It started as a place for people that had to carry too much stuff everyday. The goal was to try and not look like Batman when carrying a variety of tools and gear. It slowly became a home for people that like to carry tons of stuff because they think it is fun rather than to be able to accomplish tasks. We also have a handful of Mall Ninjas. If you don't know what Mall Ninjas are, here is where the term was born. http://lonelymachines.org/mall-ninjas/ I hope I can eventually push it back the other direction and get more people that actually get their hands dirty again.
Well I was 13 when I first made a forum (on proboards). It all started when I learned HTML and started making HTML websites. A person saw it and wrote on the guestbook that I was pretty good for a beginner. I started replying to him via the guest book and we had a long conversation. Finally he said I should consider a forum if I wanted to have chats like that. I had no idea what he was saying, lol. He linked me to his porboards powered forum, I instantly liked what I saw and made me one. The funny thing is, I was such a newbie that I didn't know what a thread was LOL!!! So I thought the boards where that and I made like 200 boards in a few hours haha. The friend joined and helped educate me of what I was doing wrong... haha. Once I got the forum in actual order, I got like 5 members in a week and I was freaking thrilled. Then one of the new members suggested I get hosting and try phpbb2.. I did it and that started my forum running career
I decided to start my forum because I was interested in gaming and modding at the time (still am), and wanted to create my own website the way I wanted it to be. It started out as a personal site just to mess around with, and then people started flowing in
I have learnt a lot of things in the past 10 years, since running various sites and communities. And needed to offer my views and want to create another forum for my niche that would allow other people as passionate as me to discuss about that topic. First forum I started was in 2002, a karate forum. I was trying to share some of the things I was learning as a new karateka and also gather people who knew a lot about this to help other beginners.
Love reading this topic. Hearing what started off some of the great sites is mesmerizing reading. Keep going, I want more stories! gogo
It was actually a space game "X-Beyond The Frontier", that led me into starting my first website using Frontpage 2000 at the time, later used DreamWeaver. After seeing another persons website covering the same game also and thought it was pretty dam awesome what he'd done with it posting tips, secret bases, system maps and so on. Later I then decided to venture more into forums for people to use talking about stuff posted on the website about the game. From that I became more and more interested in forums then, rather than running a website because of the discussion side of things. Most of my first forums was PERL script ones with Flat file database systems. YaBB and Ikonboard being prime examples of them used then. I was able to even run them from my ISP Blueyonder webspace at the time, because they didn't use MySQL and PHP.
X-Beyond The Frontier? If you did, how long for? Also, was you ever a member then on the Egosoft forums posting there? That game was actually a follow-up or expansion pack to the first one called "X-Beyond". I played both, also bought X3 later, but that game had some serious performance issues with it.
I have a promotional forum and started because I like helping people out.I love giving a place for site owners to come advertise for free and try to get them more members.
I started designing web sites from my bedroom in 1998. A year later I reduced the hours at my regular job and got an office and worked for myself for two days per week. In between web design jobs I'd mess with Perl/CGI and that's when I started my web directory. A few years later I quit smoking and with the money I saved in the first couple of months I bought a new bike. I then visited a few cycling forums to get advice and since I enjoyed using them I decided to have a go at building my own forum using free PHP forum software - you know, something to do in-between design jobs when I was kicking my heels. I started CycleChat and waltzed along for a couple of years and gained 70 or so members, but there wasn't much going on and I wasn't all that bothered really. Then a popular cycling magazine merged their forums with sister sites and a few hundred people didn't like the end result and decided to jump ship to CycleChat as an alternative. The rest, as they say, is history ... When my employer retired a few years later I couldn't find any part-time work that paid anywhere near as well and wasn't making enough profit from the web design to support the family, so had to put the family first and shutdown the office and go back to work full-time for someone else. No worries though, the forums were doing okay and the web directory was earning enough to cover the server rental. Since then CycleChat has grown very well and I've re-rigged the web directory to earn a little more whilst cutting out all extras and unnecessary costs and overheads so it's a nice, simple operation now. One that, at the moment, takes up all of my spare time though ... lol. My future plans are to capitalise on the success of CycleChat, take what I've learned, and apply that to other niche forums so that as a group they can support me in working for myself full-time. GeeksChat is my second forum and as it covers another of my interests it is a natural use of one of the additional XF licenses I bought to support Kier, Mike and Ashley. I'm currently focusing on getting it properly established because whilst I've had it up for quite some time, I've been so busy with CycleChat that I haven't really put much effort into it. Since moving CycleChat to XF I've found it much easier to manage, which has allowed me to spend a bit more time on getting GC off the starting blocks. Like many of you I don't have any money to throw at promoting my site so I'm doing it the old-fashioned way and posting and linking and tweeting and doing the legwork to get the name out there. Once it's got some momentum I'll have a look at getting my remaining two licenses into use ... The key thing is though, I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it - and since I'm a chatter box it comes in really handy having a ready audience to read my waffle. Cheers, Shaun
I decided to start a forum after the forum I'm a member of has closed down. I wanted to build a new "home" for people who have the same interests as me.
