Guest Mod's Note: Merging this with related topics:
Portkey.org beginnings
Why the four ships here? Why H/H, D/G, R/LL, L/J?
Who's the first PK author?
Portkey.org history as written by Nicole, one of PK's first moderators

~Pen/gal-texter


I'm sorry, but is there any page that lists the sites that Portkey hosts? (eg. the HMS Harmony page at harmony.portkey.org)

I've tried looking for it but to no avail, I have no idea if it actually exists or if I'm turning blind.

Need more new H/Hr sites to satisfy H/Hr cravings, you see.

HMS. Harmony

Thats the link I hope this helps

here are the list off the top of my head ^.^

http://aparecium.portkey.org (Fanart & fiction by Kaori)
http://quillsnspills.portkey.org (Gwendy's Fanarts)
http://ppmt.portkey.org (Pumpkin Pie & Mai Ti's resources. Not sure if it's up yet.)
http://harmony.portkey.org (Essays and Opinion Columns of H/Hr shippers)

There used to be some others, but we seemed to have misplaced thm, and the authors have not email us back.

NAPPA

Mmm thanks both of ya. Suggestion then? Compile the list of pages hosted by Portkey =)

I remember an back a few months ago there was a link on the mainsite which let us read about all the different attempts you made to create Portkey. I remember reading about (and visiting) the original "Kindred Spirits" and the "Septanic" sites. You also had the old link images from each of them.

Maybe it's still up but I can't find it in any of he places where it should be. If not I think you should add the site's history. I think there were 5 or more earlier tries and you could include 1 or 2 of the earlier formats for portkey.org. I found it really interesting and I'd like more people to be able to read it.

-Quis

James apparently saves everything like a pack rat. I'm hoping he has it. I'm sure I can find the images and things if I looked. No gurantees though. I have about 200 Gb's of files. Some so enumerous, I don't know where the hell they are ^.^

I will look into it though

NAPPA

I was studying Bachelors of Computing Systems. I got into fanfiction and all that, and became part of the H/Hr community. There is stuff before that, but nothing that relates to Portkey. I started making my own webpage -- learning to to make them using tools like -- Front Page 97 and Paint Shop Pro 5. Wild days! I didn't learn more than the basics.

The first Version of the site was called " Kindred Spirits " . It was hosted on tripod.com. It had only my own stuff on it. It was actually just one page. It listed my fic Septanic Dueling and all it's chapters. That was it.

I met James a bit before that, and we became fast friends. He told me that he wanted to make a site like fanfiction.net. At first I thought he was nuts. I was really mystified with the fanfiction.net system. I was sure that you need to have a programming degree to be able to do that. I kind of laughed him off. Though I didn't tell him that exactly.

James finally made a site that was kind of like that. http://loveofloyalty.tk --- it was his attempt at reviving the H/Hr fic directory ( pumpkinpatch ). It didn't really launch well. Well it kind of did. We got some people posting their recommendations, but nothing really went anywhere. ( Original Crew - HarryNZ (Carl from pp.org) and James ( Our James ). Anyone could post a link that was H/Hr. Mods (me and James and Carl) would approve them.

I made some graphics for this site -- modifying images of the Love Hina (Anime) series. Including what will be known as my trademark -- mistakes in spelling of the name of the site.

We had a small forum too. It was a PHPBB forum. I think we got about 30 posts in there, before closed it down. The site sort of died -- in the mean time James picked up more skills, and wanted to actually write up a system like fanfiction.net . A full blown fanfiction hosting site.

At this time I started to pick up my webdesign hobby again, and I asked him to write up a system host 13 authors. I'm going to try to name them now.

James
HarryNZ
Heaven

Ryoko
Chocchip
Me

Chris ( Veritaserum )
Shades of Grey
Brian Yoon

Max Lonewolf

I think there were more planned, but I can't recall them off the top of my head now. ^.^ Basically, all the people online that I was "tight" with. It wasn't ever supposed to host more than those people. IT was kind of going to be a yahoo group kind of a site. We wanted a backup system since we were hosted primarily on ff.net .

My wife bought me the domain name Septanic.co.uk -- I didn't really like the name. She picked it out because I talked and annoyed her lots about the fics ideas. So she I suppose thought I would like this. She's normally not the person to find the best internet deals -- but she did find it at that time. I still own that name.

Anyway... We made the first version of the site, but it was more than H/Hr site. IT was to also host JAG and Anime related fanfiction ( by Ryoko ) fanfiction. And SmallVille. I was really into that series then ^.^ I was planning to write a Harryeque Smallville fic.

