sunrunner_pei
01-30-2003, 04:32 PM
I see a lot of new members, so I thought a brief history lesson may be in order. :) Afterall, the Grand Am Owners Club as it is now didn't happen overnight...
June 9, 1999 - I started the Grand Am Owners Club on Yahoo!. When trying to research my Grand Am purchase, I couldn't find many good GA resources on the 'Net. Why not start my own? :) Yahoo! Clubs offered free message boards and I was familiar with the layout, so I started a club called "Grand Am Owners". After a short while we became known as the "Grand Am Owners Club. Our address was http://club.yahoo.com/clubs/grandamowners
June 10, 1999 - I picked up my 1999 Grand Am SE2 from the dealership. Thus started the long road to subtle mods, club meets and lots and lots of problems.
Feb 13, 2001 - The GAOC has taken off. Things work well most of the time, sometimes not. After almost 2 successful years, over 17,000 posts, and nearly 1000 members, the lack of moderation was evident. 3 co-founders were nominated and chosen: Dallas, John and Steve. Their hard work really paid off!
May, 2001 - The lack of features, terrible performance, Yahoo! bugs, and the same questions being asked over and over and over again made me consider starting over with a brand new forum. It was a treat when Jason Miller of GAPower approached me and offered to set up and host a FREE forum for us using uBB.
May 24, 2001 - Started setting up new forums for the Club. uBB sure had a lot of features to it!
May 28, 2001 - Started work on a brand new website for the Club. Man, I need to work on my HTML skills! lol
June 5, 2001 - The brand new website and forums went live at http://www.gapower.com/~gaowners Now the work of getting people to transfer over to the new forum begins. I can't turn off the Yahoo! club, and people are very reluctant to use the new forums. For a long while we have people posting to both sites.
Sep 6, 2001 - Bought domain name gaownersclub.com The new domain name brought a level of professionalism to the site, and marks the first time money was actually spent on the club.
Oct 1, 2001 - Joined forces with http://www.n-body.net to deliver the awesome Grand Am registry! Ryan's hard work is evident, and MUCH appreciated! The registry is maintained on N-Body.net's servers, but we created an interface to browse the registry through the GAOC.
Nov 14, 2001 - After several successful months, 775 new members, and many many posts, our forum changes servers once again. The new location doesn't work, and the forum goes offline for several days.
Nov 18, 2001 - The forum goes offline permanantly at GAPower. Disagreements arise between GAPower and it's Network websites, and we search for (paid) hosting elsewhere.
Nov 21, 2001 - New hosting is secured for the Club at http://www.innerweb.ca The site is transferred over to a dual 1GHz server with 2GB of RAM running Linux and an Apache web server. A huge thanks goes out to Kelly, who is paying 1/2 the hosting costs!
We can not secure a copy of our forum software for use on a different site, so the quest for new forum software begins...
...Getting anxious, we install XMB, which is a mySQL/PHP based forum. All is set up and the forum goes live... Only to find out that the forum software is buggy as hell. Nothing works. We're off to a false start. :(
Nov 22, 2001 - The hunt for reliable forums resumes, and we decide on phpBB (version 1.4.4) which was a true blessing. Not quite as feature-rich as XMB, but this software performs!! It also brought the stability we desperately needed.
Dec 7, 2001 - We're moving along and growing steadily. 99 new members and 830 posts as of this moment. Thanks to everyone for their patience, help,and continued support!! It is much appreciated. :)
Oct, 2002 - With the rising cost of hosting fees because of our ever-growing bandwith usage, we decide we have to do something soon to ease the burden on our bank accounts. A true blessing when RSM Racing (www.rsmracing.com) approaches us about buying some ad space. After very careful consideration, we accept. We then decide to also sell ads to GrafxWerks (www.grafxwerks.com) and Alter Impact (www.alterimpact.com).
Dec 13, 2002 - We are approached by Andy's Auto Sport (www.andysautosport.com) to sell them an ad space as well. Again, we gladly accept.
Dec 2002 - We've seen an explosion of growth in the GAOC forums, and we're realalizing that we're quickly outgrowing our forum software. With well over 100,000 posts and almost 6000 members, and with most support for phpBB 1.4.4 discontinued, we decided we must upgrade our forum software once again.
Kelly and I spend several hours on the phone each night discussing our options and what would be best for the club as a whole. I spend many hours researching our various options. I do test installs of several different forums. I start doing test upgrades to these forums as well. All without the membership knowing what was happening in the background.
Jan 1, 2003 - Kelly and I put a call out to our membership to get a better understanding of what the members would like to see happen. Leave things as they are? Upgrade to the new version of phpBB? Or scrap phpBB entirely and move on to a professional board that will better suit our growing needs?
Jan 7, 2003 - Kelly and I decide to bite the bullet and we purchase vBulletin, the leading forum creation software. We know it has the features, the stability and the speed to deliver what our membership want from the club. What we don't know is if we can upgrade our existing forums to save our membership and data.
I do several test upgrades, and they all fail. We are in constant contact with Jelsoft and with hack authors to try and determine the problem. We figure out what the problem is, but it wasn't one we were able to overcome.
