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The AutoHotkey Foundation

Our History

Our history is a quite a long story, therefore we are just keeping it to how this domain got started:

Why ahkscript.org? (now autohotkey.com) AHKScript.org was a new community consisting of the active AutoHotkey developer(s) as well as other enthusiasts. Since, the autohotkey.com domain was no longer under the control of the developers, this newer domain was created. New users were encouraged to migrate and participate at this new site. However, these two domains are now reunited.

The beginning: AutoHotkey actually started in 2003.

Mid-2009: Chris (also known as the creator of AutoHotkey, Chris Mallett) lost interest in AutoHotkey. He had released his last version of AutoHotkey - Version 1.0.48.05. Lexikos (also known as Steve Gray) had begun developing what was then a fork of AutoHotkey named AutoHotkey_L (or AHK_L).

2009-2012: AHK_L development flourished with much long-time desired functionality, such as Unicode, COM, arrays/objects and many others; some of which were implemented by fellow community members. It had become the de-facto official AutoHotkey version.

2011: Lexikos started developing AutoHotkey v2-alpha.

2012: Chris decided to transfer ownership of the domain (autohotkey.com) and its data to polyethene (A. Ahmed, formerly known as user Titan).

Mid-2012: polyethene decided to restore old 2009 version of AutoHotkey (v1.0.48.05) as the official version for still not understood reasons, removing all references to AHK_L in the main autohotkey.com site and performing questionable moderator actions. Immediate backlash ensued, and eventually a petition to finally make AutoHotkey_L the official version was made.

Late 2012: After consultation with the community, AutoHotkey_L became the official branch and now has been renamed to AutoHotkey or AHK 1.1 to be specific. Lexikos officially became the AHK maintainer. Download links were updated accordingly.

Late 2012: autohotkey.net (a file repository website for users to share AutoHotkey related things such as scripts and user pages, originally created by polyethene) was hacked and all files were lost.

2013: polyethene became completely missing, meanwhile the old forum (which had gone through two upgrades, phpBB2->phpBB3->IP Boards) riddled in bugs.

October 2013: After the last straw, tank (also known as Charlie Simmons) stepped in, tired of the forum bugs, and created this site. The community flooded over here (including all prominent members such as Lexikos, SKAN, tidbit and many others), basically leaving autohotkey.com in a state of stagnation. Administration of ahkscript.org was defined to work in a cooperative way, with many people with varying power levels (instead of just forum moderators and site plenipotentiary).

April 24th, 2014: The legal entity AutoHotkey Foundation LLC was created.

February 6th, 2015: Tank was finally able to contact polyethene. He replied that he was ready to hand over the domain (autohotkey.com) and give full control over it. Tank was made a co-owner.

September 22nd, 2015: autohotkey.com was completely migrated to a new server (VPS), and polyethene was officially demoted to the level of a normal member.

November 1st, 2015: On autohotkey.com's older forum (IPBoards), as part of the forum transition, the ability to create new topics has been disabled. However, forum replies will not be disabled until December 31st, 2015.

November 13th, 2015: An SSL certificate was finally added for the first time onto the website.

January 1st, 2016: Replies on the older/archive forum (IPBoards) have been disabled.

If you are interested in knowing more, you may read from the following forum topics: