ZenHex logo.
The Mystery Of The ZenHex is an underground forum website that has had somewhat of a troubled history behind it. Founded in 2002, it started out as as a site that not only provided forum use, but also a platform for user-created content. It had poetry, quizzes, jokes, and rants/raves. It was considered a major competitor to Quizilla, with the user traffic reaching the millions at one point. This became so problematic that the site's servers would often crash, unable to support such large traffic.
Desperate for a solution, website owner Zen sold it to then-growing social networking site MyYearbook.com (now known as MeetMe.com) in 2005. Many of the users felt angry and betrayed seeing their "underground" site being implemented with such a mainstream-catering service. Nearly 3% of the site's original content disappeared in the transfer. This would not be the only time material would disappear from the site.
In 2008, ZenHex's deal with MyYearbook ended and the site branched back off on it's own again. Much of it's content was again going mysteriously missing during the transfer back over. The site went through a re-branding in 2011, which then deleted all of the site's user-created content. Then, in 2012, the site changed it's design back to its original model, deleting all the material made during the new design and only restoring part of the material posted during the site's original design. Nearly 60% of the material is completely gone. As of this writing, it looks like even the forum has disappeared for mysterious reasons. There is no reason given anywhere on the site.
The site is now considered a shadow of its former self. Old users from as far back as the website's conception have been desperately looking for their old content in vain. No torrents exist and Zen, (the site's administrator), seems reluctant to restore the missing content. Though, in his defense, the site changes were made based off of member complaints of the site's "old" look and the site's "overly mainstream" rebranding. While some of the forum content and poetry has survived and some members have been able to recover content from other past members who saved their work, most users have been left without their valuable user content. If there is one lesson to be learn here, it's this: don't rely on third parties to preserve your original creative content for you.