On Wed, 6 Feb 2002 cgoodin@sfu.ca wrote:
> So, it's not really over, is it?
> Has phoenyx really had a web presence for 16 years? That's great
> --what did you guys use before HTML?
The Phoenyx has only had a web presence for a few years, but we've been in
business for 16, having started as a dial-up BBS dedicated to PBeM games.
We moved onto the net gradually, starting with a QWK packet (BBS offline
reader) gateway that let Internet users send and receive QWK packets. We
eventually built an Internet email to BBS forum gate way. Both of those
were done via a standard dial-up account. After that, we moved to UUCP,
which is a true multi-user Internet mail transport mechanism... it's
dial-up, so we weren't live then. We paid for a domain name and a web
host to give us a live web-site, but it wasn't interactive with the list
server software.
In January of 1998, we subscribed to a dedicated modem and went live 24x7.
In 2000, we switched to DSL.
Somewhere in there, we abandoned the BBS and moved entirely to a Linux
platform, but I can't remember exactly where. We were doing UUCP on the
Windows box and gating messages back and forth between the BBS software
(Remote Access, if anybody cares) and the UUCP spool. But I don't recall
if we were doing UUCP on the Linux box, or if the transition to the live
connection coincided with moving to Linux and abandoning the dial-up
altogether.
By the time we went 24x7, we had virtually zero dial-up users. It was an
odd feeling, knowing that we weren't a BBS any more, but an Internet site.
But the Internet was destroying the local BBS scene and I think we made
the transition pretty smoothly.
-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
