Welcome to LPLive Milestones!
Our LPLive About page covers a good bit of background about our website, but we wanted to recap history, important events, and more for LPLive: Milestones. Like our full staff interview earlier this week, the goal of LPLive: Milestones is to tell a story of the website over time.
The idea for our website first came about in late 2005 to create an all-inclusive guide of previous and upcoming Linkin Park tour dates, with as many setlists as possible, and a list of all known recordings of shows. To do this, Mark and Jonas combined traders lists, tour dates from the band's archive and from fansite archives, and put it all together into one big list. The site launched on September 16, 2006 as a .txt files based site that was very simplistic, but also informative.
This is where LPLive's first incarnation was born.
VERSION ONE SEPTEMBER 16, 2006
Take a look around: Home | Yearpage | Showpage
Surprisingly, we didn't know much when we started the site. We knew what we wanted and due to the hard work of the people that joined together to start the project, we got it done. Over the course of the following decade, staff members learned how to run the site behind the scenes and implement new features.
The first version of the site was HTML with .txt show pages, just with the basic setlists to start. Eventually, we slowly added in short notes that recordings did exist but we didnt have much information on them. In the first version of the site, it was Linkin Park shows only and no side projects. The goal of this basic site was to just create a simple archive of the setlists that the band played and more importantly, to allow us creative control to change them as we find corrections, updates, and cover the future of the band over time.
It took quite a while to compile all of this information. Websites like ForfeitTheGame and PushMeAway archived dates, but not necessarily very accurately. There were fan projects by Omar Osatch and Sebastian Sobotta at the time that tried to list the known recordings of shows and since it was much harder to record shows in the 2000-2004 era, they were able to do this successfully.
At the same time, our staff member Jonas collected as many of these recordings as possible and compiled them into his own list. It was Jonas' collaboration of dates and recordings with Mark's compilation of dates and setlists that provided the first backbone for Linkin Park Live. The site was then born on September 16, 2006 after over nine months of work with all of this data from many sources.
VERSION TWO OCTOBER 22, 2007
Take a look around: Home | Yearpage | Showpage
Honestly, to our surprise the site gained a lot more attraction than we initially thought. There were many competing fansites and also quite a few established sites within the community. However, there was no site that had attempted what we wanted to do - archive the entire live history of the band. Previously, tour dates were just a side section of a website.an afterthought, essentially. With LPLive, we brought that idea to the forefront of the site and really emphasized on the band's performances, setlists, recordings of these shows, and the community interaction around them.
For the second version of the site, we had some ideas of what we wanted the site to be in the future. Obviously we needed a good layout, so that was added. To have more eye-catching images on the site, we had a series of rotating banners at the top of the page that caught on pretty fast. At a later time, we had fans also design these rotating banners for us with LPLive logos...unbeknownst to many, some LPLive staff members still want these banners to return, ha!
The site was still HTML-based with no database behind it...each show was manually edited and uploaded. Honestly there were probably hundreds of corrections lost over time, because when editing the pages some staff members didn't download the latest version of the page before they uploaded theirs. As the number of shows grew over time, this needed to be addressed. It wasn't the most ideal setup, but it's what worked at the time for us.
When discussing the site with non-Linkin Park fans, sometimes its mentioned that the staff that originally built the site was made up of a group of hardcore fans that worked well together and with one common goal/purpose. None of us were masters at designing a website, none of us were geniuses at established a behind-the-scenes database, and none of us were website professionals. However, what happened was that a group that was extremely dedicated to one cause got together and spent thousands of hours working alongside each other to launch a basic, but informative website.
Because we were getting more visitors, we brought in CuteNews for a commenting system. Fans could comment our updates we posted to the site (including new setlists). One of the biggest threads of all time on the site was the Hannover 2008 show, where Linkin Park debuted a brand new setlist. What I've Done opened the set for the first time, Valentine's Day and My December made appearances, and A Place For My Head returned for the first time since 2004. The reaction to that shows setlist was one of the largest in the sites history, ever. Still, this many years later, this show is at the top of many fans minds when it comes to the biggest response about a shows setlist in the band's history. And at that point in time, we thought we perhaps should look into a forum so fans could be more interactive with discussing the band's setlists and more.