I begin the work of creating the new forums from scratch. During this process, it is decided that the rest of the website including the main front page should be updated as well. To accomplish this, we installed a portal product called vB Home Lite. This brings a new level of functionality to the club's homepage and in the end will make updating the page a lot easier for us.
Jan 20, 2003 - The new vB forums are presented to the forum Super Moderators for them to give it a good round of error checking, bug testing and to make us familiar with the administration tools.
Jan 22, 2003 - We present the new forums to the Section Moderators for them to get familiar with the new layout and controls.
Jan 23, 2003 - New registrations to the existing phpBB forums are disabled
Jan 24, 2003, 1:36 pm AST - The new vB forum goes live for the membership of the Grand Am Owners Club. The phpBB forum is closed to new posts, and people start to register on the new site. The changeover was planned for that evening, but because of my severe cold, I decided to make the changes early.
The changeover is a complete success!
Jan 30, 2003 - In less than a week (6 days) we're up to 493 members with just shy of 10,000 posts. We're off to a fantastic start!!!
June 9, 2003 - The GAOC celebrates its 4-year anniversary!
August 22-24, 2003 - The Grand Am Owners Club, with the gratious help of ClubECM (http://www.clubecm.com) hosts the First Annual GAOC meet in Albany, New York. The meet was a huge success. With over 35 cars and over 50 members attending, we all had a great time. Plans are already being made for Albany '04.
November 17, 2003 - We install the Timeslip Database (http://www.gaownersclub.com/forum/timeslips.php) to keep track of various members' timeslips.
Also on Nov 17, we re-install vB Home Lite, the portal software for our homepage. We had to previosly remove it for performance and bandwith issues.
November 20, 2003 - Discussions regarding the MFX body kit were banned from our forums, due to threats of legal action against the GAOC by AED. This marks a dark day in GAOC history.
Feb 26, 2004 - We reach the 5000 member milestone on the new forums. Our 5000th member was PhattieG.
March 1, 2004 - Our new Part Number Database goes live. A great big 'Thanks' goes out to The Parts Guy. You know who you are. ;)
New Updates Continued here... (http://www.gaownersclub.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=48525)
A great big "Thank You" goes out to the membership of the GAOC. Without you, we wouldn't exist. As well, I'd like to thank all the moderators and Super moderators for the thankless job they do of keeping the boards fun for everyone.
I would also like to thank Kelly for his time, efforts, diplomacy, and not to mention his paying 1/2 the club's fees. Without him there would be no GAOC.
Finally, I'd like to thank Karen & Evan for putting up with me and all the time I spend working on this club and website!
Last updated September 22 - SH
June 9, 1999 - I started the Grand Am Owners Club on Yahoo!. When trying to research my Grand Am purchase, I couldn't find many good GA resources on the 'Net. Why not start my own? :) Yahoo! Clubs offered free message boards and I was familiar with the layout, so I started a club called "Grand Am Owners". After a short while we became known as the "Grand Am Owners Club. Our address was http://club.yahoo.com/clubs/grandamowners
June 10, 1999 - I picked up my 1999 Grand Am SE2 from the dealership. Thus started the long road to subtle mods, club meets and lots and lots of problems.
Feb 13, 2001 - The GAOC has taken off. Things work well most of the time, sometimes not. After almost 2 successful years, over 17,000 posts, and nearly 1000 members, the lack of moderation was evident. 3 co-founders were nominated and chosen: Dallas, John and Steve. Their hard work really paid off!
May, 2001 - The lack of features, terrible performance, Yahoo! bugs, and the same questions being asked over and over and over again made me consider starting over with a brand new forum. It was a treat when Jason Miller of GAPower approached me and offered to set up and host a FREE forum for us using uBB.
May 24, 2001 - Started setting up new forums for the Club. uBB sure had a lot of features to it!
May 28, 2001 - Started work on a brand new website for the Club. Man, I need to work on my HTML skills! lol
June 5, 2001 - The brand new website and forums went live at http://www.gapower.com/~gaowners Now the work of getting people to transfer over to the new forum begins. I can't turn off the Yahoo! club, and people are very reluctant to use the new forums. For a long while we have people posting to both sites.
Sep 6, 2001 - Bought domain name gaownersclub.com The new domain name brought a level of professionalism to the site, and marks the first time money was actually spent on the club.
Oct 1, 2001 - Joined forces with http://www.n-body.net to deliver the awesome Grand Am registry! Ryan's hard work is evident, and MUCH appreciated! The registry is maintained on N-Body.net's servers, but we created an interface to browse the registry through the GAOC.
Nov 14, 2001 - After several successful months, 775 new members, and many many posts, our forum changes servers once again. The new location doesn't work, and the forum goes offline for several days.
Nov 18, 2001 - The forum goes offline permanantly at GAPower. Disagreements arise between GAPower and it's Network websites, and we search for (paid) hosting elsewhere.
Nov 21, 2001 - New hosting is secured for the Club at http://www.innerweb.ca The site is transferred over to a dual 1GHz server with 2GB of RAM running Linux and an Apache web server. A huge thanks goes out to Kelly, who is paying 1/2 the hosting costs!
