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History of MLPF dive

Snow

Entry posted by Snow in MLPF

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Instead of watching some guitar videos and practicing like a responsible me should have I once again procrastinated and of all things went looking for old user accounts on MLPF :jazz-hooves-please:
Found out some neat history/trivia too.


MLPF went live on the 3rd of October 2011 and is hosted by the service Invision Community  https://invisioncommunity.com/
Not super relevant but interesting to me is that the official Warthunder forum use to be hosted by Invision as well https://old-forum.warthunder.com/

A lot of early members who already knew one another including MLPF's founder(s) came from a place called "3DS Forums" can't say I'm familiar. 
I see a lot of people were aware of and waiting for MLPF to go live many joining right after launch.


This is a generalised timeline, dates and numbers may in actuality vary quite a bit.
I am lead to believe 46(-1) members joined on day one October 3, 2011
100 members was reached October 4, 2011
500 members was reached  November 20, 2011
1000 members was reached January 7, 2012
10,000 members was reached November 22, 2012

Before I go any further I do ask that you look with your eyes my little ponies :grin: It is probably for the best that a lot of these threads and especially the profiles are not disturbed.

Here I have compiled the first 10 users of MLPF, the first two users are the founder and co founder, despite my best efforts I cannot seem to find user #3 or confirm if there even was one.

https://mlpforums.com/profile/1-twilight-sparkle-✨/
https://mlpforums.com/profile/2-kurtiss/
3?
https://mlpforums.com/profile/4-vinyl-scratch/
https://mlpforums.com/profile/5-plnkle-pie/
https://mlpforums.com/profile/6-lyraheartstrings/
https://mlpforums.com/profile/7-butterfly667/
https://mlpforums.com/profile/8-spiders-claw/
https://mlpforums.com/profile/9-pony-joe/
https://mlpforums.com/profile/10-octavia2/

As well as members I also took a look at some of the oldest topics, once again choosing to list out the very first 10 for you.
Topics 1 through 5, 7 and 9 are posts in the Welcome Plaza, many being from the first 10 members, please do not reply to any of these :twi:
The outliers for this batch are topics 8, and 6.

https://mlpforums.com/topic/1-my-little-introduction/
https://mlpforums.com/topic/2-oh-well-hello-everypony/
https://mlpforums.com/topic/3-lets-get-it-started/
https://mlpforums.com/topic/4-hi/
https://mlpforums.com/topic/5-whats-up/
https://mlpforums.com/topic/6-s02e03-lesson-zero/ Now this interests me as well, being the first episode related post on MLPF, it was uploaded October 3, 2011. S02E03 aired October 15, 2011.
https://mlpforums.com/topic/7-danger/
https://mlpforums.com/topic/8-so-far-so-great/ Posted in Feedback.
https://mlpforums.com/topic/9-hey-everypony/
10?

Not very diverse and when I originally posted I had  yet to find topics 6 and 10 so you get some more. (Thanks @Captain Salty Scribbles for pointing out 6)

https://mlpforums.com/topic/11-3ds-thread/page/6/#comment-6127593 And how's that, a thread for the 3DS mentioning that 3DS forum.
https://mlpforums.com/topic/12-wheres-lyra-sitting-lyra-photobomb/ :devious: I'm just about to Necropost ol' 12 here.
https://mlpforums.com/topic/13-the-banned-game/ the incredibly popular to this day "Banned game" is one of the oldest, who knew.


What luck as well a post in topic 12 shows us how MLPF use to look, I swear I do remember this look from when I first joined in June 2016 :dash: 
This is marked as October 8, 2011 so a very early glimpse indeed at how things use to be, and no that Lyra is an edit made for the previously mentioned topic, she was not originally there.

I have also added some screenshots from today, September 12th 2024 for comparison and future reference.

