Charahub
| Website | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Charahub |
| Owner/Maintainer: | Keith Kurson & Gemma Golland |
| Dates: | March 5 2012[1] - March 1, 2019 |
| Type: | |
| Fandom: | Original work/Original characters |
| URL: | http://charahub.com |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
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Charahub (sometimes CharacterHub[2]) was a website for listing original characters, keeping track of their information, and fleshing them out through prompt questions. The site was created by web developer Keith Kurson and his friend Gemma Golland, an illustrator.
The mascot for Charahub was a green-and-purple peacock named Argus, as introduced in the site's blurb:
Picture this. You're putting the finishing touches on your latest character, titled "Argus" - the quirky-humoured, happy-go-lucky peacock.He's almost done. You just need to find that picture of the ideal beak for him you had on screen 20 minutes ago. After surfing through a good twenty tabs, the only thing you're closer to is a migraine and a meltdown.
Charahub exists to keep everything about the character in one easy-to-use and shareable place. This could include anything from character description (little body, big beak), personality traits (that mischevious scamp!), or even visual and text influences to refer back to later.[3]
By April 18 2017, over a million characters had been created.[4]
Features
Characters could be placed in custom groups.
Characters could be made private or public.
Charahub had forums, but they later stopped functioning.
Users could follow each other.
Characters could be linked to each other and their relationship named (for example: friends/family/rivals).
Problems and Closure
Due to problems with users uploading stolen[5] or sexually explicit images[6], the webmasters had difficulty running ads on Charahub. Another issue that occurred was the site getting flagged as malware due to malicious code in some advertisements, leading the site to remove ads altogether in February 2017.[7] The webmasters experimented with paid premium accounts (Charahub Gold), but ultimately the site was operated at a financial loss.
With no notice to the users (unless they were diligently following the site's Twitter/Facebook posts), Charahub shut down on March 1 2019. Alternate sites with similar functionality suggested by Charahub's owner include Subeta (a virtual pet site that Keith founded and where Gemma worked as an artist), World Anvil, and Notion.so.[5]
Many fans were quite displeased at the lack of email notification in advance of the closure.
[Character Hub]
And, we're down. Moving all of the images to glacier storage and encrypting our final database backup.
Thank you everyone 💖
[Bethany]
I know this was a side project for you, but if you really cared about anyone that used your site you'd have given us an email warning to back up our stuff instead of options after it's all gone. Thanks for nothing. #pissed off
[Cassidy Chester]
Exactly! It's not like I don't know my characters but an email would have been nice! I'm sad that I couldn't save anything, just went to add something to my page today and found it offline.[8]
[penderggast]
I can’t believe you deleted everyone’s information without contacting us in advance. That’s devastating. Why would anyone want to get involved in anything you do in the future after you screwed us all over? That is so fucked. Definitely not using your shit ever again.