Ending it all on a perfect 7
On April 6 2004, a tiny speck of a website was launched to show off some Halo trick videos - pretty much a little boat floating in the ocean of
HBO. Soon after, a phpBB forum followed, with a handful of people signing up who just loved to hang out and chat about Halo 1 trickery.
Then came Halo 2 - the explosive growth in traffic, great new community members, excellent Halo trickery, and plenty of madness. Then Halo 3, and...
Most of you know the rest of the story, and so here we are. However,
this year on April 6 - exactly 7 years to the day since HIH began - we're heading into cryo. It's been a long and amazing trip, but it's time that HighImpactHalo draws to a close.
The decision has been in the works for some time, and is ultimately made by me, but with the counsel of the HIH admin team - and it's a good decision. Many won't like it, but it's time. In web years, our site is like 487 years old or something like that.
The good thing is that we're not just 'shutting down' - we're going into cryo, following in the footsteps of a certain Halo character we kinda like. HIH, complete and entire, will be frozen on April 6, and will be locked but viewable, including all the content. Forum posts, archive forums, all of our huge HIH Trick Video Archives - everything will remain available as a testament to all the great people who have spent time here and contributed their talent to the Halo community.
To make this happen, we've come full circle - back to HBO where we first started. We've partnered with Louis Wu, who has graciously agreed to host every single bit of the content of HIH going forward. Most of our stuff is already there, but no 'switches' have been flipped yet. That will come later. I'm also maintaining a separate and complete copy of everything, with build packages, as protection against any sort of unexpected content loss.
Making this choice wasn't easy, because HIH after 7 years almost seems to be a part of my DNA, even though my personal contribution here has been little in recent times. I literally could not be more thankful for the relationships that have been created over the years in our little corner of the interwebz, and the sheer volume of FUN that this group of people helped to create for many of us.
SO, the entire point here is to the give the community some notice - slightly more than two weeks - and I would ask that everyone use this post as a place to drop by and writeup some favorite HIH memories, hat tips to past members, etc.
NOTE: for those of you viewing this on the front page of the site, simply click the 'comment' link below the news post to be taken to the forum post.
The one rule is that we keep it positive - we'll be removing anything that isn't. Let's take the old girl out on a good note.
Thanks everyone - I'll post another note on April 6.
-Duke