Spoiler

Posted Image

The original image keeps breaking so I'll upload this copy next to it.

image.thumb.png.283a93f512ee5c0c44bb8616657d389e.png

Spoiler

image.thumb.png.5a8a1823a3f2876cfbc030177e3b4f0f.png

 I zoomed out in this second picture to try and make it look similar to the old example.

image.thumb.png.c08ce54ea5c8940c9aabbf2398015d13.png


Interesting to note the loss of the Cloudsdale Colosseum, I dug up this topic from May 2012 explaining the change.
https://mlpforums.com/topic/16473-cloudsdale-colosseum-section-split/   


Some extra bits I don't feel like fleshing out at the moment:

Like mentions of a "chat room"  that we no longer have

Finding when the switch to this new look was made / a topic on it (I'll maybe look for it later)

There is a lot of juicy info and screen caps on the post for MLPF's first birthday I could draw from 


I also found this post marked as being from January 1, 1970 which is rather amusing in https://mlpforums.com/forum/3-mlpfim-canon-discussion/
image.thumb.png.9bc11bf69654e220f95038b32cd1fe6e.png
Thought unfortunately the link leads to an error page and the account cannot be interacted with https://mlpforums.com/topic/142385-your-bottom-season-5-episodes/
 

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Starlight Serenade

Wow, this is pretty interesting. Things were so different 12 years ago. So many fun little tidbits.

Funny that you mention the post being marked 1970, I recall seeing one of my posts from a while back, being marked from January 1, 1969! I thought it was a glitch as it kept giving me errors for a while.

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Iforgotmybrain

Oh man the MLP browser theme in that 1st before-after image takes me back. I used to have one just like that but with Fluttershy instead of DJ Pon3.

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Sparklefan1234

@Snow First off, Thank You SO MUCH for this history lesson, Bestie! Great work! :D 

 Do YOU have Sparkle Sense, too? :P

I just posted a couple of days ago about how I wished I could start over at the beginning of MLPF 

because I feel like I've missed a lot by being a couple of years late to the party.

Edited by Sparklefan1234
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Snow
3 hours ago, Trot Shuffle said:

@Snow put the URL into the Wayback Machine and go to the earliest archive for a surprise :nom:

:dash: the OG announcement eh? that is pretty neat, I could have done something a lot more in-depth but I was just mucking about on the forum itself, didn't even think/bother to use wayback.

Cheers for brining that up though. 

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Espy Vibe
24 minutes ago, Snow said:

:dash: the OG announcement eh? that is pretty neat, I could have done something a lot more in-depth but I was just mucking about on the forum itself, didn't even think/bother to use wayback.

Cheers for brining that up though. 

Yep, I also swear I came across an image on here that shows what it actually looked like, because it had more going for it. It just broke a bit (like a lot of snapshots around the same time period on the Wayback Machine). It might've been posted in the throne room early on for something.

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Rare Crypty

And the prize in nomination of "the best archeologist of the week" goes to @Snow!

You dig deeply man and I pay respect to it.

Topic 6: https://mlpforums.com/topic/6-s02e03-lesson-zero/

Topic 10 has been deleted or database was damaged after many years. Albeit it's inaccessible anymore. The next topic is 11: https://mlpforums.com/topic/11-3ds-thread/

I suppose new appearance of the forum was in 2015, cuz I remember how it happened. New handy mobile layout appeared and users genders were swapped. Females got "not telling" and males got females. It was a funny mess for several days. I guess it was migration to Invision from another forum engine.

Edited by Captain Salty Scribbles
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Prospekt

Now this makes me feel nostalgic. I'm not on here much anymore but I was inspired to check how much has been archived on web.archive.org's Wayback Machine.

Like this, the earliest version of the home page:

Screenshot2024-09-15at9_28_18PM.thumb.png.d0e5d04d31667dd663096e7fd5fc1fab.png

And the earliest version after I created my account. I'm the Twilight in the middle that looks like she's thinking. And I definitely remember several of the users on here.

Screenshot2024-09-15at9_33_01PM.thumb.png.b2a5da44629219406abdb8da3c00995f.png

Unfortunately, my own profile page was not archived until 2023! But from the above home page, I can access some others.

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Sparklefan1234
31 minutes ago, Prospekt said:

Now this makes me feel nostalgic. I'm not on here much anymore but I was inspired to check how much has been archived on web.archive.org's Wayback Machine.

Like this, the earliest version of the home page:

Screenshot2024-09-15at9_28_18PM.thumb.png.d0e5d04d31667dd663096e7fd5fc1fab.png

And the earliest version after I created my account. I'm the Twilight in the middle that looks like she's thinking. And I definitely remember several of the users on here.

Screenshot2024-09-15at9_33_01PM.thumb.png.b2a5da44629219406abdb8da3c00995f.png

Unfortunately, my own profile page was not archived until 2023! But from the above home page, I can access some others.


Cool! I think I recognize @Photon Jet @Envy@DubWolf and @Ashen Pathfinder‘s avatars. 😁

Edited by Sparklefan1234
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