When OTC was just a gleam in Papa's eye...

[Cerise]

I was wondering about the birth of OTC. How did the idea go from just a thought to a full-fledged forum?

I know nothing about creating web sites, so I'd be interested in hearing the details, if not step-by-step, on how it was born.

For instance, I've seen vBulletin forums---do you buy or rent the forum software, select the options you want to present, and add your own personal touches, and---voila! There you have it? Does it cost much $$ to keep a website like this alive? What kind of expenses are there? Is anything tax deductable?

And about those Mods. Were you guys all friends from the start, or was there some kind of application process, you were accepted, sent management access privleges, and away you go? Do you try to spend "X" amount of time on the board? How does a mod retire? Do you quietly fade away, or do the long goodbye?

I've always thought there was much work involved in putting a forum together, and I just wanted to get the scoop....

 

[Professur]

Sam, you wanna field this one?

 

[Altron]

From what I remember (I didn't join up until six months or so in), there was one site, HWC (I posted there only a handful of times, and only after posting at OTC), with an OT forum, that got kinda out of hand, so it was removed, and a few members decided to reincarnate it on another site.

Then there's the whole complicated relationship of JJR512, OTC, Catocom's, Xibase, and that one racing forum. Can't say I have anything more than a vague understanding of that either. I made a handful of posts at Xibase nearly four years ago, and I did make a decent amount of posts at JJR's a year ago as a dry run of my second unbanning here.

Since it's pretty much the same people across the board, dunno why there are that many forums, but I don't know any really specifics. I came here six months late, and through another forum that Kruz moderates, completely unrelated to OTC, altho I think a handful of members might have made an occasional post there.

 

[Nixy]

JJR and Xi started around the same time-ish I think...two different people started boards and they both posted at some of the same places so some of the same people ended up on both boards...Sam got Xibase from Sin2 (who started it) but I'm not sure if that was before or after OTC...before I think...so that brought the same people over...we all know and love Cat so when he started his forums many of the same flowed over.

 

[Gonz]

JJR512 & the original Xibase started around the same time. Sam took over Xibase about 6 years ago. Many members form both those & Hardware Central. Since HWC did away with an OT forum, the HWC crowd had nowhere to go. There was a spat between JJR & the OCN sects of HWC & Xi wasn't all that big.

Eventually Sam decided to combine the JJR, Xi, OCN & HWC crowd with an off topic forum. It worked wonders until politics escaped its cage & people got lives.

 

[samcurry]

Well gonz pretty much finalized everyone memory.
OTC came about due to the HWC banning of all off topic. Waited about a year after and then finally got the go ahead from HWC to start putting a link in my and a few others signature that there was a new place to talk about all things OT. And so was the birth of OTC.

Almost all of the core members came from the same sites, all the politics in running a site can be a real pain in the ass but we eventually worked through our differences and have remained friends for years.
vB you van lease or own(owning is the better deal) and depending on the amount of traffic you have at a site it can get expensive.

We are very lucky here because there are those that donate to the cause and keep us going.
Putting a site like this together can be alot of work.(specially for the coding disabled, like me) But with the many friends i've made over the last 10 years its much more rewarding.

 

[Professur]

Gonz, you left out that Force3D was a major factor in the creation of JJR512.com. It's where Justin recruited me. Lord know, we all know where that led.

 

[Gonz]

Force3D was before my time.

I browsed HWC & JJR for quite a while, reading, but not joining. Knowing Sam on a personal level got me to sign up at Xibase. The rest is (frightening, history, revealing, a tale better left unsaid, take your pick)

 

[Inkara1]

I remember when JJR tried out that evaluation version of UBB, then because things kind of took off he got the regular version. vBulletin came later.

 

[Cerise]

Wow--looks like the road here has many a winding turn. I'm glad to see it has survived, and thrived!

 

[kuulani]

Then there's the whole complicated relationship of JJR512

*lightning striking*
*shudders* Back, Satan, back!!

 

[samcurry]

ahhhhh!!!!ubb and fusetalk, i remember those well.

 

[BB]

er- *tad confused*

so - is Sam the Man??

funny really- after a while i realized i knew many on here ... you get a kinda community over several boards and whatnot ... like an extended online family ... with all the reality of love, and fighting ... i hate boards when they are too on-topic ... it's kinda pointless ...

..so ..was it BIG SAM the man wot started OTC then? (heh- i skimmed a bit ... )

 

[Nixy]

Man, we need a "how did you meet this crowd" thread...I think there is one...I should find it...*goes off to hunt the thread*

Be werry werry quiet, I'm huntin' threads

 

[highwayman]

Be werry werry quiet, I'm huntin' threads

So much for the Fudd pudd....

 

[samcurry]

er- *tad confused*

so - is Sam the Man??

funny really- after a while i realized i knew many on here ... you get a kinda community over several boards and whatnot ... like an extended online family ... with all the reality of love, and fighting ... i hate boards when they are too on-topic ... it's kinda pointless ...

..so ..was it BIG SAM the man wot started OTC then? (heh- i skimmed a bit ... )

why yes, yes i am.

 

[nalani]

Man, we need a "how did you meet this crowd" thread...I think there is one...I should find it...*goes off to hunt the thread*

Be werry werry quiet, I'm huntin' threads

I recall a thread like that .. can't remember if it was at JJRs or here or at Xi .. I haven't posted at Xi for aaagggeeessss ... and I take frequent long breaks from this place too LOL .. but only because life gets in the way LOL ..

 

[Nixy]

I never found the thread...I'm not a very good thread hunter...

 

[fury]

I remember Q3Arena and Force3d... those were the first two discussion boards I ever signed up on. Previous to that, it was all Quake servers and IRC.

JJR's place was the first site I'd ever been a mod at, and Xi was the first place I'd ever been an admin at.

I think OTC was the first site we both started from scratch - Sam brought the domain name and hosting, I brought the software (WBB at the time) and the fix-it gene. Make a few posts with a link to OTC in the sig at HWC, and voila, we get an instant hit. Of course, it was too much for our then-current incompetent host (F5) to handle, and we had to change servers. Even withstanding that, the software was getting cumbersome to deal with, so I set out to convert it to phpBB2. That lasted for a few months while Sam scrounged (or extorted, whatever you want to call it ) for enough money for a vBulletin license. We've been using vBulletin ever since, I believe, December of 2002, 8 months after we started.

Sam is the man indeed, without him I probably never would have bothered to learn PHP or any of the other programming languages I later learned after that. Funny how he always says he knows nothing about coding, cause he doesn't need to with me to bug every now and then

I owe a lot of who I am now to the people in this circle. And it's a mighty big circle.

 

[Professur]

We owe you a lot too. Including a kick in the ass for being absent so long.