[good dog]

Just reminiscing about the good old days after seeing a post by dylantomcat, and got to thinking we should have an info sticky on the history of the site.

Roo, the Administrators and Moderators who have been with the site since it's beginnings deserve some sort of recognition in the form of a documented history of the sites beginnings, the ups and downs and we can't forget to mention the infamous Forester Industries law suit:icon_wink: It should be stickied in the New Members Forum for those interested in how we all got here. Just a thought.

Anybody else agree?

 

[Superru]

This was the member list on Jan 8th 2006.

I've got more if there is interest in seeing them.

 

[good dog]

I was thinking we also need some info about the old site which eventually had to become this site. I know the info like what you posted would not be around for the .com site, but yes that is what I think the new members and current members would like to know. There has been various snippets of information or comments in threads but nothing complete.

Thanks for posting that.

 

[frogstar7055]

Very cool.

 

[bbottomley]

Yes! Twas a scary time. 'Administrator' was on vacation in DC and essentially offline. I was visiting my daughter in Canada. Had I been home in (then) Maryland I would have invited 'Administrator' out to my house to give him a chance to try to straighten things out.

There were a few days of nothingness. I trolled the other Subie sites. Per Richard's list I guess I missed out on super charter membership, but I did rediscover the place quite shortly thereafter.

There are largely untold stories about what actually happened. Hacking? Failure to renew domain? Tales about the attempts to reconstitute the data base, including a trip to Connecticut by one of our central-Mass. members armed with a few CDRs. The story about the ultimate sale to Autoforums as it was at the time and as it has now become.

Yes, some of this didn't get emphasized at the time due to typical commercial reasons and the press of getting things started again. I think that this is all water over the dam by now. Time to record it for posterity. Thanks for the suggestion, Good Dog!

 

[WNC Forester]

I am not surprised to see somebody from Asheville on that old users list. This place is a mecca for foresters. I see about 30 everytime I go out!!!:bacon:

 

[FPT_RAIDER]

i have always wondered, it came up for a lil on the anniversary this yr, but now with this it seems there was more, i think it would be really sweet to get the low down on the whole deal!!!!

 

[Tuned200]

Cool info. A lot of good people have done a lot and gave a lot to make this place what it is. And to this day, new members continue to add to the knowledgebase of what is .org!!!!

Thank you to everyone who has became a member, old or new and who has added information that is of value!

 

[MudRunner]

Yeah... I've always wanted to hear the story! :smile:

 

[bellatech]

This was the member list on Jan 8th 2006.

I've got more if there is interest in seeing them.

WOW! I am freaking amazed. For some reason, I thought the site had been going on since the first SF days, that there were way more members just four years ago. :smile:

Seriously, applause are in order, to all that have contributed, to you guys for making me love my foz and this site so much. And I gotta say...compared to other forums for whatever and who knows what, the folks on here are sharp as tacks, super cool (for the most part) accommodating, and gracious.

Yay! :bananapartyhat: And gracias!!

 

[funkymonkey1002]

WOW! I am freaking amazed. For some reason, I thought the site had been going on since the first SF days, that there were way more members just four years ago. :smile:

Seriously, applause are in order, to all that have contributed, to you guys for making me love my foz and this site so much. And I gotta say...compared to other forums for whatever and who knows what, the folks on here are sharp as tacks, super cool (for the most part) accommodating, and gracious.

Yay! :bananapartyhat: And gracias!!

The site was around before that, but there was a "shaky" time in which it was down for a while. That screen shot is from when the site was taken back by the community and the forum as it mostly is now was born. I was a member on here back in the "before time", but then stuck to scooby mods for a while when the site was down and didn't join back up until (whenever my profile says I did!).

Didn't the site originally start out run by a dealership or something in the very early days?

 

[pleiad7]

The short version: Roo discovered the previous iteration of the site (subaruforester.com) by accident in late 2002 and built the membership to about 5000 members when an unfortunate incident took it offline in late 2005. In January 2006 the previous owner still showed no interest in bringing the site back up, so we finally bought the domain and (unfortunately unrecoverable) database from him and started everything over from scratch with the .org suffix. It didn't take the members from the old site very long to find us, so we were able to recover most of our membership in a very short period of time.

I want to get Roo in here to tell the complete story because he's the guy who started it all, and is much better at storytelling. :smile: I'll ask him tonight to do a little write-up here.

Anyone remember our black ops agent ahartfie and his mission to recover the old database from some obscure residence in NH or thereabouts? :lol:

 

[pleiad7]

Didn't the site originally start out run by a dealership or something in the very early days?

Originally the site was owned by a guy in WA whose business is building online parts sales sites for dealerships (such as SGP). He built the Forester forum and it just sat there idle until Roo stumbled on it and started promoting it on other Subie forums.

 

[pleiad7]

The first screenshot of the "old" site that actually shows a forum - Nov. 30, 2002: http://web.archive.org/web/20030622103148/www.subaruforester.com/forum/index.php
That was about a year before I joined. 132 members, and the member numbers didn't really gain real momentum until the 04 XT appeared on the scene in mid to late 2003.

The last screenshot before it went down - Dec. 24, 2005: Subaru Forester :: Index

 

[Duderotomy]

wow, it's always interesting to see the history behind certain things... and those old screenshots are cool Silke.
The forum really has come a long way since those days, but it's too bad about the long-lost archives :frown:

 

[sea-scooby]

We did rescue of lot of info from the old forum using the Google cache thing.

I joined the site in mid 2005 to find a few parts and it just went from there. When the original SF.com was lost, it took a few weeks to get the word out so a lot of the original forum members where not here the first week or two.

I remember the forum being more "member" ran, and we would have fund raisers and raffles to cover costs and things like that. It was fun stuff!

 

[sirwilliam]

"That's one small step for foresters; one giant leap for subaruforester.com/org":biggrin:

 

[adc]

I want to get Roo in here to tell the complete story because he's the guy who started it all, and is much better at storytelling. :smile: I'll ask him tonight to do a little write-up here.

That would be great This forum has become mad busy.

 

[abacall]

It's funny how many of the "older" members have the same join date, Jan 06. It's like an OG badge.

 

[dylantomcat]

Oh, this just gave me goose bumps!!!!! I remember back in the good old days (late 2003, early 2004)) when I was a moderator and pregnant with Lillian. Things were simpler than and I spent most of my time cruising this board! And then I had the t-shirts made right after Lillian was born and spent all my time packing orders.

Good times! But how can I get rid of Blubaru and what does Kevin (her Godfather) think?