way to post ads. There was a lot of discussion at one time about making it mandatory to pay a fee, but Skip refused to do that as he wanted everyone to have access. There were a few times when it was on the verge of going under as servers cost money. For a while if you wished to contribute you had to send a paper check.

There were also some strange goings on from time to time.

 

I sure am enjoying hearing all these comments -let's get Skip to take a look and maybe he'll enlighten us further.

 

I am enjoying hearing these stories Meliai - and I do enjoy being here on the HipForums every day now. :rockon:

 

As I recall all I had was dial up. There were no cell phones and only one landline into the house so I used to get in trouble for tying up the phone. I think I used Netscape for a browser which evolved into Firefox, I believe.

 

We are indeed approaching the 20th Anniversary of Hippy.com, the original site, where these forums were born in 1996.

Back then, Hip Chris and I were business partners and all stressed out from running three bizes simultaneously.

So we decided to forego the greed and unbridled capitalism of the USA and start an Internet biz free of the rigged system.

We hoped to start an offshore Internet company in the Caribbean (not just a bank account!)

But it wasn't a feasible location at the time for technical reasons that soon became obvious, as the island lost power for 3 days.

Brainstorming an idea for our first Internet website, I wrote up a list of what things interested me the most (cause being a businessman didn't).

Looking at the list, I couldn't help but think back to a time when I'd been a "hippie", because the list sounded like priorities I'd long abandoned when I lived a more carefree and less stressful lifestyle. Hip Chris had likewise been living that lifestyle in the Caribbean for many years, but working too.

So we registered hippy.com and got our first webpage online! It wasn't supposed to be more than a proof-of-concept, or me learning how to create an html page and post it online.

The first page was nothing but links to other websites. In fact, in 1996, that's about ALL THERE WAS FOLKS...

Webpages linking to other webpages. Looking for content? Good luck!

That became painfully apparent. And a quick pre-google "search" indicated that there wasn't much out there for anyone not in Technical institutions, much less ANYTHING counter-culture.

I could only find one or two pages at the time that mentioned hippies, but with little content.

I figured hippies would be somewhat alienated from technology (little did I realize at the time, it was hippies behind the personal computer and Internet revolutions).

It was apparent someone had to fill the information gap, or the history might be lost forever, once the Web was woven by those with other agendas.

Most people still living the hippie lifestyle in 96 were either living on communes, gone underground, or maybe hanging out in a place were there's good weed, like Amsterdam!

So yes, we ended up in Amsterdam, dragging our newly christened internet business with us.

There, we worked on the site, doing research on the hippy movement, creating new html pages on different subjects with links to newly born websites of interest to hippies like Psychedelics, Music, Sex, etc.

And soon we started posting up emails from those visiting Hippy.com.

To add more interactivity, we put up Question of the Week, and we'd compile the email responses and post them up each week.

Soon it became apparent that we needed more that just a few html pages in one category, so more categories were introduced, like Ask the Old Hippy.

And then we couldn't keep up with it manually, so we got our first automated system that could accept direct postings.

For a short while, it was possible to keep track of each new post and even respond to each. But then the Internet exploded and Hippy.com with it.

The traffic coming in required us to upgrade our server and software. So we finally got a good program with vBulletin (I wish we still had it!).

And that was the birth of the Hip Forums.

Our research on hippies resulted in our first published book, Hippies from A to Z.
It was published in 1999 and included a compilation of postings from visitors to Hippy.com, as well as many chapters I'd written as well as content I'd posted on Hippy.com.

After the book sold out, we ceased publication and put the book online for all to enjoy for Free. No reason to kill trees to send the message. At one point the book was selling used for hundreds of dollars because it was assigned to students and it was no longer in print!

The hipforums are no longer as active as they once were. The Internet is now a crowded place, and most ppl are addicted to one or more of the big social media companies that record everything they do and sell the information to businesses and the government. It's sad that the Goliaths get to crush the little guys on what was once an even playing field (no longer!)

But we are still here, keeping on keeping on...

And so are you! Keep on trucking and spreading those hippie values to the younger generations!

Peace and Love to you all!
-Skip