Finally, we decided to add Fort Minor shows, Chester's guest appearances, and to start adding samples to our current recording sources.
VERSION THREE JUNE 8, 2008
Looking back, we probably shouldn't have upgraded to the third version of LPLive as soon as we did. This is one of the darker periods of our history, but we collaborated with new staff members to debut a new version of the website. The band was on a HUGE tour for Minutes To Midnight and a forum was needed at this point, so we brought that in. A lot of the focus on 3.0 was for looks - easier tabs, more sections of the site, etc. which were not really that necessary. Did fans really need parking information for shows?
Unfortunately, there were growing pains with the site and staff members split ways, causing LPLive to go from its new version three back to version two just two months later in August 2008. This is where the site remained for two years. Thankfully, the band had some down time and we were able to work on a brand new version of the website at this time. Linkin Park was working on a new album and Chester was starting to work on his Dead By Sunrise project. Through the next two years, Linkin Park only toured once for a brief period (Summer 2009) so we worked for 24 months on the next site version to make it as good and complete as possible.
A highlight of 2009 was that we got the idea to start doing LPL Meetups at shows. Advertised via our website and social media, we had fans meet up at the shows afterward to hang out, talk about the band/show and sometimes go out to eat. These meetups caught on quickly and featured fans from a variety of countries. We look forward to continuing the meetups on the next world tour.
In August 2015, our meetup idea was expanded once again. LPLive VIP member Nikita organized a full meetup at a local rock club in Minsk, Belarus to celebrate Linkin Park's first show in the country. Complete with a Linkin Park cover band and appearances by the Linkin Park touring crew, the event was a true highlight in the sites history.
VERSION FOUR JUNE 18, 2010
Take a look around: Home | Yearpage | Showpage
While Linkin Park was taking time to work on A Thousand Suns, our staff worked tirelessly on making the site as good as possible. Version four of LPLive added themes for every Linkin Park album to the site, quickly gaining popularity was the Meteora theme at the time which was centered on blues and greens. We added a forum login to the homepage, which further integrated the forum into the site. Since the forum was previously just by itself and separate from the site (since it was added much later to LPLive), this brought everything together. For the first time, you were able to be logged in to the SITE - you were logged in to LPLive, not just our forum. The site and the forum shared the same design, bridging the gap between the two.
Major redesigns of the homepage, year pages, and show pages happened in 4.0. Starting with the homepage, what we called the RHSM (Right Hand Side Menu) for years, was finally added. This still exists today where you can see the 5 upcoming shows, 5 previous, and on this date shows. A recent addition to that menu is you are now able to see the latest 5 shows edited by our staff, so you can see whats being worked on almost in realtime. Random facts for hardcore fans, inspired by LPFuse back in the day, were implemented too. To date, we have hundreds of facts rotating across our homepage.
The year pages and show pages were redone from the ground-up. We added info sections at the top of each show page, so we could add other bands, what show number of the tour it was, etc. With a whole page to work with, we really took advantage of the space. Setlist NOTES were implemented since Linkin Park started doing so many intros and outros on tour. We kept the show sources, and completed the huge pages with show notes, other notes, and sources.
Flags were added to the year pages, making it easier to identify countries. While we weren't able to implement icons, we had S P T letters next to each show on the year pages to indicate which shows had setlists, which had tickets, and which had photos.
Jonas was smart enough to start collecting tickets and images many years prior, so we were able to slowly add these to our brand new gallery. This was something that was planned for years and finally implemented to this version of the site. All of this was put together in a brand new MySQL database, the first database of information for our website and a long-overdue feature, also with HTML/PHP-based show pages.
While many could have been satisfied with this version of the site and leaving it to be for years, we still had an idea list and to-do list of things to add to LPLive for the next big upgrade.
VERSION FIVE MAY 20, 2014
Version five is the site you see today. We worked extensively on it for almost a year.
It was a constant fight with the IPB software to get things to where we wanted them to be. Lots of code editing had to be done because there was no other option, resulting in countless hours of researching how and where something can be changed. Lots and lots of errors and bugs occurred, which took us weeks to fix up. Here's a screenshot of our 7 page bug list that helped us in the process.
