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4WebHelp

About us

Awards

Golden Web Award Featured phpBB November 2003:

34SP Community Best of the Web Silver Award
March 2004:

34SP Community Best of the Web Gold Award

Compiled by Daniel

The Freedom2Surf Days

Note: 4WebHelp is no longer affiliated in any way with Freedom2Surf.

Back in early 2000, a group of Freedom2Surf users got together, and started a website, entitled users.f2s - Support for users at F2S (later changed to Excercise your Freedom2Surf). This website had a collection of tutorials, scripts, FAQs and useful tools for F2S users. As F2S grew in popularity, so did the website, as it was linked to by F2S themselves. Over time, the site grew (we added a forum in late 2000), and so did the team behind it.

Note: At that time, Freedom2Surf was still hosting websites for free. They do not provide free hosting anymore.

Since F2S provided little to no support (answers from them by email were rare - phone calls were expensive), which is understandable for a free service, users.f2s was the only means of getting help for F2S users. Freedom2Surf only had forums for a short period of time, before they were removed (there was never any official explanation for this). users.f2s was not only a help site, but a kind of meeting place for all F2S users.

In December 2001, the inevitable happened. Firstly, the free account subscription form disappeared from the F2S website, with no explanation. Then, a few days later, all free F2S customers were contacted by email, asking them to either pay for an account or leave the service. The deadline which was set was February 28th, 2002. After that, all free accounts were to be deleted. This was a great blow to F2S' customer base, and meant that many webmasters closed their websites instead of paying the amount F2S was requesting.

Meanwhile, the users.f2s Team was faced with a "problem" what to do with the users.f2s website? F2S was repeatedly contacted regarding the possibility of continuing the website, but answers were slow and misleading. On January 2nd 2002, it was ascertained that there was no future with F2S: they were not willing to host us and could not see the need for an F2S support site now that there was no more free hosting. So, we effectively packed up our bags and left.

A new beginning

In the first week of 2002, we organised the technical aspects of what was to be the foundations of the 4WebHelp website. A new, non host specific website was to be setup, along the lines of users.f2s. However, content was not to be limited to Freedom2Surf specific. A name and address were chosen, and the domain name was bought: 4WebHelp.net. Simple yet catching. From then onwards, the initial framework of the site had to be put up quickly: users.f2s was to be closed in less than two months, and a redirection page had to be put up.

The move was "painful": many visitors were lost in the process, but others were gained: since our website was not limited to Freedom2Surf users, it had a greater scope. During January 2002, the forums were setup, and various designs were tried out for the site. Over 2002, the site grew and came to what it is today.

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