Site News

Hear ye, hear ye!

You asked, we've made it happen.

A few weeks ago Jon and Cindy were invited to sit down and chat all things kingsnake.com past and present with Mike Stefani and Nick Lillis. It was awesome and we had a great time!

Jamie McNellis, a Conservation Specialist at the San Francisco Zoo, holds four-month-old garter snakes kept in enclosures at the San Francisco Zoo in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group) The San Francisco Garter Snake is amazingly beautiful and also very endangered, but now with the help of the conservation program at the San Francisco Zoo, they may get a chance at re-establishing their population! The largest current population of the snake lives on the property of the San Francisco airport and is quite protected but there is another area in Pacifica that conservationist from the Zoo have been preparing to help headstart a population of 115 babies for a spring release with more planned for the future!

Those destined for Pacifica will be released into a habitat that has been upgraded for their arrival. The project included creating a new pond for snakes and red-legged frogs to thrive, and removing invasive Monterey Cypress and Monterey Pine trees. “If we didn’t do any type of tree removal, those scrub and grassland areas would be converted into forested habitats,” said Fong. “For sun-loving reptiles like snakes, converting open grasslands and scrub to forested habitats is not great.” In December, a vegetation crew from NPS scattered seeds to help populate the upgraded habitat with native plant species. One remaining concern is the continuing threat posed by people and their pets. The striking colors that make the San Francisco garter snake a California icon have also made it a target for illegal poaching for the pet trade, said McNellis. SFO can secure its habitat with a security fence, but other habitats cannot provide protection.

THANK YOU

It’s been amazing welcoming you all back to the site. We’re exceptionally grateful you spend your time with us.
We’ve now made it easier for you to get assistance when you can’t use Kingsnake to the fullest.

Build in the Public Update You now know our mission statement. Ready to see what we've been working on?? We heard you loud and clear. You want a better mobile experience from Kingsnake. This is our first and top priority. Our development team beautifully stated,

“We are rebuilding Kingsnake with a new, responsive look that displays properly on a desktop, tablet or mobile device”

Kingsnake has been under new ownership for just shy of 4 weeks and what a ride it’s been.

We know we have been promising BIG things and just to prove it, here is a sneak peek! Remember, we have a lot to work on so things are taking time, but our first thing is about ready to go so we wanted to share that now! The thing you have been begging for! A better mobile experience!

WHAT?! Mobile update?!

inset photo from our photo gallery by user da_great_jandini

kingsnake.com has always been about the community. Heck, we are the one who coined the phrase reptile community, eschewing the original "reptile nation" and avoiding using industry because we are more than just breeders! The community makes us.
Logically, we want to hear your feedback.

Last night Jon sat down with David Levinson and JMG Reptiles on Trap Talk Radio with Cindy and our programmer Gerry there to back him up in the chat room to answer some questions about Kingsnake.com as well as just him personally! If you missed the broadcast you can check it out here!

On Friday November 14 at 9 pm EST, our new owner, Jon Poff will be sitting down with David Levinson and Jeff Galewood of JMG Reptiles to talk about what is coming our way with the future of kingsnake.com on the Trap Talk Reptile Network! This will be a live podcast with an open chat that you can ask questions in and steer the conversation. I will be joining along in chat and if possible I will help answer any questions too! We hope you can join us live! Just click here to do it! Remember 9 pm EST Friday!

I have had a lot of people reaching out who have forgotten their passwords or even usernames! I know it has been a while for some of you and with the changes, you aren't sure who to reach out to!

If you need help recovering your account right now, please feel free to reach out to me at cindyatkingsnake @ gmail.com (remove spaces obvs) and I will be happy to get all things squared away for you! Remember, we are still working through the transition and rebuild so everything is still "classic" Kingsnake at the moment. As time goes on you will start to see changes, but for now enjoy the classic.

In 1995 I, along with some other reptile enthusiasts (Joe Forks,Gerry Salmon, Troy Hibbitts, and others) created a web page for gray-banded kingsnake hobbyists called The Alterna Page. By 1997 one thing led to another and it had morphed into what today is kingsnake.com. That marks 30 years building and maintaining web communities for reptile hobbyists around the world. That is almost half my life. But all good things eventually must come to an end and after discussing it with our sponsors and staff I have concluded it is time for me to retire to pursue other things in my life, and for kingsnake.com to retire as well. I want to thank kingsnake.com's primary sponsors, LLLReptile.com and RodentPro.com, along with the staff, Cindy Steinle, Melody Golubski, Mark Kennedy, Gerry Freymann, Dick Bartlett, and Ted Hatfield who volunteered his time looking after our servers. Special thanks go to Christie Keith. It is because of their dedication that kingsnake.com has lasted so long. As well there are literally thousands of other advertisers and community members that made kingsnake.com the place to be for herpetologists and herpetoculturists during its great years, from 1999-2016, when some would say the reptile culture was at it's peak. I met many of these thousands of people at countless reptile expos and consider many of them my friends. Along the way kingsnake.com pioneered many new things for the reptile community and industry, such as topic/species based message boards (forums), live chat symposiums, reptile blogs, podcasts, and video interviews. Many of the fights in the forums were epic. Most remembered will be kingsnake.com's classifieds, for many years the Internets most popular reptile and amphibian sales tool. It helped turn a random group of like minded hobbyists into a real industry. At it's peak there were over 2200 active classified accounts. Officially kingsnake.com will close down on October 31,2025. If you have your pictures on the site, or forum posts or other content that you want to save, please do so now, they will not be available on our systems after October 31. If you have a paid classified or other advertising account your account services will still be functional until October 31, or when your contract runs out if sooner. If you would like to continue to post classified ads until the close date of October 31,2025 please feel free to register for a free classified account and post away. We will be disconnecting our advertising purchase system this week. Though we are closing we are not filing bankruptcy. We go out clean, all our debts settled and all our bills paid. And if someone is interested in continuing kingsnake.com's legacy I will entertain offers until October 31 This has been a very hard decision, but it is the right one, and it is the right time. I will miss being an integral part of the reptile hobby and culture. - Jeff Barringer

After many years with our current server farm, they are closing and we will be moving our servers to a new provider this weekend. This will result in about a half a day to a full day of time being offline. We are working closely with our server providers to make this as smooth of a transition as possible.

Thank you for being a loyal kingsnake.com member!

"I don't know much about art, but I know what I like." Bill Flowers, an Australian artist based in Tasmania, knows what we like too. Thankfully he has taken it upon himself to edit some of the worlds greatest masterpieces and add the snakes that really should have been a part of the original work.

"I love snakes, and a few other humans on this planet also love snakes. Sadly there are so many humans that do not. I painted this series to make people smile. Smiling is a positive thing. If I can get humans to have a nice fun feeling while looking at snakes, my job is done. - Bill Flowers"

It may still be freezing out in most parts of the country, but we're all ready to spring into spring savings here at kingsnake.com!

Get exactly the advertising exposure you need for less on the Internet's oldest and most popular reptile and amphibian web community!