5chan was a short-lived English bulletin board website that was set up by “BarnacleEd” (later “NekoEd”) in January 2004, but he quit and gave ownership to “Zabadab” on February 29, 2004¹⁾ who later quit on October 24, 2004, thus 5chan died for good in under a year.

It was mostly porn-oriented, affiliating with TheRowan's HentaiKey and Numbus's HentaiGroup, but it had no anonymity as a HentaiKey account was required and all posts showed your username with a 13-character combination provided by HentaiKey. In a way, comparisons can be drawn to the Japanese 1ch.tv. They were also known for housing a furry community.

Early 5chan is shrouded in mystery since everything was behind a HentaiKey login²⁾ and the robots.txt file prevented archiving.³⁾ They did temporarily disable boards around February 9, 2004, which allowed some snippets to be archived and we can conclude that they used the “Haikyo” script.⁴⁾ According to the Something Awful thread for 4chan, “BarnacleEd” shut down 5chan after Raspberry Heaven ganged up on him.⁵⁾

On February 29, 2004, it was announced that “Raku-You” would replace the “Haikyo” script, and a German man named “Zabadab” would take over.⁶⁾ They bought a new server in June 2004 and replaced the news page with something connected to the forums,⁷⁾ but wiped their own database as they planned on re-coding the website on July 5, 2004.⁸⁾ This was sometime after the 4chan 2004 shutdown.

A couple months later, 5chan went down in August 2004 and showed the GoDaddy coming soon page. It would later redirect users to HentaiPalm for their status on August 27, 2004.⁹⁾ While 5chan did reopen on September 17, 2004 as an open beta,¹⁰⁾ it would shortly shut down on October 24, 2004 since “Zabadab” left the scene, leaving the domain to “Nimbus” who simply made it redirect to HentaiGroup.¹¹⁾

• Anime
  • Anime - Clean [ac]
  • Anime - Ecchi [ae]
  • Anime - Hentai [ah]
  • Manga/Doujinshi [mandou]
  • Cute [cu]
• Alt. Hentai
  • Alt. Hentai - Hermaphrodite [ahh]
  • Alt. Hentai - Tentacles [aht]
  • Alt. Hentai - Bestiality [althbe]
  • Alt. Hentai - Feet [althfe]
  • Alt. Hentai - Bondage [althbo]
  • Alt. Hentai - Piss [ahpi]
  • Alt. Hentai - Other [aho]
• GIFs
  • Animated GIFs - Hentai [gif]
  • Animated GIFs - Clean [gifc]
• Guro
  • Guro - Blood/Death [gurbde]
  • Guro - Defacation [gurdef]
• Furries and Animalgirls
  • Furries - Clean [furcle]
  • Furries - Hentai [fs]
  • Furries - Yaoi [fy]
  • Furries - Yuri [furyuri]
  • Animalgirls - Clean [anc]
  • Animalgirls - Hentai [anh]
• Lolicon
  • Lolicon - Clean [lc]
  • Lolicon - Hentai [lh]
• Yaoi and Yuri
  • Yaoi - Shota-con [ys]
  • Yaoi - Adults [ya]
  • Yuri - Normal [yn]
  • Yuri - Lolicon [yl]
• Real Chicks and Cosplay
  • Real Chicks [rc]
  • Cosplay [cp]
• Torrents, Flash, ZIPs
  • Torrents [tor]
  • Flash and ZIPs [flashzips]
• Oekakis
  • Oekaki - Clean [oekc]
  • Oekaki - Hentai [oekh]
  • Oekaki - Random [oekr]
• Other Stuff
  • Random [rnd]
  • Wallpapers [wp]
  • Mecha/Guns/Vehicles [meguve]
  • Toons [to]
  • Straight Shotacon [ssh]
  • Board for Testing Stuff [test]

5chan was blamed for shutting down Poole's PayPal account on June 15, 2004, which caused 4chan's fourth shutdown on June 20, 2004 but they didn't want their refugees, so refugees bounced to IIchan and started a war against 5chan. Then, 5chan was blamed for closing Thock's PayPal account in August 2004, barring him from collecting IIchan's donations, allegedly $540 which became a meme among IIchan users.

• After its closure, the domain would redirect to HentaiGroup until 2006. It looks like someone might've purchased the domain in 2007, but didn't hold onto it very long as GoDaddy took it back. For some reason, it would be bought again and serve as a redirect to HentaiGroup from 2011 to 2017, though it seems like HentaiGroup has been down for a while now.
• 5chan did host the first few English furry-oriented imageboards, but some western furry artists didn't approve of having their work re-uploaded and probably threatened to sue for copyright.

• Fchan

• 5chan [Archive] - The front page of IIchan, archived October 23, 2004.