We can not secure a copy of our forum software for use on a different site, so the quest for new forum software begins...
...Getting anxious, we install XMB, which is a mySQL/PHP based forum. All is set up and the forum goes live... Only to find out that the forum software is buggy as hell. Nothing works. We're off to a false start. :(
Nov 22, 2001 - The hunt for reliable forums resumes, and we decide on phpBB (version 1.4.4) which was a true blessing. Not quite as feature-rich as XMB, but this software performs!! It also brought the stability we desperately needed.
Dec 7, 2001 - We're moving along and growing steadily. 99 new members and 830 posts as of this moment. Thanks to everyone for their patience, help,and continued support!! It is much appreciated. :)
Oct, 2002 - With the rising cost of hosting fees because of our ever-growing bandwith usage, we decide we have to do something soon to ease the burden on our bank accounts. A true blessing when RSM Racing (www.rsmracing.com) approaches us about buying some ad space. After very careful consideration, we accept. We then decide to also sell ads to GrafxWerks (www.grafxwerks.com) and Alter Impact (www.alterimpact.com).
Dec 13, 2002 - We are approached by Andy's Auto Sport (www.andysautosport.com) to sell them an ad space as well. Again, we gladly accept.
Dec 2002 - We've seen an explosion of growth in the GAOC forums, and we're realalizing that we're quickly outgrowing our forum software. With well over 100,000 posts and almost 6000 members, and with most support for phpBB 1.4.4 discontinued, we decided we must upgrade our forum software once again.
Kelly and I spend several hours on the phone each night discussing our options and what would be best for the club as a whole. I spend many hours researching our various options. I do test installs of several different forums. I start doing test upgrades to these forums as well. All without the membership knowing what was happening in the background.
Jan 1, 2003 - Kelly and I put a call out to our membership to get a better understanding of what the members would like to see happen. Leave things as they are? Upgrade to the new version of phpBB? Or scrap phpBB entirely and move on to a professional board that will better suit our growing needs?
Jan 7, 2003 - Kelly and I decide to bite the bullet and we purchase vBulletin, the leading forum creation software. We know it has the features, the stability and the speed to deliver what our membership want from the club. What we don't know is if we can upgrade our existing forums to save our membership and data.
I do several test upgrades, and they all fail. We are in constant contact with Jelsoft and with hack authors to try and determine the problem. We figure out what the problem is, but it wasn't one we were able to overcome.
I begin the work of creating the new forums from scratch. During this process, it is decided that the rest of the website including the main front page should be updated as well. To accomplish this, we installed a portal product called vB Home Lite. This brings a new level of functionality to the club's homepage and in the end will make updating the page a lot easier for us.
Jan 20, 2003 - The new vB forums are presented to the forum Super Moderators for them to give it a good round of error checking, bug testing and to make us familiar with the administration tools.
Jan 22, 2003 - We present the new forums to the Section Moderators for them to get familiar with the new layout and controls.
Jan 23, 2003 - New registrations to the existing phpBB forums are disabled
Jan 24, 2003, 1:36 pm AST - The new vB forum goes live for the membership of the Grand Am Owners Club. The phpBB forum is closed to new posts, and people start to register on the new site. The changeover was planned for that evening, but because of my severe cold, I decided to make the changes early.
The changeover is a complete success!
Jan 30, 2003 - In less than a week (6 days) we're up to 493 members with just shy of 10,000 posts. We're off to a fantastic start!!!
June 9, 2003 - The GAOC celebrates its 4-year anniversary!
August 22-24, 2003 - The Grand Am Owners Club, with the gratious help of ClubECM (http://www.clubecm.com) hosts the First Annual GAOC meet in Albany, New York. The meet was a huge success. With over 35 cars and over 50 members attending, we all had a great time. Plans are already being made for Albany '04.
November 17, 2003 - We install the Timeslip Database (http://www.gaownersclub.com/forum/timeslips.php) to keep track of various members' timeslips.
Also on Nov 17, we re-install vB Home Lite, the portal software for our homepage. We had to previosly remove it for performance and bandwith issues.
November 20, 2003 - Discussions regarding the MFX body kit were banned from our forums, due to threats of legal action against the GAOC by AED. This marks a dark day in GAOC history.
Feb 26, 2004 - We reach the 5000 member milestone on the new forums. Our 5000th member was PhattieG.
March 1, 2004 - Our new Part Number Database goes live. A great big 'Thanks' goes out to The Parts Guy. You know who you are. ;)
New Updates Continued here... (http://www.gaownersclub.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=48525)
A great big "Thank You" goes out to the membership of the GAOC. Without you, we wouldn't exist. As well, I'd like to thank all the moderators and Super moderators for the thankless job they do of keeping the boards fun for everyone.
I would also like to thank Kelly for his time, efforts, diplomacy, and not to mention his paying 1/2 the club's fees. Without him there would be no GAOC.
Finally, I'd like to thank Karen & Evan for putting up with me and all the time I spend working on this club and website!
Last updated September 22 - SH