Herpy
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| Herpy: Reptile Lovers' Community | |
|---|---|
 Herpy logo (2005 - 2009, 2010 - 2012) by D.O.P.R | |
| Author(s) | Website staff:
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| Website | |
| Status | User-uploaded |
| Launch date | February 28, 2005 |
| End Date | N/A |
| Genre | Multimedia archive, niche community |
| Rating(s) |  |
Herpy: Reptile Lovers' Community (formerly known as Herpy Image Archive from 2005 - 2009 and commonly referred to as Herpy by its community and visitors) is a website for herpetophile fans, artists, and writers.
Contents |
[edit] History
Herpy was established in February 2005 by Varka and BullGator as a reference resource for both artists and those interested in certain aspects of reptilian behavior and anatomy. It's additional non-founding staff include Dracokon, Xavos, and Venghze.
Based on its own server in Los Angeles, California, the site receives over one million hits per month. In October 2006 it passed a milestone of 1,000 registered members despite not being widely advertised in the fandom and continues to grow on a daily basis. The website was the victim of a defacement attack in November 2008 and was forced to go through a forum and gallery software update to ensure the same exploit wouldn't happen again. Herpy relaunched in April 2009 and has remained online without any further periods of large downtime and in August 2010 the forums were upgraded to run on vBulletin software.
The original Herpy logo was designed by D.O.P.R, a scaly artist who maintains a gallery in the "Artists" section. D.O.P.R.'s logo was retired temporarily in 2009 but later became the official graphic of the website once again with slight alterations to reflect the community's new name.
[edit] 4th Quarter 2008 Downtime/Defacement
In the early hours of November 11, 2008 an unknown group of trolls abused a security hole in Herpy's phpBB 2.0 software and crashed the website, deleting forums and threads and replacing most graphics with shock images. Herpy.net was taken down by Varka and replaced with a message that the forums would be restored and online again soon. The Gallery was the first to be restored to its original status and the forums themselves came back online in April 2009.
A post by BullGator on the Bad Dragon forums during the downtime mentioned when the forums re-open the community would be managed by himself, scaler, and Dracokon. [1] Upon re-launch Dracokon was the only member of the two mentioned in attendance so the staff position was given to him after a period of rocky transition.
[edit] Herpy "2.0"
Formerly a playful joke perpetrated by Dracokon on the forums, "Herpy 2.0" was a tongue-in-cheek reference to a number of upgrades and additions that he wanted to apply to the forums if given the opportunity. The name, originally "Herpy II", was dropped in favor of performing regular maintenance; however on August 24, 2010 when the community forums were upgraded from phpBB to vBulletin upon relaunch the forums officially adopted the "2.0" suffix for several months.
The "2.0" update brought upon numerous fixes and updates, the two largest and most notable bieng a built-in blogging system and a content management system planned for future use to be used as a hub for articles on reptile-related content.
[edit] Gaming
Many of Herpy's users are avid gamers. They can be recognized on various gaming platforms (Steam, Xbox, Minecraft, etc) with the clan tag "HRLC".
[edit] Contests & Giveaways
As an incentive to keep people in the community administrators Dracokon and BullGator have both held numerous giveaways at landmark Herpy milestones or on regular holidays. A list of previous giveaways is below starting with the most recent:
- Happy KONukkah (December 2010): Prints of reptilian/cetacean photography (Dracokon)
- Herpy Holidays! (December 2010): Temeraire books, figurines, & DVDs (BullGator)
- 24,000 Forum Posts (November 2010): MacFarlane dragon figurine (BullGator)
- Kon's Unbirthday (April 2010): How To Train Your Dragon promotional posters
- Herpy 5th Birthday (March 2010): Zeta stickers (Dracokon)
- 10,000 Forum Posts (February 2010): Spyro the Dragon & Ripto's Rage for PS1 and Dragon Rage for PS2 (BullGator)
- Herpy Holidays! (December 2009): "Double Croc" T-shirts, Dragonology calendars, & Komodo dragon figurines (BullGator)
- Herpy Holidays! (December 2009): Dragon Wars on DVD (Dracokon)
- 3,000 Forum Posts (May 2009): MacFarlane dragon figurine (BullGator)
- 9,000 Gallery Images (April 2009): MacFarlane dragon figurine (BullGator)
- 2,000 Forum Posts (Date Unknown): Godzilla DVD set (BullGator)
- Unknown Giveaway (Date Unknown): Life in Cold Blood documentary DVD set (BullGator)
[edit] References
- Herpy Hits 1,000 Members!, a September 30, 2006 post at BullGator's LiveJournal
- Herpy reaches 3,000 posts!, a May 26, 2009 post by BullGator
- Herpy gallery reaches 10,000 files!, a December 30, 2009 post by BullGator
- Happy fifth birthday, Herpy!, a March 1, 2010 post by BullGator