and how old will it be?
I've been here for a few years i think...but when was this place made?
I sure do like it... :icon_razz
I've been here for a few years i think...but when was this place made?
I sure do like it... :icon_razz
When is Supramania's Birthday?
- Thread starter Figit090
- Start date
What was the crash like? Just wondering. Was the site just down, or were ninjas taking over profiles, or what? Did everyone have to sign up again?
Dunckel;906262 said:
Yes. That's why if you go to the members list, then sort by join date, the first 2-3 pages is all join date March 30th, 05.
I forget what SM was like pre-crash. Seems forever ago. I do remember SM wasn't nearly as active as it is now. In the beginning, I barely used SM because the forum moved so slow... It was easier to ask on SF.
Now it's the other way around. I hardly ever post in the SF MK3 section anymore.
JustAnotherVictim
Supramania Contributor
/\ pretty much sums it up though I have to agree with TJ as it was alot slower, both in performance and in traffic than it is now. All the changes I see are for the better from pre to post crash SM. Maintaince and a SM who gives a shit apperently does wonders for a forum....
ps. to the OP yes we got a spammed pretty hard at the end and then someone was the LeEt HaXtOr and stoled all of our megahurtz. it was FTL
ps. to the OP yes we got a spammed pretty hard at the end and then someone was the LeEt HaXtOr and stoled all of our megahurtz. it was FTL
I always thought it crashed cause some douchenasal tried to be all scriptkiddie and pull a swordfish to steal important CIA Mark III Supra Documents we had hiding here.
Still waiting for Mike to shed some light on the actual birth of this place. lol.
So by saying it helps to have a SM that is good, i'm guessing the site has changed hands at least once? so maybe nobody who is still here actually knows?
I did do that same search and found Mike's first post on the form remake in vBulletin, but obviously the previous posts were...um...gone.
So by saying it helps to have a SM that is good, i'm guessing the site has changed hands at least once? so maybe nobody who is still here actually knows?
I did do that same search and found Mike's first post on the form remake in vBulletin, but obviously the previous posts were...um...gone.
Figit090;906587 said:
I didn't start the site. Tem Wu (7M Power) did in late 2002. Tem is pretty much a "silent partner" and although he stops in from time to time, we don't hear from him much.
As for me, I didn't start hosting the site until late 2004.
The site was hacked in early 2005 (we were running phpBB, which is nice free software, but isn't 100% secure). At that time I leased a copy of vBulletin, which is far more secure and is the same software we still run today.
To give you a little feel for how the site has grown, here's a little history:
At the time of the crash, the site had about 1,700 members.
When we installed vBulletin, we started from scratch and asked people to re-register.
Within a month, we were back up to 1,600 users. The site stayed pretty much that size until late 2005. Up until that point, we had tried to run the site as a "public service" where pretty much all decisions were made by user vote and public opinion. Around this time, some of our members figured out that we were weak in the leadership department, and started spamming, starting nonsense threads, and basically disrupting the whole site. This pissed off a lot of people and the site started to fall apart, mainly due to a some out of control members and a lack of clear leadership.
At this time, we moved over to the management model we have today which is an odd setup, but it works. It's kind of a mixed benevolent dictatorship with an advisory staff that is a meritocracy.
I think the entire staff will agree that I make a lot of the decisions around here, and they, for the most part follow them. Jeff and Grimjack also do this, but not as often.
But it's also true that they can all override me, and if I ever became a tyrant, they could kick my ass (or the other admins) to the curb. This keeps us all honest and prevents any one of us from becoming too much of a tyrant. It a word, it works.
To give you an idea of how well it works, after switching management models, banning a handful of problem users (and I mean less than a dozen - you'd recognize the names from SF's list of trolls), we grew from 1,600 to over 2,200+ users a month later. By the end of the first year under this model we had 4,000 + members.
We did a fairly massive server hardware upgrade at that time, and we're still running on that same box today. (Edit: Update - that server was retired in October of 2009) (Edit 2: Update - And the replacement server was retired in April of 2015)
In early 07, we needed a RAM upgrade and our vBulletin license was expiring. The members chipped in and not only covered it, but donated enough that we upgraded our license to an "owned" version. This is really a lot of help. I invest few thousand dollars a year into keeping SM running, and these donations mean a lot. It's the fact that you people care that makes all the difference.
We've been running like this for years now, and we've got over 7,000 members, and the vast majority of them are active. We get over 1,100 unique logged in users per day.
While most Supra sites seem to be slowly dying, we're growing, every single day.
In recent history, we've focused on expanding the scope of the site, and we've added a ton of features and modifications.
What I think sets Supramania apart from the rest is:
- Privately funded, owned and operated. With the costs of the hosting split between me personally, user donations and a very small amount of Google ad revenue.
- An open door management policy where any member can contact any staff member without fear of reprisal.
- An administration staff who is actively involved in the day to day running of the site.
- Ride of the Month / Year contests
- Free Classified Ads
- One of the best collections of moderators I've ever seen, with the capability of being firm, but fair.
- Clearly defined rules that are posted publicly. Very little favoritism or nepotism here. If you see it, let me know.
- No draconian "no advertising rules". We've got no financial motivation to stifle competition like some other sites do.
- While other sites are just trying to get the page to load, we've got some advanced forum features like:
- A photo gallery for our members rides.
- Custom user pages.
- Flash Chat
- iTrader Rating System
- User Badge System
- Video Embedding in posts
- An enhanced PM system with more storage than most other sites.
- A thread prefix system in selected forums.
- Ability to ignore a thread
And probably a dozen things I take for granted...
I think all of this has combined to make us the second busiest Supra site on the web. I know when it comes QUALITY, we are arguably number one.
Also, to give you an idea of how our numbers are a little different from some other sites, we've deleted over 4,000 user accounts for inactivity. Other sites don't do this because they want to attract paying advertisers. So they leave dead accounts and stupid threads up on the site because the numbers "look good" for the advertisers. Since our vendors don't pay us, we don't care about making the numbers look good, so ours are honest numbers.
I think SM provides some of the best content you are going to find, and if you have a real problem with your car, you'll find the answer far quicker here than most places.
And that's the absolute last time I post something like this after drinking that much coffee....
I sound like this, don't I?
[video=youtube;i7FyhtIwa8I]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7FyhtIwa8I[/video]
SupraMania is the single best run forum I've ever had the privilege of being on.
And I've been on the internet since '93, to give you an idea.
And I've been on the internet since '93, to give you an idea.