UPSB
UPSB stands for the Universal Pen Spinning Board. It was the primary international Pen Spinning Community for the English language.
History
UPSB V1
Paradoxically, there was never a 'UPSB V1' forum, with the original Pentix forum often being mistakenly referred to as UPSB V1. To add even more confusion, when Kam first started working on UPSB on the 7th October 2003, the address directory was /UPSB2/. This was given to prevent people guessing the URL to the forum, and not an indicator of the forum's version number. After release, the /UPSB2/ directory was kept and never changed to /UPSB/, adding to the confusion.
UPSB V2

Opened to the public on the 11th January 2004. In 2005 a collaboration was held between PDS and UPSB with an edit from SuperHandz's De'vo named 'UPSB + Pendolsa Collaboration Video', split into two parts. The collaboration featured early spinners such as Zombo, nhk_9 and Tohlz. Important contributions from the V2 forum were the Research Department, Naming Committee and the UPSB Wiki. The former two did not have much impact at the time, but the UPSB wiki had great impact as a reference for correct terminology to the general public. The wiki was edited and maintained by members of the Research Department and Naming Committee.
UPSB was originally going to be named simply "UB" but this was changed before the release of the site.
On the 16th October 2005 UPSB V2 closed without an official replacement. Lack of moderation and problems with the forum software were listed among the reasons for the closure of the site[1]. This led to the creation of UCPSB in its wake, as the planned UPSB V3 was delayed with no updates.
UPSB V3

The development version of UPSB V3 was opened accidentally for public registration once and then closed for maintenance. Delays caused the new board's opening to be delayed for a couple of years.
UCPSB V3 merger
On June 11th, 2007, development started on UCPSB V3, aiming to fix issues like a non-functioning search engine to help the board's success. After discussions with Kam, UCPSB V3's name and structure was changed to fit the theme of the prototype UPSB V3. The original UPSB V3 site was closed and the UCPSB site was to adopt the role of UPSB V3 in its stead.
On the 8th September 2007, the opening of UPSB V3 was announced on the third UCPSB podcast by Zombo[2]. It opened two months later on the 14th October 2007, with UCPSB closing to allow people to migrate to UPSB V3.
2009 Crash
On Oct 9 2009 UPSB V3 went offline suddenly without explanation[3]. Over the course of the next few days it was realized that the data for the forum was lost, and the site had to be restored from backup. The backup was dated late June that year, resulting in the loss of nearly 4 months of content from the site. Normally UCPSB would have been used while the site was down, but it was inaccessible at that moment, leading to the creation of a Google Group for users to get information from when UPSB went down in the future. Unfortunately, the group was largely subject to spam.
Host switch
UPSB V3 originally cost $28/month for hosting, but in late 2009 the decision was made to move hosts after a series of crashes and data losses[4]. This led to a switch a new hosting provider that instead costed $54/month, prompting UPSB to add donation buttons and pursue donations more seriously in order to fund the rising costs of running the community. Soon after the ability to purchase a "Premium Member" subscription was added in Jan 2010 in order to fund the server costs[5]. The premium member status allowed users to have a colored name, larger personal picture and access to a secret forum.
Closure
On the 22nd June 2010 Zombo opened a thread announcing the closure of UPSB V3, citing unjustifiable increasing server costs as the reason for closing[6]. In the same thread, the opening of UPSB V4 was also announced.
UPSB V4
UPSB V4 opened a day after the closure of UPSB V3 on the 23rd June 2010. Over the course of the site's lifespan Zombo had increasingly less of a role in running the board. Eventually Zkhan, a moderator at the time, was given administrator access to the site.
SQL Injection Attack
By 2014 maintenance of the board had fallen into disarray, and the site was left vulnerable to several exploits that had not been patched by updating the VBulletin forum software. This led to the site being attacked by an SQL injection that allowed full access to the database of the site[7]. The attacker used this access to grant himself undeleteable admin access on an account and dump the database tables containing emails, passwords and other details about users. They then logged onto the account and started causing havoc, breaking user password hashes and posting the passwords of UPSB users into the shoutbox.
The administrator of the website at the time, Zkhan was not technically knowledgeable and was ill-equipped to handle the attack. Making no attempts to mitigate damage or protect user data, the attacker was allowed free roam of the site and database, compromising all user account data.
The attacker demonstrated some knowledge of the pen spinning community in the shoutbox, indicating that he was a spinner himself. The attacker also suggested the XenForo forum software, which was eventually used to create UPSB V5. Access to the site was not revoked from the attacker, and even after a rollback to 8th September on the 16th of September the exploit remained unfixed, meaning that the attack only stopped once the exploiter had become bored with his work. The vulnerable forum remained open until the opening of V5 in December.
