Six years ago Jessica (my sister) made a yahoo group called Linkin Lady - Samantha's Spot. At the time the group was just for a few Linkin Park fans to get together and talk a little about the band and share the few pictures of Samantha that was out there at the time. The group turned out to be quite a success so I told Jessica she should make it into a full website. I had been dabbling in web design so I offered to help her out. So we made the website and dropped the second part of the name and just kept Linkin Lady.
Not to long after the website went up we started getting more and more visitors. Some who were supporters and some who weren't. For a while there we had a lot of bashers coming around. Hating on us, Samantha, the website layouts...etc. We didn't pay much attention to it though. Matter of fact I started making a brand new layout every month (which was something I hadn't see anywhere else at the time) and tried to improve each time.
After a little while and with the help of other people around the internet we found a little info on Anna, Linsey and Vanessa. I decided we should make mini sites on Linkin Lady for each girl so that everyone could see all the info and pictures in one place. It started out very very small but eventually we had a little collection of things on everyone.
So with the help of everyone who would send stuff in and countless hours of searching the web and a forum, we continued running the site for about two years. That's when the news came out that Chester and Samantha were getting divorced. We decided to put the site on a hiatus for a while since it was still majorly focused on Samantha.
But like a month later I talked with Jessica about re-opening the site, this time on a blog platform, and she said it was fine. So I did and that is when I decided to make Linkin Lady about ALL the girlfriends and wives of the band members.
Now that we had a blog it was much easier to update and the layouts where different. It took a while for me to get it looking right but eventually I figured it out. It was a lot of work but we got there and the site started getting visits again.
That's about the time Talinda came along. When she was first photographed with Chester at the Indy Parade it was a hectic time at the website...There were many mixed feelings about her and so there was a lot of work to be done daily to ensure that nothing inappropriate stayed on our saybox. We had a rule about Talinda and the Bennington divorce. No rude comments about Talinda and no assumptions about her or the divorce. It was a hard one to enforce but eventually people chilled out and the site was fun again.
After that there was more things to post on the site about. The guys took out their girls more often and there was a bit more information out there. Chester and Talinda got married, they had a son...
"Chester Bennington, half the vocal fire power of Linkin Park and his wife Talinda, proudly welcomed their son, Tyler Lee, to their family on Thursday, March 16.
Tyler was born in Los Angeles and weighed in at a healthy 9 pounds, 3 ounces. Tyler was also welcomed by brothers Jaime (10) and Draven (4)." -www.bwr-la.com
Things around the site were good - until one day when we encountered someone with a lot of "info" and we couldn't figure out who they were or why they had it....Turns out she was a stalker. I had no idea but when I was asked to remove her from the saybox I did it right away. Later the news came out about Devon Townsend and I was shocked.
After that I felt bad that the Bennington's had been harassed that way. And I honestly hope and pray that Linkin Lady didn't encourage it in any way. I definitely don't ever want to make gossip or encourage anything creepy by running this site.
Thankfully it seems the Bennington's are ok with the site. So I am very happy about that...
The past few years have been the biggest for us. I added some staff to help update - and they do an amazing job! I bought a domain (finally) and found a layout that seems to work pretty well with the site. We have started some projects; The Closet and The Linkin Lady Awards, plus we've collected more pictures than ever and as always, I have a lot of site visitors to thank for that! I wish I had a list of names of everyone who helped along the way but I don't. Hopefully YOU know who you are *big hugs and much love*
In 2007 I had the pleasure of meeting Chester and Talinda and must say again that they are both really kind and down to earth. I just hope me and my nervous quiet ways didn't make me seem to weird LOL.
So here we are, January 28, 2009 and it has been 6 years! It's been a lot of fun and I am looking forward to to the year ahead and hopefully the one after. We are adding stuff all the time so we would be glad to hear any ideas or thoughts on ways to improve the site or of something to add to it. ;)
I'm sure no one really took the time to read all of this as it is so long. Sorry about that! I get carried away when I am writing sometimes. Plus I have never had a website for this many years so it's kind of epic for me.
God bless,
Jen xXx
