PHWOnline

PHWOnline (Formerly PHWComics) was a website dedicated to making comics for the Half-Life 2 community, using a popular modification called Garry's Mod for the PC game Half-Life 2.
History
PHWComics started out with Michael K. Clements, the creator of the site, making a simple sex pose in Garry's Mod. That one sex pose quickly turned into the first Public Health Warning. Michael proceeded to make several more comics, and created a website to host these comics on. Thus, PHWComics was born.
Wanting to improve the site, he went on to form a team of comic makers to post their works on PHWComics. Michael invited lajsiiwan, creator of Roger, Todd and the Island, and Steinmann, creator of Geremy Tibbles. The team quickly expanded, inviting Clover, MonkeyMan, Sammo, and Waxx, creators of Jeff, Return of the Shepard, Jumbo the Clown, and Ravenholm Armory respectively.
Unfortunately, lajsiiwan had to leave the team due to personal reasons soon after, and MonkeyMan mysteriously disappeared. After the creation of BrashFink's popular comic Apostasy, Michael invited him to the team - but BrashFink declined his offer. As hype grew over Apostasy, Michael approached BrashFink again, and this time, he agreed. Time went on, and John-Matrix and Major. Dump were later invited to the team, due to their works seen on the PHWComics forums. The final member to this generation's team was Lode, creator of Afro Zombie.
Unfortunately, as yet more time past, Lode also left the PHWComics team, due to losing interest in the practice of producing comics, Sammo was kicked off the team for not producing enough content and John-Matrix left the team for a brief period, but then promptly returned. Major. Dump was then forced to give up his staff title on the assertion that he was not doing enough to further the website, although he was assisting in the production of Apostasy. Major.Dump is now a Moderator on the forum, and his work with Apostasy remains unchanged.
In late 2006, Mjolnir82991 joined the staff team, bringing his popular series, Kenny the Cop to the comics archive. A short while later, Waxx, one of the site's very first staff members, left the team, because of an argument between himself and the site creator, Michael.
Recently, the comic creator Jeff Eastman, known by the community as Clover, resigned from comic-making, and stated that he would lend his series, Jeff to another comic creator if they could provide good enough sample works. He never gave it to anybody and made one last comic. On January 30, more comic makers were introduced to the team, including Near Elite, Spaztique, Happydevil, and AJ Rimmer.
In October 2007, PHW "exploded", as most pages were removed. The site has since been taken over by the malware site kolmic.com. The community itself is now based at PHWboards.info, while the new PHWOnline.net site, meant to replace the old site, has expired and gone offline.
The Site
PHWComics, as a whole, began to move away from the single object of comic making, or 'comicking', around the time Lode joined. They soon expanded into several new sites, including PHWRadio and PHWMovies. These two sites both became hits around the community, with PHWRadio offering a weekly internet radio, hosted and presented by Steinmann, and PHWMovies producing multiple successful machinima movies within Garry's Mod. These movies were generally produced and directed by both Michael and Steinmann, with additional help provided by Monkey-Junkie, the PHWMovies team, site and forum staff, and community members willing to help.
In time, the site's name was changed to PHWOnline, highlighting their move away from just comics, and to a general entertainment community. A third site design was created by PHW's graphic designer, StinkyJoe. The site's PHP backbone was created by JPhantom who replaced the previous system administrator, Morpheous.
PHW's domain expired in early January 2009, and due to difficulties with the host, re-registering has been made increasingly troublesome. Many refugees of the site have temporarily transferred to Mine-Dog.net.
The Forum
The PHWOnline forum has undergone many changes in its time, much like the site itself. While the forum's are controlled by the site staff members, they are also very much looked after by the dedicated team of forum Moderators.
Previous Moderators for the PHWForum include the mysterious Jackson 'MonkeyMan' Wiese - after he suddenly and unexpectedly reappeared from an 8 month absence, in which many of the members had actually considered him as deceased.
The PHWOnline forums also offer a unique insight into PHWStaff life with the special Mayor of PHW event. This usually includes a group of members putting themselves forward as candidates for the Mayor position. After each of them campaigned for the title, the community will choose their favourites over a pre-determined voting period, with, at the end, the member with the most votes being announced as the winner, and having the honour of becoming the PHWMayor for an entire month. So far, there have been just 3 elected Mayors; Shazbot,Dav0r and Andres.
In late January, two titles made a comeback. These are the 'Approved Comic Maker' or ACM, (Good comic makers) and the 'Approved Custom Designer', or ACD for short. (Good skinners, modellers, etc.)
Other forum titles available include 'Respected Member', 'PHWPlus' and even 'Banned' - for reasons you can presumably tell.
PHW introduced the Council, as suggested by Andres during his term as mayor. These members get a new title, "Council," and are able to suggest changes to the forums to the moderators, and in some cases, change things themselves. Current council members include: Kaka/Hyklema, Lt. Commander, Stellar, Sevensixty, Andres, Space-bar, Era, Mozza, and Sammo
Recently, the site "blew up," with dramatic changes to the forums. All titles were taken off, all of the mods except Joseph "Slick" Shea had been de-modded, and Michael had started banning more people. Slick managed to bring the various moderators who wanted to come back whilst new ones were appointed such as "Nemi", but the ACM and ACD titles were permanently lost. Michael has stated that he will let the forums stay online. The PHW community helped pull the site back together, but the inability to post in many of the main Gmod sections is a constant reminder of the near-shutdown of PHWOnline.
On November 30, 'Combine_dumb' posted a thread summarizing previously raised suggestions, along with sharing some of his own views on the state of the community. Among the suggestions were for Michael to hand over ownership of the site, and give full administration privileges to a more active member. Immediately the community picked up on the debate, with some claiming Michael had performed inadequately with circumstances being what they were. Some members who donated to PHW, had their 'PHW Plus' status revoked until further notice by Michael for insubordination- along with the main forum being renamed to 'Michael's Playground' bestowing a picture of a baby on the frontpage. He has summarized his terms: Michael will allow the Main Page to directly link to the forums, if in exchange all the members he has previously banned are left untouched. Many believe that the latter of this ultimatum was aimed at Admin/Head Moderator Slick, who had previously undone a series of high profile bans on the communities older, and more well known, members.
Starting in late 2009, a team including Slick, Alex, Filipe, Nemi, and Brian started working on a completely new website and community. This will provide a blank slate to restart the whole community from scratch, and will cover. a much broader focus than the original.
Since mid 2010, progress on PWHOnline.net has ceased and the website domain has gone offline. There is no update as to the state of the future community.
Current status
In February 2009, the website PHWonline.com was taken down and replaced by a generic website template by the domain holder and ISP called FirstLook.
The second website PHWonline.info was taken down about a year later, and is currently a hyperlink designed by DomainSponsor.com
The forums can now be found at PHWboards.info. Progress on the new community site at PHWOnline.net has ceased and the website domain has expired.
Edit: as of 10/1/2011, PHWboards.info is now also occupied with a domain holder.
As of 11/12/2011 PHWOnline.net is now property of MGen Studios, linking to www.mgenstudios.com

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