Htown.co.nz
Located on the interweb at www.htown.co.nz, 'Htown' (as it was known to its members) was Hamilton's place to go on the net if you wanted to talk about gigs, organise events, find band members, or just generally be a nuisance to all the music nerds, and cause trouble.
History[edit]
Launched in mid-late 2003, by drift and Dan Duran. In short, Dan Duran provided the local knowledge and a fledgling zine (Buzz) to tie in with, and drift provided the technical expertise and desire to see his new town be something more interesting than it was at the time.
Initially the two were happy if the forums had more posts in a day than those on the Generator's website; within a few months, the site had gained enough momentum to keep growing on its own, and needed little if any help from drift or Dan Duran to keep running.
By 2006, the site had hundreds of members, and in some ways had changed the way Hamilton bands organised gigs and interacted. Perhaps the first multi-band gig to be organised purely through use of the forums at Htown was the Wailing Burger Deluxe, in 2004, held in what used to be the McDonalds/Downstairs Oranga at The University of Waikato (the gig was so named in honour of the long lost student bar the Wailing Bongo).
One recurring feature of the site, which was something common to many internet forums, is members occasionally getting a little too wound up/overzealous/precious/serious, or just plain drunk at the controls of their keyboard.
By 2012 activity on the site had decreased significantly, and began to be populated by more spam than posts by users. Although still accessible for some time after, the site did not dissapear until 2014.
