Rory Landon Aronson started the SLO wiki project on an old desktop computer in his living room on June 21, 2012. His intent was to provide a hub for information exchange, collaboration, and open discussion to improve the Quality of Life and Community Bond experienced by the People of& San Luis Obispo.

After initially setting up the Front Page, a bunch of Directories, and the User Guide, Rory began seeding pages for places to see Movies, eat at Cafes, enjoy Public Art, go Hiking, find an ATM, and more, all in San Luis Obispo. Only two days after starting the project, the wiki entered Beta on June 23, 2012, taking on the ironic name of wikiSLO.org. Friends were invited to try out the software, make edits, add content, and give Feedback.

Quickly realizing the project was going to take off, Rory set up the bathroom nearest his internet router as The Server Room. After all, he couldn’t keep an ethernet cord running through the middle of his bathroom, bedroom, and living room forever!

During the week long Beta, kinks were worked out and the site was refined. The number of pages grew from 115 to over 300. On July 1, 2012, wikiSLO went public. Word was spread via email, social media, contact with local news sources, and word of mouth.

In 2014, WikiSLO moved out of Rory’s bathroom and onto the servers of LocalWiki, where they remain today.