To expand on the podcast idea, I would be talking about the latest Linkin Park news, play some recent live tracks, aswell as latest LPP updates and stuff from around the Linkin Park community.

Also, yes, the navigation bar has been removed from all pages, and only the blog and forum are accessible. That is intentional. And finally, if you haven’t already, please go download Firefox 3. It is by far the best browser out there.

For those of you who are not familiar, W3C is an organization that strives to set standards and guidelines to “lead the Web to its full potential.” By having the xHTML, CSS, & RSS all be W3C valid, that means the site will look as intended in all browsers.

So hear is a list of some of the updates the site will be getting with v2.0:

At this time I expect that we should be done by the end of the month, hopefully sooner! I will be posting updates a couple times a week as we make progress, including some screenshots.

-J

Feel free to speculate.

We will use this blog to keep you guys updated on our progress, and preview new features!

Right now, we are interested in suggestions that you guys have for the new site. Is there something you really like? Something that annoys you? Features you would like to see? Let us know by commenting on this blog post to let us know what you would like to see in v2.0.

 I can tell you that v2.0 will feature a complete media section, before anyone suggests that lol.

-J

Then Liam(Shay) was added as admin one day while I was at school. He made some hella cool changes and adds on the site, but I had no clue who he was and why he was on the site. We beefed for the longest. He told me I over babied the users and I believe I said he was a Jackass. I tried to talk to Spin but he told me, Liam is my main man, I trust his choices. So I am having issues with someone of the staff and the site owner wasnt going to do crap about it. I was soo close to quitting. J had also gotten promoted to SMod and he noticed the tension between Liam and I. We never made it seen on the MB because we were better then that but believe me, there were days, I wanted to go through the computer and strangle him. I was soo ticked with Spin I was threatening to quit the site. I mean how could I work with someone who had Spin’s approval for anything his heart wanted to do and I couldnt even get a “we will talk this out as a team” from the owner. I took the issue in my own hands and Liam and I settled our issues. We worked great with each other then, he had his fall out with Spin. Azk was inbetween SMod and leaving and soon J had been promoted to Admin. He made Nox Smod and things seem to work until he got into a beef with a nother member and “left”. By this time, I was highly stressed. Spin had gotten to the point where he was never around for me to ask him about the site and he avoided me for the longest, I was soo mad, I was feelin hate towards the site, so i made the decision that I was going to leave. J refused for me to leave. LMAO now not that he could make that choice for me, but he told me that I needed to take time away and get my head together. So I was going to take two weeks off. Sadly those two weeks turned to 3 weeks because my beloved dog Ginger passed away in my arms during that time, and I just couldn’t bring myself to be active. When I finally did come back, I was still admin, and the site was going through change. Nox was made admin and they were getting ready to change FMW to MachineShopSpot. I sat back and let them do their thing. My named had changed from Thebytchfit to thepickletickler back to TheBytchfit .Now that I think about it, I really didn’t do much for the change. I kept the forums clean to help who ever was the smod at the time and the boys made the site all cool and stuff. We were content. Spin had pretty much stopped showing up on the site because his other site was his main focus so we had all the control. We had our first annual site award polls goin and we were content. My name finally changed to Darth Peanut. However a few months later something happened we had no clue was brewing.

One day, I was at home coming to log in when the site no longer loaded. At first I thought it was my connection. But I had a perfect connection and when i tried again, the site didnt load. I was freaking out. I didn’t know if we had gotten shut down by Warner for something stupid, or if we had crashed. When I got a hold of J needless to say, he was mad and so was Nox. We were thrown in the middle of a fall out between our site owner and the server host. We suffered for it. The server host was nice enough to let us run the site under a few rules and we tried to look at other options before Spin decided to show us that he was an asshole and have our site redirect to another new site. We had alot of words for him and he aimed me before I found out what was going on. Weird. He avoided me for the longest then out of no where messages me and shuts us down without telling us. He made it on a list I have that no one ever gets off of. Along with that, we had do do something quick. We were left with a pile of issues in regards to the site and through the combined efforts of myself and some nice donors, we got a new site thus LPP being born. I offically and finally decided that Darth Peanut would be my name and I’ve stuck to it. It was a rough start. We lost a lot of members when the site changed. People going to MachineShopSpot, thought we had changed our name to HipHopSphere and was joining the site there. It was depressing but we knew we would get over that. Besides, Spin was using OUR name to get people to go to the site. how sad is he?

It has been a long road. Over a year in the making. I must say, I wouldn’t change any of the Admins. I work well with them, despite that I am the only female between us. It takes alot for me not to like a person, and you really have to do something to make me irked. After reading J’s post, I felt the need to post my side of how it came to be and how i became admin. A girl named Streets having some idiot kid want to mack my site as his own. Now I’m Darth Peanut, nearing 21 still admin and not as hands one. Though I do host some of our contests. I still not as hands on but who knows.

As some of veterans probaly know, the Linkin Park Projekt is a result of MachineShopSpot.net, however, only few of you around when the site was reallyborn. So, and some of you FortMinorWorld vets may have to help me out, here is my account of the origins of the Linkin Park Projekt.

