2002
The doors open
The WeedGuru forum begins on 14 July 2002, in the era of message boards, home-made websites and online communities that still felt like places rather than feeds.
390,040forum posts
24,424topics
16,440members
24 yearsfrom founding to restoration
The long strange scroll
A timeline written in posts
Not a corporate history. Just the surviving landmarks of a community that spent a very long time talking to itself.
2000s
The forum becomes the archive
Guides and static pages mattered, but the real record accumulated in the conversations: cultivation, cannabis culture, music, films, art, politics, friendships, absurdity and ordinary life.
Later
The lights dim
The site gradually fell into disrepair. Its presentation broke and development stopped, but the databases, uploads and enormous forum archive remained.
2026
Restored, not reinvented
WordPress was brought forward, phpBB was upgraded to 3.3.17, the forum database was preserved and the old site was given a modern skin without sanding away its peculiar character.
Open the cabinet
The bits a sensible redesign might have thrown away.
Which is precisely why they survived the restoration.
The restoration rule
Keep the memory. Replace the broken machinery.
The original URLs, uploads, pages and forum database are being preserved wherever possible. Old skins and brittle presentation are not sacred. The people, writing and history are.
This page will grow as old screenshots, stories and artefacts are recovered.
Go wandering