The Heirophant is perhaps the largest source of information on Marilyn Manson available on the internet today. Since its inception, our site has been maintained by fans, for the fans of Marilyn Manson. The Heirophant was conceived and created by webmaster Filicide out of his respect for the band's music and style, and also the somewhat inadvertent effect of boredom in the Winter of 2000.

When I decided to make The Heirophant, I had no expectations that its popularity would come as quickly as it had. Since its initial unveiling on Valentine's Day 2001, The Heirophant has made an impact on Marilyn Manson fan sites and continues to raise fan expectations with every new version that is released. Today, The Heirophant is the most popular Marilyn Manson fan site on the internet.*

Prior to maintaining The Heirophant, I ran a mini-network of fan sites entitled "The Music Netwurk". The Music Netwurk was comprised of Slipknot (as much as I hate to admit it now) and Nine Inch Nails fan sites. Soon after the release of the Nine Inch Nails site known as "Systematic Decline," The Music Netwurk became more popular than ever before. Soon after, I decided to make plans for the third and final feature, a Marilyn Manson fan site.

The initial name of the Marilyn Manson site was "of red earth," but was later changed to The Heirophant months before the site's initial launch. As I began experimenting with the basic framework of the Marilyn Manson site, I realized that it was unrealistic to maintain three sites with the current news and frequent updates required to keep visitors coming back to the site. Consequently, I decided it was time to let The Music Netwurk die and focus exclusively on The Heirophant.



When I finished the basic layout for The Heirophant, it caught the eye of Andy, owner of former small music network rmp3.net. Rmp3 offered hosting for the site, which was a welcome change from our humble hosting beginnings at Geocities. Rmp3 hosted two manson sites, The Heirophant, and Marilyn Manson Online--run by Joey, the first Heirophant co-webmaster. After the construction phases were complete, version 1 of The Heirophant was launched on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2001.

Everything was running smoothly until rmp3.net folded due to its network sites violating the terms of service employed by its parent hosting company. However, almost immediately after, The Heirophant was offered hosting on yet another music network known as Get Some Noise. I immediately obliged, as The Heirophant was in need of a web host. Again, version 1 was launched and was accessible from the domain www.mansonnet.com. The site's popularity began to grow among Marilyn Manson fans as time progressed.

Joey, webmaster of Marilyn Manson Online, was out of a host, so I offered him a staff position on The Heirophant. Now run by two people, maintaining The Heirophant was less difficult. Unfortunately, a few months later we ran into more server troubles. The Heirophant experienced several periods of steady downtime which we later concluded was because no one was paying our webhost for the dedicated server our site resided on. The last period of downtime (over 2 weeks) was the end of our affiliation with Get Some Noise.



After more than 2 weeks of downtime and the loss of our publicized domain mansonnet.com, we were in search of another means of web hosting. After our rollercoaster ride of hosting issues, we were not very eager to get hosted by another unreliable music network. From that point on, I decided to cover hosting costs for The Heirophant. During the next several months, The Heirophant was hosted on virtual hosting account equipped with a mere 10 gigabytes of bandwidth.

After almost a month of downtime, I decided to create a new version of The Heirophant with a more functional design and an abundance of content within. Also new to The Heirophant was a new PHP coding architecture which made transfers and requests faster on the user end, while making it easier to update from the administrative end. The new version was partly created as an apology for the repeated downtime in the months prior.

Heirophant v2.0 was finished and launched on May 10th. Although our page view count was quite low at the time, the word quickly spread about the return of The Heirophant.



One month later, I decided to do yet another PHP coding makeover on The Heirophant. This time I created a backend engine -- A PHP-powered system containing all of the site operating functions. Once again the user end of The Heirophant was complimented by faster loading and processing time by the compressed file handling techniques built into the PHP engine. This update also provided an easier means of updating the site on the administrative end. Not many content upgrades were made on this revision. However, some features were added to the site's existing sections.

Heirophant v3.0 was finished and launched on August 5, 2001. By this time, our page views had increased significantly.



After about 6 months of hosting the successful Heirophant v3.0, plans for a complete redesign and revamp were made for the next website revision. The goal of v4.0 was to stray away from the overused general page setup used in versions 1 through 3. With the removal of the two link-columns. A javascript powered navigation system was incorporated to increase ease of use and allow more free space to display content.

Joey, the co-webmaster of The Heirophant from v1-v3 left the staff due to a declining interest in Marilyn Manson. Our staff vacancy was shortly replaced days later by a long-time Heirophant supporter Strife, now known as Heresy.


Months later, and close to two years in the making, The Heirophant was recognized by Marilyn Manson himself. Through our relations with Manson, we were fortunate enough to conduct an exclusive interview with him in July of 2002. The interview was mentioned on the official Marilyn Manson site, the Gottfried Helnwein website, and several others which largely contributed to our heightened success. To this day, The Heirophant is the first and only fan site to have interviewed Marilyn Manson and also the first and only to receive mention on the official Marilyn Manson website.



The development for The Heirophant version 5.0, code-named "Metamorphosis," began in late 2003. Our objectives for this version were to improve upon the site's ease of use while making the interface more pleasing to the eye. Our offered sections were improved aesthetically with the inclusion of Marilyn Manson imagery into the site interface, adding life to our offered content. Our entire massive library of Marilyn Manson information was overhauled with new content and designs. The former javascript navigation menu used on version 4 was replaced by an all-flash navigation system.

v5.0 launched on April 4th, 2004 with an exclusive interview with bassist Tim Skold. Once again, The Heirophant breaks new ground as being the first fan site to interview Skold and also one of the first few to interview him since his induction into Marilyn Manson.

This marks the end of our site history to this point. Our history, however, has yet to be concluded.

* Based on statistics made available at alexa.com.