It all began way back in early 2006. Spin Doctor and HipHipFoundry decided to start up a fan site for a new hiphop act that was coming out, as Spin Doctor had just been to their show in Australia, and was a big fan of the album. Who was this new hiphop act? Why, none other than Fort Minor. The site: FortMinorWorld.com. At the time, I was a pretty big Linkin Park fan, and had recently downloaded the first single, “Remember The Name”, off of HipHopFoundry, and loved it instantly (still my favorite Fort Minor song). I bought the Special Edition, and to this day it is still in the first slot in my CD Changer. Then one day, as I logged on to HipHopFoundry, I noticed this thread. It was annoucing the new site, Fort Minor World. I immediately jumped at this as a chance to start up a web site, and so I joined up and posted that I was interested in a moderator position (see my reply in that thread, #4). That day, I got an IM from Spin Doctor, and he offered me a postition on the staff, and I of course accepted. I had never been a moderator before, as I was only just starting to become interested in forums and online communities of the like. He taught me the basics, and I learned all the rest pretty quick. The other moderator of the first FMW staff? Why, none other than the lovely Streets, aka Darth Peanut. At first she was not active, because of school I believe, but once she got active, we became quick friends. Some other early members of Fort Minor World who are current members of the LPP include Creep Show Host aka DJ Devil, Azk aka Praya, and Oscum Guy.

The first contest was a referral contest, and the winner got a signed copy of the Rising Tied. I won that contest, but have still not received my prize. Spin Doctor said he forgot to mail it the first time I asked, and then from there I kept getting more excuses, so I just gave up on asking. Whether or not he really had a signed copy for me, I’m not sure. But thats not important. Oh, and another thing I remember. When the site first opened, Hahninator got on us about some spelling errors Spin made. Now me and him chat almost daily. Funny how that works.

The continued to grow over the next couple of months. Some key members, such as LPryane & LPSoldier joined during that time, and every was going pretty well. Then, couple months in, if I remember correctly, a new admin joined. Who was that admin? His name was Xquisite, but you may know him as Shay. He was helping Spin Doctor run his “Hood Playa Network”, as Spin Doctor had left the HipHopFoundry Network, and was starting up his own. Shay brought valuable knowledge and community network experince to the team, and he is probaly the reason why FMW & MSS had such good page ranks on Google (I know you did more than that, I just don’t remember, or they were done on the back end). However, Jes and Shay did not get along too well, and that led to some arguements. But they were able to talk it out, and no longer butt heads (if they ever did butt heads, again, my memory on that is poor). Eventually, Shay and Spin Doctor had a fallout, and then Shay was no longer admin. It was around that time that I was promoted to Super Moderator, and Jes was promoted to admin. I was then promoted to admin shortly thereafter (I dont remember the occasion).

Then one day, we got a new member. His was Pliskin (didn’t think I would remember huh lol). He soon proved to be a very valuable member, active, and talented with graphics and raps. Today, you may know him as Noxious. He was quickly made moderator, and proved to be a very important member of the staff. At that time, we were undergoing some “drama”. Praya, who was then a super moderator, was leaving and coming back, and Noxious was almost begging me to make him Super Moderator. Finally, I did. But not shortly thereafter, Noxious got fed up after arguing with someone (Don’t remember who, may of been Jes), and asked me to remove his moderator position. I did, but then a short time later he came back and asked for his spot back (imagine if he didn’t do that).

Around the summer of last year, we decided that we needed to change our site name, as the Fort Minor project was begining to slow down, and if we wanted to keep the site active, we would have to change accordingly. Many names were suggested, but eventually we choose MachineShopSpot.com, as we thought we could capture the most new members by being dedicated to Fort Minor, Styles of Beyond, Holly Brook, and Linkin Park, who at that time were not doing anything. We were able to change our name, but our site url remain fortminorworld.com, as Spin, instead of transferring the data to the domain, just forward machineshopspot.com to fortminorworld.com (Lol Nox STILL has fortminorworld.com linked in his signaure at FMMB). So for months we went with our name as Machine Shop Spot and our url as fortminorworld.com. Then finally one day late last year I spent a hour chatting with the host of the site fixing it.

Over the next couple moths MSS got pretty active, and I made a name for myself by providing sometimes the only rip of interviews or other appearances. Noxious designed our first real and updated layout for the site, which many of you may remember. Eventually though, activity began to decrease, and we hit our first slow time since the site opened.

But, then one day late last year, as I logged on to MSS, it wasn’t there! I quickly IM’d cen3 aka skip (who knows Brad Delson’s dad, who owns BandMerch.com), the host of the site, and asked him what was up. He informed me that he and Spin had broken off business relations (I won’t go into detail, as its complicated and probaly shouldn’t be posted). In the end (*it doesn’t even matter*), I decided to go and switch to MachineShopSpot.net, to save the site. In that process, I also become the new owner of the site. Eventually however, as site activity slowed down worse than before, myself, Jes, and Adam realized that it would probaly be better to switch to Linkin Park based site, as the new album was on the way, and that would attract the most fans. So I bought the domain, and the rest as they say, is history!

Even though today I dont really like Spin Doctor, and run a rival hiphop site (OUU…he runs HipHopSphere), I would like to thank him for giving me that moderator spot, because if he hadn’t, LPP probaly wouldn’t exist. Also, thanks to Nox, Jes, LPSoldier, and everyone else who I’ve met since then, who’s made all my hard work worth while.

Feel free to recall fun memories from FMW/MSS, or to point out any mistakes I made in recalling it, or to add something.

On a side note, there may be a major, and I mean major, addition to the site this week or next week, but I can’t tell you what, as it’s not for sure. Feel free to guess.

Thanks, and here’s to y’all for making LPP kick ass,

-J

 Thanks to a nifty plugin, all members can log in to the blog with your forum username and password! Non staff members are classified as “Subscribers”, meaning you can post comments on articles, moderators will be classified as “Contributors”, and us admins will be, well, admins.

If you have any suggestions, feedback, would like your blog to be added to your blogroll, would like to contribute an article, or just want to compliment us on our work, feel free to contact me, Adam, or Jes.

-J