Nick's page started in 1995. It was a single page that he used mainly to keep his footy links. It was just stored on our home computer for his own use. I had a computer support business at that time and had been developing some small web sites for clients and could see the potential in the web. I needed a working site that I could use as a test bed for ideas and practice. Nick often visited the then new official site and Magpie Magic, which was, I think, the first footy site on the web and was put together by Driver who now runs Buckley Surfers). So I suggested to him that he put his page on line and that we develop it together, so he did and that's where the name came from. 'Nick's Collingwood Page' was just that - a single page on the web. That was about October 95 and Nick had just turned 11. During the off-season we developed it into a small site ready for the 96 season. A lot of that original site can still be seen in today's site.I hope im not boring the shit out of you here but can you do us all a favor and i know a lot of others are interested it was a talking point in the cricketers arms this year when we were all half pissed well i was the others were fully pissed.Can you give us some stats on and about nicks board i.e when it started who was the first member what was the first post that sort of stuff.
After that it was just evolution. Some key points along the way were:
- March 97 - Introduced the first live scoreboard in Australia. The present scoreboard although slightly changed in appearance, still uses the original code written to run the first scoreboard - and we believe that it's still the fastest.
- March 97 - Introduced the Guest Book and Bulletin Board
- April 97 - Introduced the fan mail facility which allowed users to send fan mail from the site directly to the Club.
- Late '97 - Created the database holding results from all home and away games since the inception of the league (VFL).
In January 99 we introduced registration and forums to the bulletin board to help control ratbag elements from other clubs, protect usernames and allow moderation. Although this change came about as a result of user requests, we lost a lot of users at this time. The main complaint was that the new board was too formal and the board had lost its feel. People didn't like having to remember passwords either.
We're almost ready for a major upgrade. Hopefully during this long break we'll get a chance to completely revamp the site and bring its appearance up to date.
Justifying the money and expense has always been a problem, especially seeing that it keeps us broke enough not to be able to get to the footy. We're about to try again to offset the cost by selling email addresses. We've tried this in the past, but as soon as money is mentioned, nobody's interested. If you value the site and would like to keep it up and running, you'll support us, if not, we're wasting our time and we need a break anyway. The email system will consist of Hotmail/Yahoo type webmail accounts or will redirect to your existing email address. The cost will be about $20/year and you'll get magpies.net email addresses for that (username@magpies.net) - your usernames on here will be reserved for your use, but you can use a different one if you prefer. It would be a good idea to get in early while the popular names are still available. There will be an online order form, but I'll take username reservations whenever you like - email me.
Some stats:
The first post on the bb 12/3/97 (after a few test postings)
Early BB members. We only started registering at the beginning of last year, but the first registrations (after Nick and me) were from Tom (hasn't been seen since) and Charlie who still posts from time to time (especially when someone rips off his posts from elsewhere).
Traffic. We are currently getting between 1500 and 3000 hits a day from about 300 unique addresses. That means that about 300 people look at approx. 5 - 10 pages each, each day. For some perverse reason traffic has actually risen slightly since the end of the season, it normally dies to almost nothing at this time of the year.
If you'd like to see the old sites and the old bb messages, they are archived here.
Well - that's about it I think - any questions?
