"Mommy, where do forums come from?"

[Mpegger]

Just curious to find out about the birth of this forum. I'm seriously thinking of opening up my own forum (not computer related though) and am curious about a couple of things.

When O/C Forum was "born", was there already an established user base that was moved over from some other form of web board?

Was Skip the one and only member for a while, or were the mods and such decided upon ahead of time and present when the forum was first online?

Did members join quickly since the forums was part of O/C.com, or did they at first, join slowly?

I ask those questions cause I'm still in the process of forum layout and making graphics for it and it just looks so strange looking at a empty forum with only 1 registered user. I know word of mouth and such sould help user base grow, but a forum with no postings (yet) and only 1 member, heck, I dont think I would join even though its my own forum.:rolleyes:

[el]

lmao

[William]

Don't know a ton on the history, but here is what I know. This forum has been around for four years I believe. Skip has changed the software as the site has gone on. The forum was started as an offshoot of the front page and from there the beginings of the community was started. As for the mods, we all have been around for various amounts of time. I am coming up on a year and a half being here. The others mods are in that general timeframe to much longer. The number of mods and the role of the mods have changed as the forums has grown. It used to be that we had 1 moderator, now we have 10(i believe) active moderators and 3 admins.

[Jon]

Front page was started first and the forums followed suit a while afterwards.

It started as many do, those interested in the front page discussed articles and their own ideas/concepts within the forums.

So, was there an established user base when the forums opened? In a sense, yes...albeit small. Those interested in overclocking and already reading the articles on the front page took advantage of the forums when they opened.

Skip has always run the forums (to my knowledge and I've been here since maybe 2 months after they opened). Up until barely over a year ago, we had only one moderator, Daniel ~, who pretty much etched the personality these forums have today. As the forums exploded in membership base, more moderators were added over time.

Forum growth was somewhat slow for the first year to year and half. There were probably only a few dozen that were considered regulars and I'd say, at most, several hundred to only over a thousand registered users. When the forums moved from the original layout to something very similar to what we have now (vBB) it really began to pick up. I'd say we've seen over 15,000 new members in the past year and half alone. Skip would probably have a more accurate account than me, but I don't think I'm too far off.