Ask us About Making a web Community

[The Gremlins]

Forgive us if we speak about ourselves in the third person.

The Gremlins have been a part of this site since it was created. This community and its sites were actually created on or before 2002, and the role of "The Gremlins" has been filled by many different people off and on through the years. Sometimes The Gremlins have been multiple someones at once.

There have been at least 10 people that have been "The Gremlins" at one stage or another. Collectively we have probably about 60 years worth of web community development between us and around 40 to 50 years of web experience.

This is what we hope will be the final form of Gametramp.com and this particular community, but God only knows.

Many of these people can still log in here as The Gremlins, though whether they will or not is entirely up to them and circumstance.

I can't promise that we'll collectively be aware of or respond to this thread properly or as it should be done, but we'll try.

Sites that The Gremlins have helped develop:

What Boys Want (they're on their fourth version)
Denver Broncos (Two incarnations, one overhaul)
Denver Bronco fan sites (at least two)
Its Happening (we used to steal Al-Qaida's web sites)
Eternal Keep (closed for now)
Hot or Not (two incarnations)
Slashdot (details unknown)
Pandemic Studios (four incarnations)
Oddly, no one here has ever worked on SA... I just realized that. Huh. Weird.
Numerous small communities - too many to count (10+)
Private communities and web sites (at least 50).


This of course doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the PR and Marketing background for web development that exists, or most of the other skills involved.

We do have a pretty extensive list of major sites we've helped make and been part of though, so if you have questions about this kind of stuff lay it on us and one of The Gremlins should be able to shit an answer for you.

[Goonwhore]

Why did you make me and why did you give me such an insulting name?

[The Gremlins]

Why did you make me and why did you give me such an insulting name?

Shut up and suck.

[Dodecalypse]

What would you say was your largest, and most expensive, internet community? How much did it cost in the end?

[AiRsTrIkE]

What would you say was your largest, and most expensive, internet community? How much did it cost in the end?

I'd have to say anywhere from $180 to $280...

[I'm not Goro this time]

Wow, I never knew this site was that old. Or that The Gremlins worked on many famous sites.

[The Gremlins]

What would you say was your largest, and most expensive, internet community? How much did it cost in the end?

This community, to date, has probably cost in the neighborhood of $7,000 to establish.

This includes buying the domains, hosting the domains over time, the software and updates, and so on. At one time there were quite a few people that used this web site for different things. There were a bunch of members of some forums that had been tossed up (not The Pub if any of you remember that), but of another community.

The areas that were blocked off were used as a development area for different projects. Some of those projects included web sites that later went public on a different domain, a database program that was built from scratch, and a college Internet research assignment that drew in the neighborhood of 3,000 respondents to a very elaborate testing system.

What was historically on the surface of this community was only the beginning. What's here now is exactly what you see. That's why we had to purge everything to start over. There were relics of old projects everywhere.

Now, this space is used solely for this community.

But all told, probably around $7,000 dollars since 2002 (or so) was spent on this community.

This is about to go up quite a bit in the near future too. The plans for this community don't come cheap.

[Chunky Monkey]

I also did not know this community went that far back, but Im happy to be a part of it.

[The Gremlins]

What would you say was your largest, and most expensive, internet community? How much did it cost in the end?

I think we misunderstood the question the first time we replied to it. You're asking about any community, and we replied with a focus on this community.

Probably the most expensive site any of us (The Gremlins) worked on was Whatboyswant.com, but it really didn't "cost" that much because most of the code was hand-written by the crew there. Maybe one of those Gremlins will come in and clarify that for us.

In terms of sheer dollars, I think anyone would be hard-pressed to match the Denver Broncos.

It would not surprise us at all if the total cost of that site over time exceeded the million dollar mark.

[AiRsTrIkE]

What would you have to say the easiest, simplest free forum software is? Currently the people at that site have a BBS-type thing going, and maybe it just seems waay too complicated for it's own good.

[The Gremlins]

What would you have to say the easiest, simplest free forum software is? Currently the people at that site have a BBS-type thing going, and maybe it just seems waay too complicated for it's own good.

Easiest and simplest? PunBB. It barely even qualifies as a message board. It has no features, and I mean none. It's very very hackable, however. Same for any of the shareware stuff actually.

What site are you talking about when you say "that site?"

[AiRsTrIkE]

Easiest and simplest? PunBB. It barely even qualifies as a message board. It has no features, and I mean none. It's very very hackable, however. Same for any of the shareware stuff actually.

What site are you talking about when you say "that site?"

It's a little recreation club I attend in south Chicagoland. To be honest, I really don't think they need a forum at all, but if I figure if they're going to have one, they should at least have one that doesn't suck.

[The Gremlins]

It's a little recreation club I attend in south Chicagoland. To be honest, I really don't think they need a forum at all, but if I figure if they're going to have one, they should at least have one that doesn't suck.

There is no such thing as a free forum that doesn't suck.

All of the free ones have major vulnerabilities that can be exploited by complete boobs who are capable of doing an Internet search. This goes for PHPbb, PunBB, InvisionFree, and so on.

They simply don't update that often and their emphasis is on paid products. There are a great many known hacks to each of these pieces of software out there. They're really not "good" in that sense. Anyone who is properly motivated can easily hack the shit out of them even if they don't have the first damned clue what they're doing on a computer.

That's not to say those boards aren't decent or that they're useless. We have a set of PunBB boards, some PHPbb boards, and two instances of InvisionFree boards. They do their job and they're simple and they.. Mostly function (Invisionfree is a giant piece though).

But yeah, they're all vulnerable depending on how motivated someone is to screw them up.

The free ones are pretty basic. They're also pretty vulnerable.

[Snuffy the Evil]

How do you manage the site's server? Are you a corporate entity who designs and hosts your own sites for fun and profit? Do you rent the server yourself? What are the logistics of setting up and running a site such as this?