We ended up scrapping that design. I think it happened shortly before the 19th of September. Becuase I remember uploading a message a few days later that linked to Nacey's Hermione's birthday ficlet. *schnoogles Nacey*

I scrapped the entire site and went to a new webhosting company . They gave free domain names with their first month. And I thought, cool! And thus was born, portkey.org

Between the last two stages, Quis came onto the site.

We got hacked a few days later. Not US, the webhosting company :'( We lost EVERYTHING. It took a while before we got our content back again. While kind of sucked!

We moved off. We got hacked again. And aftera few false starts we found this really good host. Very stable. And we started to get some visitors. We were accepting any and all H/Hr or L/J fic at that stage.




*feeling drowsy* I will post the rest tomorrow. Along with it some images. ^.^

*applaudes* Yay! I love stories! Love of Loyalty... that's that site was called! I started going there around the time the site supposedly died. I think there was one post after I started visiting there. It's funny cause Nappa's been the one constant in my shipping career. First heard of him from Ryoko over at ff.net and then every site I went to I found him or people talking about him and James (MythX, etc.). It makes me miss shoutboxes but I like forums better now.

Anyways, as soon as our storyteller wakes up and finishes, hopefully finding those pictures he mentioned, I'll see what I can do about pinning this topic as a whole somewhere.

This sounds after a real adventure. Just if I think about It I'm not even able to create my own site...mhm I'm kinda stupid in such things...and you guys did create such a site. I mean thats really hard work and gos pretty well on your nervs if you lose everything. I take it that you started portkey or the idea to that in year 2002. Now well one year later there are 3000 members and nearlly 800 storys thats amazingly.

The first time I did visit portkey that was so around March or April 2003. It has to be March or even February. I was a long time something like a lurker before I was brave enough to post something.

Anyway I like such storys just to see how all this did start. You know what this is, don't you? Its magic, pure magic what did happen.

MOD NOTE: Merging this with a related thread. ~Pen/gal-texter

Why the four ships here?
Why h/hr, d/g,r/ll, j/l?

This question probably sounds really stupid, but I have always wanted to ask ever since I joined here.

We see sites of HP ships everywhere. Unless it's a general site like FictionAlley.org, it usually ships one ship. Sometimes they have h/g and r/hr joined, but that's really a seperate ship since there is such a thing as the OBHWF. As far as I know, there are no other major sites that have more than two ships in one place.

Then here comes Portkey.org with, not one, but FOUR ships together. It's probably evident that h/hr is the most shipped ship here because of the statistics, but it's undeniable that there are three other ships in this site.

Unlike OBHWF's two ships, the ships of Portkey are not really related apart from the parent relationship between Harry, James and Lily. (e.g. Ron and Ginny are brother and sister)

Why then, did Portkey decide to put them together? It makes sense to me, because I ship all of them. But not everyone ships them at the same time. Some might go for n/g and h/hr. And since there's no real bound between H/Hr and D/G like H/G and R/Hr, why put them together at all? Why not H/Hr, N/G and R/PP?

Also, I'd like to know if all ships were here right from the start. I know for a fact that R/LL had been added recently as there were no such person as Luna before OoTP came out. If they wren't all here the day this site had been opened, what chronological order had they been added?

I'm probably talking nonsense here. I mean, what's the point asking when the question can be easily dismissed as the liking of our admines James, Nappa and Heaven? I'm just curious, because I've never seen a site combined of four different ships before. If H/G and R/Hr combined has it's own name, shouldn't our Portkey ships combined together have a name too? (How about "The Portkey"?)

MissMoral

Well to know this question you must learn a little of the site history. When we started, it was designed to host only 13 authors. And not like a shipping site. We all shipped the same - H/Hr. When the focus changed to H/Hr fanfiction archive - we had that ship, but we added Lily/James as it was THE canon ship. Also - the only artist who would let me use their artwork on the site was Kristin ( http://chamberofkeys.com ), and her work was beautiful and mostly for Lily/James images. If I added them as a site couple - I knew I could use the artwork to look nice and fit Her other work was too hard to use then with my limited knowledge.

Draco/Ginny was added next. Back then ( before OotP ) it was a given truth that most H/Hr shipped D/G too. Or a Redeemed Draco. Thus it was added because the site populus wanted an archive. Also as a way to encourage more variety in the writing.

Ron/Luna was added post book5. It was mostly in response to the site populus who loved Ron's character in book5 and saw the Luna --> Ron attraction. Lots of the H/Hr shippers before OotP had suffered with the question of which girl for Ron - and it was also discovered to be a lovely pairings to many many many H/Hr shippers.

