Table of Contents
Fchan
Fchan is an English furry-themed bulletin board that was founded in 2004 after 5chan's death. It was founded by “Dr. Pon”, passed down to “Sage Freehaven” and “Sage Nadia”, and has been maintained by “Xenofur” since the late 2000s. It remains one of the oldest furry-themed imageboards.
The website is purely focused on sharing furry artwork and maintains a 'Do Not Post' (DNP) list as their way of 'respecting artists',1) an odd gesture that you would rarely find on similar websites,2) but it hasn't had any new additions since 20133) and the 'anti-impersonation' instructions4) now lead to a 404 page. Basically, the website is extremely niche and it isn't the 2000s anymore.
History
Following 5chan's death on October 24, 2004, “Dr. Pon” sets up Fchan at “fchan.freeserverhost.com” for their displaced furry community. They faced the usual bandwidth issues, so it moved to “fchan.hentaiplanet.com” around December 29, 2004.5)6) Much of this era is lost due to a lack of archives, but it's implied that Fchan had several resets, with their oldest known archived thread being made around January 11, 2005.7)
A couple months in, “Dr. Pon” announced his intent to resign on March 11, 2005 and let the community pick a successor,8) so “Freehaven” was nominated. Shortly after, Fchan would be reset on May 14, 2005,9) then “Freehaven” decided to resign as he lacked internet access, so he handed the website over to “Nadia” in June 2005. Fchan was then reset again on December 8, 2005.10)
On April 26, 2006, “Nadia” had supposedly resigned11) and handed the website over to “Xenofur”. In 2007, we finally saw Fchan move to the “fchan.us” domain on June 22, 2007, then staff drama occured after “Nadia” temporarily seized the server on December 16, 2007 over an undisclosed 'remark' that “Raven” made, so it led to “Raven” being dismissed and two moderators voluntarily resigned since they were his friends.
The following decade would start with a bad April Fools Day prank that stuffed everyone into a singular board, but the immense backlash led to a brief closure.12)13) In 2011, “fchan.me” was temporarily registered14)15) as Fchan started experiencing DNS issues.16) The rest of the decade saw “Nadia” finally resign from the website, and generally unremarkable server problems.17)
List of Boards
- Normal Image Boards
- Specialized Image Boards
- Message Boards
Notes
- Fchan currently uses Wakaba for its image boards and Shiichan for its barely functioning text boards.
- In the beginning, Fchan originally used Futabally, but quickly switched over to Wakaba.
- On December 11, 2005, “Shii” had personally suggested moving away from Shiichan to Kareha, but “Xenofur” insisted that Shiichan was 'feature rich' and 'easier to use' than Kareha.18)
- “Nadia” is named after the Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water protagonist, Nadia La Arwall (ナディア・ラ・アルウォール), though she rendered it as “Nadia Rah Alwar” or “Nadia Ra Alwar” instead.
- For curiosity reasons, her final avatar on Facebook and Twitter is Diva from Blood+.
- Around February 1, 2008, “Freehaven” argued with “Nadia” because this version of her self-written personal article was basically pretentious,19) and he also commented on the fact that Fchan managed to become far removed from what was considered typical 'imageboard culture' at the time.20)
- Personally, I'm just wondering how one writes “openly dislikes porn”, yet ended up on a website that used to have the URL of “fchan.hentaiplanet.net”, like, are we just going to ignore that?
- Later, “Freehaven” co-founded The Goddamn Furry Board (TGFB) around October 8, 2010.21)
- All things considered, the Fchan staff was oddly progressive for its time, which might explain why Fchan stands out as a massive outlier when you compare it to the usual suspects.