hi!
The site became quite popular and I got a lot of emails. A lot of those were people who want to talk with me about lucid dreaming, had questions, etc. I diligently answered everyone, but at some point I could not keep up anymore.
Back in the day: no social media. (that word didn’t even exist yet).
So at one point I decided:“you know what, everyone please go talk with each other, so I dont have to personally email you all.” So many people wanting the same thing - talk about lucid dreaming with likeminded people.
So I went to search for a solution, and found one in the form of an online bulletin board. That became the first forum. I added it in 1999. It was integrated in the site, not a separate thing. And this was the start of the lucid dreaming community.
forum and site always existed together. Due to my design decisions in the past (read: I designed a layout that did not consider how to merge a phpbb forum in there) - the forum became more separate than the ‘guide’ part of the site. And LD4all became more and more known as a community than as a guide to lucid dreaming. So I went with that.
eventually (when moving to the forum you are on now) I just let the community be it’s own space and not tried to integrate it in the main site.
IRC - I actually don’t recall when I added that, but it was after I added the forum. @Siiw do you know?
If you are interested, here is a LD4all timeline with actual dates when things happened xD (somehow never included the IRC addition). - also with old screenshots of previous incarnations