This month we feature Hyperfunkalicious.net. Here’s a bit more on the site…

Hyperfunkalicious.net was founded in March 2004 by University of Colorado students Marc Spooner and Drew Webber. At the time, Webber was living with Fox Theater promoter Johnny Cap.
Cap’s brother Chris, and pal Josh Gary, were on the East Coast flyering for RAQ’s then-current tour. When prompted to describe RAQ’s sound, the duo would respond that its Hyperfunkalicious rock and roll meltdown. RAQ would later pen a song titled Hyperfunkalicious.

So, back in Boulder, Webber and Spooner decided to name our website Hyperfunkalicious.net. Spooner and Webber collaborated on site design, graphics and functionality and launched Hyperfunk v1.0. Hyperfunk’s humble beginnings started with iKonboard’s message board software, a setlist archive and a small amount of concert photos. Membership was low but community did indeed develop. By the end of 2004, an active user-base was visiting the site daily to discuss the band, their music and the regular goings-on of its individuals. It wasn’t until late-winter/early-spring of 2005 when Hyperfunk made its mark in the RAQscene. By then a couple hundred folks were on-line daily using the site to communicate.

In 2005, the website continued to grow. With membership increasing, the now-defunct iKonboard could not handle its user-base. The board would crash or stall daily; however, this prompted the need for more stable software. By the end of the year, Spooner decided to call it quits with the current software and re-launched Hyperfunk v2.0.
The new message board lasted about 8-months. This time, site membership and activity increased beyond what our server could handle. It was around the time of v2.0’s re-launch that Jonathan Healey (A View Of You) was brought on to serve as an administrator to assist with daily site maintenance. After some investigation, we realized it was time to re-vamp the entire website with Invision Power Board. In September, Healey dedicated some time to learning PHP and built Hyperfunk v3.0 while Spooner found a new server for hosting.

We have just completed the entire website and are proud to announce to launch Hyperfunk v3.0. The new website is a robust community/entertainment Internet destination for RAQfans that hosts a community message board, user-controlled photo gallery hosting, blogging, live chat, a casino and arcade as well RAQoriented references such as setlists and lyrics.

These new features have greatly enhanced users online experience, but the sites finest attribute is still its members The strong sense of community on Hyperfunk stems from the fact that so many users go out of their way to meet each other in person at shows. The small-town feel of the site lends itself to great hospitality, and it’s not uncommon for members to post open invites for other Hyperfunkers to join them for pre-show meet-ups, post-show parties, or even offerings of a ride or a place to crash after a show. The populace of HF are generally outgoing – questions about the band’s music or history are answered knowledgeably, introductions are made enthusiastically (can’t wait to meet ya is an oft-used phrase in replies to new members’ first posts), and offers of carpools between shows or recommendations for places to stay, eat, and drink on tour are plentiful.

Contributing to the connectedness of the Hyperfunk community is the broad array of forums on the board dedicated to things non-RAQ. From the Sports forum to the Food, Wine and Beer forum, or the Generals forum, where anything goes, there are members discussing anything and everything, just shooting the shit. Because there are so many more conversations going on than just things about RAQ, people get to know one another in a more multidimensional way. Whether just killing time sharing amusing Internet links or trading music, swapping suggestions for heady beers, or just arguing about politics, the members of Hyperfunk do a good job of keeping things respectful and generally positive. The ability to disagree without personally attacking one another makes for great discussion forums, and this is a big part of why people come back.

Features of Hyperfunkalicious.net v3.0

Community Message Board
The centerpiece of Hyperfunk is our message board. This is where fans connect to discuss a variety of topics. Whether it’s RAQrelated, personal, or a well thought out debate, there’s a forum for everything. We’re very proud of our system and it’s highly modified to make posting, editing and searching a breeze through ease of navigation. Users can discuss last night’s setlist, find a ride to the next concert or even attach BitTorrent files directly within their posts for show downloads. We’ve also created the ability for users to embed all sorts of media-types (YouTube videos, other websites, MP3s, images, etc) directly into their posts keeping readers on the Hyperfunkalicious’ website.
No more need to post URLs that take users out of our website and link them to another webpage. It’s all self-contained. And on top of this we’ve added spell checking.