In perhaps the biggest addition to the website, we created a wiki section of the site to have a home for all of the information that we have collected over the years on the forums (in lists) and in the "Site" column on the site, such as the Lists Of Songs Played Live, etc. Our goal was to cover information not covered by other Linkin Park sites.
There was finally a show page for EVERY show in our database. This was important because for some shows, we had tickets, passes, posters, and information about opening bands, etc. but we didn't have the setlists. And finally, we had one big template for all show pages, which is extraordinarily long (Warning: Large image!), but comprehensive.
The setlist notes that were incomplete for years were completed for every show in the live guide. The debuts section on the show pages is complete, so all shows where a song was debuted have this section below the show notes. Flags were placed on all show pages, to coincide with them on year pages.
On the year pages, where we previously had "S, P, T" for "Show Photo", "Poster," and "Ticket", we added icons! Additionally, there were new icons to indicate if the show was released as a DSP (Digital Souvenir Package) or not (as we anticipate a future release of pre-2007 shows) and if anything from the show was officially released digitally, on CD, on DVD or elsewhere. The redesign allowed us to make the year pages wider and to allow more space for longer venue names as well as these icons.
On the technical side, LPLive 5 was completely made in IPB. The 4.0 show database was imported and we added an IPB app for our gallery.
To really bring things up to speed, we completed the Fort Minor, Dead By Sunrise, Bucket of Weenies, Julien-K, The Snax and other areas of the site with all of the information we had accumulated over time. A large Grey Daze section was established as well.
INFLUENCES
Now, we will explore a few other aspects of the site
When we first started the site, there were many Linkin Park fansites online. Now, most of them have fallen to the wayside, combined with other websites, or just have gone off the map entirely. However, there were a lot of sites that influenced us early on. ForfeitTheGames tour history, inspired by PushMeAway was a big part in getting the site started.
However, there are countless live archives for other bands. FooFightersLive and DMBAlmanac really influenced a lot of the information-based parts of our website, like recording information and the right hand side menu of last 5 shows, next 5 shows, on this date in LP history, etc.
Our site also influenced two successful other archives by our friends - NINLive by Ryan and BizkitLive by Garo. These two sites have been operating for years and are staples in their communities as well.
PRESS
LPLive has been mentioned on Mikes blog several times, about promotions of their new album at the time and about our exclusives that weve posted. While our staff members released shows and songs in the pre-LPLive era on such sites as LinkinParkForums, ChesterSings, CureForTheItch and more, the first big release by LPLive was March 11, 2008 when we posted the long-awaited One Step Closer demo entitled Plaster. This release was done in conjunction with LP Association, LP Fuse (no longer around), and LP Projekt (no longer around). The post drew a long explanation from Mike on the demo, which can be read here.
Soon after, we started being mentioned in magazines, interviews, and more. Pooch, the band's long-time sound engineer, mentioned us in Mobile Production Monthly in 2008, an interview with Audio Core, and an Adamson/XTA interview. Audio Technica, MTV, MusiqueMag, and even Linkin Park's own LPTV have covered the website.
RELEASES
One of the things we like to do as a staff here at LPLive is release content to the Linkin Park community that would normally not be released by the band, but is still good content. For example, they had filmed two shows themselves in 2000 at LA's Roxy and in 2001 at London's Docklands Arena for possible release. These are great performances, with London even being rumored to be the band's first live release. However, with no release, we felt that the community of hardcore Linkin Park fans would appreciate these shows. Likewise, we agreed that releasing a proshot video recording of QWERTY from Japan 2006 would be beneficial for the fans. These are just samples of things we have acquired and released over the years.
Weve posted a wide variety of things from an unmastered studio version of Hybrid Theory to Reanimation demos (alternate versions of Frgt/10 and Ppr:Kut) and an unreleased Hybrid Theory song (She Couldn't). Collaborations like Joe with Uncle Kracker and Chester with DJ Lethal also are on the list, along with quite a rare fan recordings of live shows over the years. Two of the most interesting live shows are from the end of the Meteora era, with a proshot performance from Camden 2004 and the long-awaited fan-filmed Music For Relief 2005 show with Jay-Z.
