In 2006, current site owner Mark (Hahninator), decided that, after viewing other sites that were featuring live information on the band, he'd take the initiative to create his own site. He had offered to help manage other sites that had tour info, but after being declined a few times, he thought it'd just be easier to create one of his own. By doing this, he envisioned that he could not only dedicate one single site towards all aspects of the live show, but that it would also be something that could be updated almost effortlessly in real-time immediately following shows. Since other sites with tour setlists and show info were incomplete and lacking in-depth show information, the goal of LPLive was to make a site where fans could contribute full of accurate details on all the shows possible to form one large guide.
When LPLive first debuted after several months of work in September 2006, it was nothing more than just a few white pages containing links to text documents that had information on each show. Although it was basic, it got the job done and soon had quite a database of information. In April 2007, when the band was getting ready to tour in support of "Minutes To Midnight", Mark was approached by Sebastian Sebotta. Unknown to Mark at the time, Sebastian was the creator of the original Linkin Park Live Guide that made its debut in 2001. Mark was asked specifically by Sebastian to merge his existing Live Guide (which covered years 2000 through 2003) with the current LPLive project (the one with the text documents). Mark gleefully accepted this major source of help, and thus a major project was started shortly thereafter.
As the Live Guide was kept updated throughout the Minutes To Midnight promotional shows, the European Tour, and Projekt Revolution 2007, Mark worked on adding all the information that Sebastian had given him. Gratified, Mark was able to enlist the help of several online friends: [AndOne] (Germany) and SergSlim (Ukraine). From that moment on, the new team focused its attention on creating a brand new Live Guide. This new project would later be known as "Live Guide 2.0". Coincidentally, [AndOne] had a small live guide on his site that was filled with information on which shows had audience and professional recordings. This guide proved to be VERY useful in the construction of the 2.0 project. The threesome worked throughout the spring on the project, but unfortunately things slowed to a crawl.
Due to the busy schedules of the team, they didn't make much progress throughout the summer. Nevertheless, once the team saw the band live a few times over the summer, the enthusiasm was there to continue constructing the new site. Needing a good layout for the site, Mark contacted a good friend, Shadowfax1007 (Australia), who worked with him on the 'CureForTheItch' project. After going through two demo layouts, Shadowfax delivered the final layout in under 2 hours flat! The Live Guide was worked on throughout September and October 2007, and was finally launched on October 22, 2007. The work was finally able to be shown to the public, complete with a new domain name(LPLive.net instead of LinkinParkLiveGuide.com) and soon began to attract a popular crowd.
With its team of talented staff from around the globe, LPLive was able to successfully stay quite up-to-date throughout the Australia and Asia 2007 Tours, the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas 2007 show, the Europe 2008 Winter tour, and the North American 2008 Winter Tour. The site was able to feature professional and detailed information on setlists and shows, with a great deal of assistance being provided by Astat. He wrote specific, in-depth pages for each tour that gave as many technicalities as one could ever want. A search box and rotating banners at the top of the site were added during this stretch as well.
In May 2008, during the three-month break for the band, Mark was contacted by a guy named Lloyd, who ran a website called LPU-International. The site at the time contained a large vault of live downloads of the band. Lloyd suggested some new features to LPLive, like forums, downloads, user blogs, and a gallery. On May 23rd, after some negotiations, he was commissioned to build what became known as "LPLive 3.0". Astonishingly (even to Lloyd himself), the project was completed three weeks ahead of schedule, on June 6th 2008. After a brief run of testing, the site was launched on June 8th, 2008. LPLive was able to finally have a database of its users and also be able to track its excessive traffic throughout the summer. Due to the hardcore LPLive / LPUnderground members, setlists were being posted for some shows within minutes of the show ending. Incredible!
Unfortunately, in August 2008, disaster struck. Without even three months of having launched 3.0, some trouble found its way to LPLive. Due to conflicting interests with other staff, members were at each others' throats and personal attacks were launched. The end result being the removal of some staff and the discovery that the very designer of version 3.0 performed his own act of sabotage against the site when he took it offline, deleted admin accounts and changed login passwords later that month. Deemed completely unacceptable, Mark took immediate action and removed all involved members from the site permanently. After some staff regroup, it was decided by the team to downgrade back to version 2.0 on August 21, 2008. With some brand new forums and a total revamp of the site information, LPLive was at its peak once again and rebounded strongly after a period of downtime. Never has the site been so up-to-date with information as before and a shoutout must be given to the staff at how much work they put in to update the site regularly.
Shortly afterwards, work was begun on LPLive version 4.0. After a long time and a great deal of work, 4.0 was finally launched in June of 2010. The new site features changeable themes, a fully new layout, a gallery and more. |