RAQradio
Hyperfunk also serves as the on-line home for RAQradio. Now in Beta 1.0, RAQradio streams RAQ concerts 24/7. The system was developed in a way that anyone may provide a concert to be streamed. If a user can host MP3s on a server, he or she may add albums to the library and point the albums’ songs to the MP3 on their machine. In other words, RAQradio will develop by aggregating RAQconcerts through its users. Everyone has the opportunity to offer shows to the server. Also, the playability on RAQradio is tremendous. Via a pop-up player, users may add to their own playlists and create favorites while music is streaming. They may also get more detailed information about the song, in the player, such as lyrics, dates, venue, etc in addition to rating and commenting on individual songs.

RAQuaintances
Profiles on message boards are a great way to research and learn more about the people you’re interacting with. We’ve enhanced the user profile section into a MySpace-like environment. Hyperfunk profiles can play custom background music just like MySpace. Users may add friends to their friends list as well as leave comments on other users profiles. RAQuaintences also provides members with a Personal Profile Page. This area may used for whatever a user may want. Some members choose to create show lists for trading while others leave bios. The possibilities are endless.

Photo Gallery
Hyperfunk allows users to use our website to serve their own RAQphotos. On the old version of our board we found a lot of users where using other photo hosting websites to host their images. After uploading their photos users would return to Hyperfunk to either post links to those photos or use BBCode to embedded images to that point to another server. We decided to create our own photo server. Users may visit the Photo Gallery and upload their RAQphotos directly onto our server. Users may create albums and then share them with other users. Photos can be commented on by other users and also rated. This also allows for easy searching. Looking for that awesome picture of Chris Michetti that another user posted from their Higher Ground show? Then use the search tools to enter keywords and find it easily.

Blogging
With the Internet trend of blogging that has exploded over the past few years, we decided to offer a blogging server also. This gives members a place to keep journals about whatever they please. Other users may comment on them. Already running a blog on another blog server? Simply provide your Hyperfunk blog with the URL to your blog on the other sever and it’ll appear on our website also.

Arcade, Casino and Points
We wanted to provide more entertainment on our website and keep our users on-line. With our Hyperfunk Arcade and Casino it’s almost like people are really hanging out on the board. The Hyperfunk Arcade hosts a variety of flash games in all genres. Users can compete against one another for high scores, run tournaments or simply kill time at the office. We also have an on-line casino where members can hop from table to table playing games like Poker, Blackjack, Craps and Roulette. Both the arcade and casino use a virtual points system where wagers can be made and points maybe earned.
Users can than use their points in our Point Store to buy message board features (e.g., purchase your own custom default post color), prank other members (e.g., Tag their signature with your own comment) or even donate points to other members. The point system is also tied into the message board where users are granted points for actions such as starting a topic or replying to a topic.

Setlist, Lyrics and Tabulature Archive
Hyperfunk v3.0 hosts the most comprehensive on-line setlist archive ever created for RAQ. We had some assistance from the band and their tape archivist to document almost every show the band has played since their inception in 2000. Never before has a RAQfan-site embarked on such an endeavor. Currently, we’re building out the lyrics and tabulator archives. Albeit humble, theyre currently on-line for browsing. We hope to bring them up to the quality that the setlist archive has reached.

And where is Hyperfunk founder Drew Webber, now? Well… You can find him as reigning champion in the Hyperfunk Arcade.

Oh yes and the band has offered up its collective thoughts following a performance in Denver: "simply put, RAQfans go above and beyond. Of all the fansites we’ve seen this is the fucking coolest. We love the casino at 5 in the morning after a show…..Oh and by the way…TON THEESE."