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About this website

Hierarchy's Dark Side has a history even longer than some of the .com websites that have popped up (and many have since closed) in recent years. Hierarchy's Dark Side started in June 1996 as "Hierarchy's Home in Cyberspace." In October of that year, a name change to "Hierarchy's Dark Side of the Universe" accompanied the third redesign of the website. Many ideas, including a freeware page and even a web design service, cropped up between then and now. Also, the site saw several changes in homes, from Geocities to a few ISPs to a web hosting service and finally to ThrillNetwork. It is where this website has made its home for the past several years.

In 2001, Hierarchy's Dark Side celebrated it's fifth anniversary, with version 6.0 of the website. Instead of the static HTML and amateurish graphics, the site proudly uses PHP with a MySQL database and an administrative backend in order to better and more easily update the site with minor things. Also added was a "ramblings" section, where he just speaks his mind, shares a few things he's come across, and so forth. This has been the most popular section of the new website to date. Lastly, in 2003, the site added "Coasters" and "Friends" sections, where coaster reviews and some short write-ups about friends are included.

The "Friends" section lasted until 2005, when it was retired. To prepare for its tenth anniversary in 2006, the site went under a major redesign. Codenamed "DarksideX", forums, pictures, and "The Blargh" (a blog) were added, and a new look featuring a chopper/maltese cross motif was unveiled, with the former 6.x code transformed into XHTML 1.0 transitional, with the site remaining PHP/MySQL.

With the changes, the site is currently up to version 7.0, which help track the # of additions (the .x of the version) and the cosmetic/bug fixes (the .xx of the version).

For a complete history, visit the History web site.

About Hierarchy

Steven Heicher (aka "Hierarchy") was born in Flint, Michigan in 1979. He lived in the Flint area until he was 7, when he moved to the Grand Rapids, Michigan area. When he was 17, he moved back to the Flint area. After he graduated High School, he went to Grand Valley State University, where he graduated in December of 2002 with a degree in Information Systems.

He was the President of the GVSU College Democrats from 1999 until late 2000 when he resigned to pursue other interests. In his spare time, he also likes to hang out with friends whenever he or they get the chance to. Otherwise, he enjoys football (both outdoor--NFL, NCAA, and High School, as well as Arena football) and hockey when he gets the chance. He also enjoys reading, travelling, thrill rides (namely Roller Coasters), wishing he could chase tornadoes, and of course computers. He doesn't really have a favorite movie (he likes so many of them), and likewise he doesn't have a favorite type of music (other than that he hates country)... he has several favorite songs and the list would be too big to put up anywhere. We'll just say that he loves his music, and that he has to have it whenever he is in the car, or sometimes even while on the computer.

He is currently a systems administrator for ThrillNetwork, a site dedicated to roller coaster and thrill ride enthusiasts. If you wish, you can see him on ThrillNetwork's CoasterChat, where he spends lots of time keeping order, or on AOL Instant Messenger (assuming you have his screen name).

Besides being called "Hierarchy", he is also called "Mak" (or "Makaveli"), as well as just plain Steve or Steven.