About our community

You've stumbled into a cyber village full of young people from around the world. Most of us fall into the category of LGBT Youth, and the rest of us are either unsure, curious or just straight but supportive. Thanks for your interest in learning more about our online community. Are you a parent, teacher, or guardian? Stay calm, and have a look at our Guide to QueerAttitude.com for Schools & Parents ^[PDF] If you're new to this, LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. When we refer to QA as a gay youth website, we use the term inclusively.

QA first become a community in 2002 and it pre-dates its larger rivals. Indeed, it's amongst the longest-running youth resources online and we believe it's one of the best. QA is entirely free. QA has no advertising. QA is monitored and managed around the clock by a team of volunteers. QA supports free speech and freedom of expression, but there is always a line and we ensure everyone respects each other. QA is, above all else, a friendly community and we're happy to have supported over 10,000 members since our launch.

As you will have noticed already, QA is not a dating site, and you will not find a member search. We've got lots of people all wrapped up in our community, from 12 years old to mid 20's; protection for all is vital. That's why we have a Safe Space Policy. Dating is of course fantastic, but we do everything we can to ensure QA is not driven by sex. We do everything we can to ensure our members are safe.

It's an unusual corner of cyberspace in a lot of ways. QA's humble beginnings were rooted in an overgrown personal homepage run by a gay teenager from Edinburgh, Scotland. A personal homepage that was first published over 10 years ago, and has never stopped evolving. That gay teenager is now in his late twenties, but is still at the helm of this organic webspace; evolved rather than engineered. This is undoubtedly the reason why we're still sticking by our principles: friendship, equality, maturity, support, expression. It's the QA Ethos.

QA is operated for young people who are looking to engage with their peers about issues related, but not limited, to sexuality. We target LGBT youth in Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and further afield; English-speaking countries such as the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand also comprise our target area. We accept registrations from anyone aged between 12 and 25 years old, regardless of gender, sexuality and nationality. Contributions, however, must be in English.

We try our best to maintain both a clever and chilled out environment, and to this end we have written various guides and articles. Please do have a look:

How much do you know about the web? This is a must read for anyone before they post anything online:
•QA Guide to the Web and the World

Want to be a good contributor to QA?
•Quality Content Guide

Some legacy sections of the site include:
•Words containing poems and texts, and
•Society containing our popular Famous Gay Celebrities page.

QA Promotional Videos and publicity material:
•Downloads

More about QA:
•QA Gay Youth Chat Rooms
•QA Staff

Join us, and be part of our digital adventure.

We love when people like you, web surfer extraordinaire, talk about QA in other corners of the web. And we especially love being in print! And we'll be forever doting if you format our name right. We're QueerAttitude.com, not Queerattitude.com or Queerattitude or Queer Attitude. QueerAttitude.com is definitely where it's at. Thanks!

We make no money and run at a loss. We've opted to sacrifice our promotional needs instead of our highly valued independence. The hosting costs are currently manageable but if you'd like to help us do more, your donation will be most welcome!

For their help and encouragement over the years:
Ross McCann, Michael Nisbet, Jill Moir, Rebecca Dale, Lindsay Dineen, Katie Abram, and Yvie Hughes.

For their contributions as QA Administrators/Community Managers:
Lewis Henshall and Rachel S.

For their contributions as QA Staff over the years:
Adam, Alex, Andrea, Caron, Cody, JayJay, Jeremy, Joshua, Lindsay, Marcel, Mark, Martha, Megan, Mike, Robin, Robyn, Ross, Shaun, Sterling, Thomas (Toz), Tom and Trevor.

For his contribution to the development of QA:
Lewis Henshall of Manchester, England.

And last but not least, AJ's Queer Teen Page: the original inspiration for GSO, QA's predecessor.

Developers

• QueerAttitude.com, its content and the megaphone logo © Copyright QueerAttitude.com.
• The "QueerAttitude" brand, "queer thinking, straight talking", and "be younique" are trademarks of QueerAttitude.com. Unauthorised use will be challenged.


• Produced and maintained by Graham G. Hughes (grum).


• Graphics, video and brand management by Robin J Browne (thisway).



• Produced and maintained by Lewis Henshall (Enigma) between 2004 and 2009 inclusive. Portions of code (CSS and XHTML on the front-end, MySQL and PHP on the back-end), text and intellectual property throughout the site and content distributed by it written by Lewis Henshall, with a non-exclusive license for non-commercial, non-profit use by QA at QueerAttitude.com.

  Some specific features entirely implemented by Lewis (excluding images): search engine (2008), networking links (2009), birthday lists (2008), chat room counter (2009), QA's home page in 2009, monthly newsletters in 2007 and 2008, dynamic site headers of QA4.3 (2007) and QA4.4 (2008).



• Additional image credits

• Finding futures of freedom and acceptance^™

• We aim to be the most influential online queer youth community. Our goal is to reach and support LGBT young people, wherever they may be. Our community will facilitate the personal development of its members in a safe and friendly space. Through innovation and dedication, we aim to nurture a close-knit and sustainable community built upon positivity, honesty and respect.

• QueerAttitude.com is registered in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is the sum of its volunteers and contributors from around the world.

• QueerAttitude.com is a free community project run by volunteers.
  
• QueerAttitude.com currently does not generate revenue and runs at a loss.

• We're running a custom built application for complete flexibility and originality; no Joomla batched components here!
  
• We use PHP scripts, MySQL databases, and a dedicated Linux server running Apache.

• Launched (Graham: Speaking Out [GSO]) sometime on 7 April 1999.
  
• Relocated from grahamhughes.tripod.com to queerattitude.com (QA1) on 20 August 2001.
  
• Launched QueerAttitude.community Forums on 9 November 2002.
  
• Relaunched (QA3) on 21st January 2003.
  
• Relaunched (QA4) and renamed, simply QueerAttitude.com, and launched QA4 Forums taking over from the ezboard forums, on 5 September 2004, at 5pm British Summer Time.
  
• Relaunched (QA4.2) on 7 April 2006, at 11pm British Summer Time.
  
• Relaunched (QA4.3) on 7 April 2007, at 7pm British Summer Time.
  
• Relocated from a shared server to our dedicated HughesHenshall server on 12 December 2007, at 2am Greenwich Mean Time.
  
• Relaunched (QA4.4) on 8 April 2008, at 4am British Summer Time.
  
• Relocated to the Graham Design server on 15 January 2011.