UPSB V5
Tasked with creating the next iteration of V5 after the hack on V4, Zkhan had to grapple with his lack of knowledge in putting up a website. With the help of Fang and donations, XenForo and plugins were bought and built into UPSB V5, but due to issues with learning how to do it, it took 3 months to accomplish. Nonetheless, UPSB V5 went live for registration on 20th December 2014.
By 2016 things had begun to run out of steam. The Pen Spinning World Cup that would normally be held that year was cancelled, and the activity of the site was severely diminished. Lax moderation policies had negatively impacted the retention of new users and many old content creators had quit the site. By 2017 Zkhan cancelled the Pen Spinning World Tournament 2017, resulting in the PenDolSa World Tournament 2017 moving to take the place of UPSB's world tournaments. The result was disastrous for the community, with few competitors and questionable management. After the fallout of the replacement, Zkhan conceded and held the official Pen Spinning World Tournament in the second half of 2017 in the end.
On November 28th, 2017 all unverified accounts between October 8th, 2017 and then had been deleted[8]. This was after discovering that the SMTP E-mail service of UPSB had been down[9] since October 8th after a malicious attack that changed the password and halted all outgoing support and account verification e-mails. The account deletion was for simplification of the problem. SMTP went down again soon after and had to be restored once more on March 30th, 2018[10].
In addition to technical issues, Zkhan had earned the nickname "Zbhan" due to his arbitrary style of moderation. Using lengthy bans as punishments or jokes, Zkhan had banned many influential community members, including banning i.suk until he submitted a combo and handing out bans of over 1 year in response to jokes, with banned users referred to as being "Zbhanned" from UPSB.
By 2018 the board was mostly deserted. Attempts to reignite a new UPSB Wiki had resulted in partial success, with pages containing a decent amount of depth. However, the amount of pages was vastly inferior compared to V4, and the wiki contributors had gradually dwindled. On the 1st of October 2018, the website finally closed[11]. The wiki was quickly edited to reference recent events and then archived for future viewers, but very little from the forums themselves survives in the archives.
After closure
- See also: Modern International Community
With UPSB no longer taking the place of main international community, various alternatives sprung up on a smaller scale. The r/penspinning subreddit became more popular and discord servers replaced websites for the international community. The name "UPSB", still considered to be owned by Kam, is still a label used by spinners who consider themselves to be a part of the international community, even if they were never a user on any UPSB website.
Competitive Spinning
UPSB Tournament
World Tournament
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament
UPSB first took part in a world tournament in 2009, as the Pen Spinning World Tournament 2007 finished before UPSB V3 was released. UCPSB was represented in that tournament instead. Historically UPSB did not have much success in world tournament events, though this changed in 2017 when i.suk made it to the semi-finals and later won in 2019.
World Tournament 2009
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament 2009
ChauTran, VicGotGame and Eriror passed round 1. Of these three, VicGotGame was eliminated in round 2 by Eriror, ChauTran was eliminated in round 3 by Dongza and Eriror was eliminated in round 4 by Supawit127.
World Tournament 2011
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament 2011
UPSB struggled harder in 2011 than in 2009. With only Baaron, VicGotGame and Eriror passing of the 6 entrants, with Baaron eliminated in Round 2 and the remaining two in Round 3. VicGotGame's round 1 combo was surprisingly popular, and became one of the most widely copied combos from UPSB spinners in later years.
World Tournament 2013
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament 2013
World Tournament 2015
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament 2015
World Tournament 2017
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament 2017
World Tournament 2019
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament 2019
World Cup
World Cup 2008
- See also: Pen Spinning World Cup 2008
World Cup 2010
- See also: Pen Spinning World Cup 2010
UPSB failed to qualify for the competition.
World Cup 2012
- See also: Pen Spinning World Cup 2012
World Cup 2014
- See also: Pen Spinning World Cup 2014
World Cup 2018
- See also: Pen Spinning World Cup 2018
World Cup 2020
- See also: Pen Spinning World Cup 2020
External Links
References
- ↑ Archived UPSB V2 thread on the board's closure
- ↑ Archived third UCPSB podcast thread announcing UPSB V3
- ↑ UPSB V3 2009 Crash thread
- ↑ UPSB V3 Thread on switching hosts
- ↑ UPSB V3 Thread announcing premium membership
- ↑ UPSB V3 thread on UPSB V3 closing
- ↑ Thread describing the rollback after the attack
- ↑ UPSB Facebook post on the deletion of unverified UPSB accounts
- ↑ Facebook post on UPSB SMTP service being down
- ↑ UPSB Facebook post on restoring SMTP the second time
- ↑ Twitter announcement of UPSB V5 closing