Over the course of the past decade, many have forgotten how iconic and rare certain shows like Yokohama 2003, Osaka 2003, Music For Relief 2005, Mountain View 2004, and others were before they were circulated on LPLive. Thanks to the crazy amount of hours of work by our staff member Nick and our good friend Felipe, hundreds of sources of Linkin Park recordings are now circulating and readily available for download by the fanbase. These two easily changed the community in many great ways.
2015 came to be known by our community as the year of Grey Daze, which was Chester's band before Linkin Park. Our staff member Lestat spent years composing a huge Grey Daze Story, which told the entire, detailed history of the band and how Chester ended up in Linkin Park.
To go along with this story, he subsequently released a LARGE amount of Grey Daze media to fans. The proshot video of Grey Daze from 1996 was one of the LONGEST periods of time in our sites history between the first email sent about something and when we finally obtained it. We first discussed that video way back in 2008 and it was released in April 2015.
Lestat was able to release Grey Daze's first show ever, pre-production demos for an album, various demos recorded throughout the years, and other media as well. Thanks to his hard work, the Grey Daze section of the website is very detailed. It's hard to believe we started with just one or two Grey Daze shows years ago in our archive.
INTERACTIONS & MORE
There are things that don't quite fit into the sites version history that we'd like to mention as well.
Over time, Linkin Park's crew has been helpful to us in many ways. They have name-dropped us in bigger interviews, leading to more visitors to the site, but most importantly they have helped us archive Linkin Park's history for the fans. Many of these passes and setlist images on the site came directly from the crew after the respective touring cycles ended and we'd like to extend a big thank you to them for that.
In 2013 around the celebration of the Sunset Strip Music Festival, Mikes wife Anna submitted to us pictures of old Xero flyers which actually lead to us establishing a Xero section of the website.
In 2008, a few fans in Germany first introduced the idea of putting a flag on stage at Linkin Park's shows. If our memory is correct, the first show this occurred at was Berlin 2008. Over time, we partnered with foreign fansites to put flags on stage during the A Thousand Suns, Living Things, and The Hunting Party world tours. A huge shoutout goes to BlackChester.de and our friend Thomas for putting us on a flag that was displayed at Rock im Park and Rock am Ring 2012 as well as Rock am Ring 2014, the last show ever at that festivals original venue.
There have also been pretty comical interactions with the band themselves. During the aforementioned Sunset Strip Music Festival in 2013, LPLive and Mike had a back-and-forth discussion on Twitter over an older band photo. Despite Chester claiming he joined the band in March 1999 on his 23rd birthday, Mike said otherwise and since it occurred so long ago, Mike summarized it nicely with his tweet of, Contrary to popular belief, none of us actually know what we're talking about. FYI
FUTURE
As we mentioned in our staff interview, LPLive will always be around - we aren't going anywhere. There are fansites for other bands that serve as inspiration for our website and archive, such as the Nirvana fanbase who is still releasing shows to this day. We have many more ideas that we want to implement over the next few years and our hope is that Linkin Park continues to tour for another ten years or more.
In October 2015, we achieved our long-term goal of acquiring lplive.com, a domain we had been working to purchase for well over eight years. Along with lplive.net, linkinparklive.com, and more, we now own several domains for the site.
At the very last show in Europe for The Hunting Partys touring cycle, the band took a request on stage to play A Place For My Head. Mike actually mentioned LPLive on stage and asked us to fact check that scenario, which we did here. Our goal was to be a factually-correct, reliable archive of Linkin Park's history and we are happy to see that the band, their management, and the Linkin Park fanbase is very trusting with the information we provide.
Lastly, there has been something else we've been working on during Linkin Park's break from touring for the past year. It is a project that we started in June 2015 and it will be unveiled in the next few days. Even when the band is not touring, we are working on a lot of things behind the scenes!
THANK YOU
A massive thank you goes out to all of the fansites and people that have inspired LPLive, helped us over the years in many ways (corrections, submission, help with exclusives), and gotten us to this point. This site would be nothing without the support of the community, the members on the site, and the hard work put in by our staff. Also, a big thank you to Linkin Park's crew for helping us whenever they can and to the band's management, especially Adam and Lorenzo. We certainly didn't expect LPLive to be around for ten years when we started it - we greatly appreciate the support and everything everyone has done for us over time!