StrawberryHeaven
Strawberryheaven, commonly abbreviated as SH, was an bulletin board website created as a bunker, and later replacement to Heyuri, lasting from September 29th, 2020 (according to archive.org) to January 6th, 2021. It is considered to be the lowest Heyuri ever sank and the very depth of the Dark Ages, some speculate upwards of half or more of Heyuri's users were lost during this period, which was marked by heavy Kolymization, Drama, spam, hacks, and more.
Although the site was universally condemned as shit and sub par to Heyuri, lolicos refusal to cooperate with Kuz left most users with no choice but to use it. Regardless, several notable posts in "Heyuri History" where made on SH, including the famous "Draw Yuno Thread".
The Story
Following the fallout and the death of Heyuri, kuz opens the site. It opens with multiple boards, with the ones differing from Heyuri being /d/, /gif/, /r/, and /mil/. The textboards that differed from Heyuri consisted of /hy/, and /chat/ (basically /lounge/). The board design was quite different compared to Heyuri, as post numbers didn't save throughout threads, so every thread began with a post number of #1. The board lacked the many features, and styles that Heyuri contained, and was considered barren by the userbase. The site also ran on kareha. Yeah.
The site contained counter on the front page that displayed how many times the site was viewed. It also contained mulitple links to other boards made by Kolyma. The site was also relatively obscure, as the dying userbase of Heyuri was fractured throughout multiple areas across imageboards.
The board began with 17 (19 if you count the KolymaBBS boards), 12 normal boards and 5 textboards. As usual, the most posted on board was /b/, with /r/ following.
As time went on, and the userbase began to grow, multiple complaints arose. Some about the look of the textboards, some about the management of the board, some about how the site had little to none of Heyuri's [lasting] appeal and as such, the site was quite dead.
On October 7th, kuz made a newspost explaining these issues and how he would attempt to resolve them. He removed most boards, leaving only /r/, /b/, /q/, and /a/. He also stated how he would move the site to a different software. The most Important part from this post, however, is his withdrawal from the site. He mentions how he is tired from trying to revive Heyuri, and gave him self two options for remedying this: Take a break, or to exhaust himself to the point where the site isn't fun anymore. He also created three anonymous moderators, and left them to help with the site. The final big thing the newspost mentions is the ever growing need of PHP devs.
Then, on October 16th, another newspost was made. It was made by yaril, who kuz had handed the site over to, as he went on his break. His adminstration was met with mixed criticism, but the vast majority of the site disagreed on some of his rule changes, such as outright banning virtual tubers from the site.
On October 18th, another newspost was made. This one was made by a developer, called man_of_steel, and it detailed the upcoming changes on the site, such as banning all lurking Russian IPs, and restoring Heyuri's old features. This gave the site optimism, however, other things were in store for it.
Behind the scenes, kuz and lolico were making amends. and it was actually discovered that kuz had a backup of the site right after a spam attack. This, in turn with kuz and lolico making up, led to Heyuri coming back, approximately around early December.
As for Strawberryheaven? The site eventually became archived, but at some point it was taken down, and the domain has been relinquished from kuz ever since.
Advertisements
In an effort to bring back the userbase, and to encourage new users to come to the site, advertisements were made and posted on multiple imageboards across the web. These were met with mixed results: some Heyuri users found their way back to Heyuri through this, others dismissed it as another "kuz site" and forgot about it, and [// people of the wrong crowd] happened to find their way there. These advertisements made the site gain more traction, as the post rate was somewhat better than Heyuri's post-lolico fallout, but this fizzled out not to long after the site's closure.
Community
The community consisted of a few Heyuri users who had managed to find their way, multiple new users who had never heard of Heyuri in their life before, and some weirdos from 4chan. Original content was made, not to the extent that it was on Heyuri, but threads like the Yuno thread gained traction and left that ever-so slight Heyuri magic into the site.
The site, however, was not received well by the community. Complaints consisted of the software, which was very buggy, and very broken, as it contained little to no features Heyuri had, and didn't even run on the same software, as Heyuri ran on lolico's proprietary fork of FutabaWall at the time and SH ran on kuz's fork of kareha named ktaba. Another consistent complaint was the post activity: Due to the death of Heyuri, many of the userbase had left it with the idea that it was another dead imageboard, and didn't find SH, or even disregarded it due to how much it differed from Heyuri. Users wanted Heyuri back, as they believed SH lacked something that Heyuri had. Due to this, the site had little popularity, and was rather obscure, save for some lurkers. The general dislike only shifted more when yaril took adminstration of the site, as people disliked how he handled the site and many wanted kuz back.
This was also a big factor that led to kuz and lolico talking it out, as many people of the userbase decided that it was [// that skiddie's] fault that the site had died, and that they should talk out their differences so Heyuri can come back, with the both of them.
There was some positive things about the site, though. OC was made, however small, and didn't gain much note around the site, whether that was because the site was dead, or because of the userbase shift. /r/ also saw quite a bit of attention, but I'm kinda exaggerating that because it was my spam board lol
Final Thoughts
Strawberry Heaven was a buggy and broken mess, and served nothing much more than a bunker for Heyuri. Although it may seem pessimistic, and is regarded as a "dark age" in Heyuri's history, it showed that the concept of Heyuri is a concept that is widely liked upon general consenus (in our little part of the internet) and that it will take much more than the destruction of a server in order to kill that idea. This is also arguably what caused Heyuri to return, as it would've been permanently dead had people not struggled for it back.
