Post #241589 by hanford_lemoore on Fri, Jul 7, 2006 3:09 PM

There's a touching story about TikiBen ...

TikiBen is the user name of Ben Fuller, a longtime friend of mine and computer super genius who was my mentor for all things technological. Ben was simply a brilliant computer programmer who worked on a variety of cool projects, most notably the very first versions of Macromedia Dreamweaver, and the ReplayTV DVR (both of which I worked on with him). In 1998 he was a huge Wiki supporter and was programming with XML -- at least five years before these noww-common technologies came into vogue.

Back before Tiki Central was located here on tikicentral.com, it was part of Yahoo Clubs. It was a booming community with just shy of 700 members, but then Yahoo changed all the "clubs" into "groups" and in the process gave us a simply horrible user experience. Missing posts, wacky word-wrapping, annoying ads, bugs, glitches, and slowness.

TC members were not happy.

I was complaining about this to TikiBen and telling him I didn't know what to do, and he encouraged me to check out phpBB, which was a relatively unknown open-source Web Forum program. I was worried because I didn't know what I was doing and had ZERO web programming experience. After all, if Yahoo can't run a forum without glitches, how was I going to? I didn't think I could do it.

TikiBen was incredibly supportive and told me that I could do it. He walked me through the installation of phpBB, and answered all my PHP programming questions. Thanks to his help I got Tiki Central up and running over a weekend. Before I announced it to the Yahoo group, I invited him to check it out, which is when he created his TikiBen user-name and posted this thread.

Shortly after launching this site, Tiki Central had new legs. There were new members and a lot of great information unlike anything that ever happened on Yahoo. To say that Yahoo Groups was holding us back is an understatement. Thanks to the encouragement of TikiBen and to his unending help, I had started on a new quest -- learning PHP programming and running a forum that today I'm quite proud of. Shortly after that I programmed my own Paypal automated payment notification and tracking system, completely from scratch. TikiBen had set me on a path that changed my life.

On September 11th, 2002, just six months after launching the new Tiki Central, I recieved the shocking news that Ben Fuller had unexpectedly passed away. He was a brilliant individual whose life was cut way too short. He was in his mid 30s. I felt depressed and lost for quite some time, because I really didn't know how I was going to continue without his guidence. But I have managed to do so. While I still miss him dearly, I can always look back to the amazing things in my life like Tiki Central that TikiBen had a huge influence in. I would not be the same person I am today without him. He was a great friend.

Ben's Father purchased the Grand Membership for the TikiBen account in 2006, and I'm going to continue to keep it up to date. I am sure that if Ben can see what I've been able to accomplish here and great friendships people have made beause of it, he is extremely proud.

~Hanford