Who's the first PK author?

I'm not sure if this is the right place for it, but I thought I'd try anyway. I know Nappa's the second one, but I don't think James is, and I haven't found Heaven's individual one.

So, please, if anyone knows....

Appreciated muchly.


PS: Please feel free to delete this, Mods, if you see no reason for it to be posted.... and, um, also please tell me who is it

Tadaaaa

James, after all.

Ri

Co-Mod butting in: It seems James was the first registered user in PK's fanfic side, him being its coder and all. But Professor Granger's the first person to post a story in PK; her fic's got the coveted story ID number 1. A bit more details here.

-Pen, 2009

Ohhhh, thanks a million!

*is finally at ease*

How'd you find out, though? I've been trying to for more than 15 minutes, lol. Was it done using your Modly powers?

Thought so. But that was after I made the post asking people

*slaps head* I really should get smarter soon,

Sorry, Ri, but though lofly James has "1" as his author id in the database, it seems as though he wasn't actually the first author to post a story. Best as I can tell, this honor goes to smileygirlo3, with an author id of "7". Her fic, entitled Graduation was published on 10/11/02, though it was never completed. The first to be marked "completed" was the NC17 fic One Hot Summer by Ryoko Blue, author id 6, on the 21st of the same month.

http://fanfiction.portkey.org/profile/7

Yay to them both!
~Jonathan

Okay, so de jure, James is #1, but de facto he isn't.

Thetrueship, you need to specify which you meant with your question

Ri

when did this site open exactly? that'll help you find out.

Actually, I think we already established who was the first author. The board believes that it was created on 6 November 2002, so we can assume that the site was created about then.

*Checks DNS records*

Hmm. Actually, portkey.org was registered with eNom, Inc. on 2 October 2002. So content probably started cropping up in October of that year.

Actually, I don't know if we can tell what fic was put up first on PK. You see, Nappa, at one time, had another story posted. He was embarrassed about it and took it down.

If I remember correctly, it was a story about Hermione losing a bet and having to give Harry a massage. Of course, my memory is a bit off...so I could be imagining all of this.

Haha Moglie,

Yeah that was a good one by NAPPA, it's too bad he never finished his Septanic Duelling that I kept hounding him for!
Ryoko's sounds like one of the first major early ones posted although NAPPA, James and others had stuff posted on other sites not transfered yet.

Septanic Dueling? I've read that one, but sadly, not on Portkey. It's posted over at fanfiction.net. Of course, I'm newbie enough not to know anything about the other fic, which sounds interesting. A causal peruse around Nappa's FF.net fics didn't turn anything up, but then again I don't really know what I'm looking for.

Cheers,
Jonathan

I kept putting off copying this bit of Portkey history, which our mod Nic (aka Nicole in the fanfic section) had put up in the LJ account she made for PK enthusiasts. Dark blue words are mine, the rest are hers save for a few minor rephrasing I've done.



About Portkey

Portkey is a site for shippers of Harry/Hermione, Ron/Luna, Draco/Ginny, and Lily/James.



History

Portkey.org opened in early November 2002 at a time when Harry/Hermione shippers had no individual site of their own to hang out at. Two other ships, Draco/Ginny and Lily/James, also made themselves at home here. With the release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in June 2003, the ship Ron/Luna (HMS Red Moon or Keeper's Commentator -- my personal favorite since HBP) was added, to the enthusiasm of many of the site's regulars.

This does not mean, however, that you must ship every Portkey ship to be a member, as there are plenty of members who don't ship Ron/Luna, or Draco/Ginny. You will probably also find that not all Lily/James fans on Portkey prefer Harry/Hermione. For this reason, each ship has its own individual forum, complete with various subforums as Challenges, Debates, Recommendations, Cookie Jars, and much more.

Portkey will celebrate its 3rd Birthday in early November 2005.



Portkey.org Trivia

The first fic to be published on the site was Out of the Shadows and Into the Night by Professor Granger.

The first registered author was the site's coder, James. Although known amongst many Portkey oldbies for having a penchant for Nappa/Ron (Ew.), and also for having his own official group of fangirls (known as the JFGs),** his main fic is Fading Regrets.

**JFGs = James's Fan Girls

The most users on the forums at one time was 660, which happened on Oct 30 2005, 10:09 PM CDT. <-- since broken

Much thanks to Nic! IIRC, she had opened that LJ as a means to update PK-ers in case of server downtimes. Even though none of the past or present mods oversee that LJ, all PK mods appreciate her intentions for opening it.