History of Hell and Heaven Net
First I'll tell why I named this website Hell and Heaven Net. Well, in Final Fantasy VIII there are two islands called Island Closest to Hell and Island Closest to Heaven. So I called it Hell and Heaven Net. I needed an unique name. First it was called Maarten's Final Fantasy VII Section, but I wanted a more unique name and cover more games.
Version 1 [Screenshot]
Version 1 of Hell and Heaven Net was online in July 2001. Kinda small site was it back then and a kinda easy layout. I began on Tripod. A good host, but with pop-ups and a long URL. Then I discovered F2s. Good host with no pop-ups. My site was still small. I first also wanna make a DragonBall Z site, but it was taking hell a lot of work and there were plenty dbz sites anyway :P.
Version 2 [Screenshot: #1 | #2 | First Forum]
In the beginning of 2002 I put version 2.0 online. But in the end of February F2s stopped with free hosting and I put it again on Tripod (again). Then a few weeks later I discovered Fateback. It was a good server, but no cgi, php... At the end of April 2002 I got a own forum. On Netfirms. The forum program was called YaBB (Yet Another Bulletin Board). It was a step forward. Then I opened my Final Fantasy VII section. My site's visitors was getting higher. Then my first staff member came: Chocobo Master. He liked my site and would help me. So, I agreed and had my first staff member. Couple of month later my second staff member came: LanceVarsconi. He's a good friend of mine.
Version 3.0
In September/October I started to think about getting an own domainname. Then I saw the prices of Digitalus.nl (Dutch). In October the domain was active. First I setted up a new forum. This one was PHP, much better then cgi. The forum program was called Invision Board. It has a lot of hacks. In the beginning of November 2002 I put up version 3.0. We wanted to cover not only the FF series, but also other RPGs, like Kingdom Hearts, Chrono Cross. First the FF7 section came, then a part of FFX-2, then FF8 and Kingdom Hearts. Some sections I also had opened, but there was only the main page of the section. I also had a topsite, but it get deleted, because the host didn't allow topsites :( :( :(. But it was a waste of bandwidth anyway. The site got more and more visitors and more forum members and also more affiliation requests. At the beginning of January 2003 the site had got 100 visitors a day! And 3 weeks later I thought, I'm gonna make a even greater version 4.0!!!
Version 4.0 [Screenshot]
On February the 1st, 2003 I uploaded version 4.0! It was much better then 3.0 and it was in PHP ( and still is). I began to work more on it and my staff members also made some content. Like Chocobo Master a part of FF10 and LanceVarsconi Suikoden 2, Chrono Cross and Xenogears. The site was getting bigger and better. In April 2003 I asked the webmaster of FFextreme to host my site, because of the little bandwidth at my current host. He accepted it and a few weeks later my account was set up. First I set up some new forum (again), because the old one was completely a mess. I choosed Burning Board. A week later I discovered that Aardvark was making a PHP topsite, so I installed it when it was released. (Far better then XDT). After a month I decided to go back to my old paid host. I decided to move host due to the lack of bandwidth. So I bought webspace on Flexwebhosting.nl (Dutch).
Version 5.0 [Screenshot]
After 6 months v4.0 was getting a little old, so I started to make v5.0. But I couldn't make a good layout, because of my slow comp... So Omario of FF Warpzone made this layout. I gotta thank him for the 3 months of online of version 5. He really did a great job. More content was coming also. In the end of August I bought a new PC, more powerful then my old one :P. I also moved the topsites from ffextreme to my host, without losing all the members luckely :P. Then 1½ months later I started working on a new layout.
Version 6.0 [Screenshot]
This is my newest layout. It's also the first blue layout of HHN! Why blue, because I was getting sick of grey layout, that I made a blue layout. I can now make better layouts on my new PC. :P With version 6 our hits were getting bigger and we had more content. Also the forum was going well (except the RPG hack giving errors). I also gave the topsite a new layout that was fitting nicely with the rest.
Version 7 [Screenshot]
Before version 7 was ready, something terrible happened to HHN. Our 'precious' staff member; LanceVarsconi has left HHN. He didn't liked it here anymore :(
Version 7 was a light blue layout, I didn't like the dark blue really. More content came and in March 2004 I moved hosts, because my bandwidth was to low again... The new host is PCextreme.nl (Dutch also). I got plenty of space and bandwidth now :D
Version 8 [Screenshot]
Version 8 was not made by me, but by Zemin, our co-webmaster. This time it's a light green layout to suit the time of the year. He really did a nice job. Cheers!
Lance had returned to HHN, he's a staff member right now. On October 30, 2004, I've upgraded the forum to wBB Lite and installed a lot of hacks.
X-Mas 2004 [Screenshot]
In December I've decided to make a simple X-Mas layout, and I succeeded! :D I use green and red (X-Mas colours, duh). The layout was up during X-Mas and New Year.
Version 9 [Screenshot]
With a New Year 2005 a new layout shall be made. I started making it untill I came with the header, I'm not good in making that, so I asked Zemin and voila! Thanks again :P
The layout was online for a very long time, because we had some problems. Like our old forum broke down, but soon after that I've bought vBulletin and it came back online! We also had some problems with someone who ripped content (easy to make pages like affiliation), but I hope that's over. <.<
My lack of interest in HHN made the site kinda inactive.
Version 10 [Screenshot]
Since I couldn't make any good layouts, I've asked Dark-Matter (also known as .KrytikaL.) to make a new layout. He made a really nice grey layout which came online in September 2005, the same month I got Final Fantasy XI :P.)
In December 2005 I restarted the topsites, since the old one, which had around 200 members, had to be removed. Also worked hard on making something nice of the forums (Arcade, RPG system). This version has been online for 9 months, which was kinda long, but it was a very nice layout to look at.
Version 11
In June 2006 version 11 came online. The layout has been completely made by me and it was based on the topsites layout. This layout is more unique, because of the games we cover are listed to the left.