Some OGR Forum History Questions

1. When (date) was the OGR forum launched?
   I don't have an exact date, but I think it was some time around 2000.
   
   
2. What was the initial hardware / software used?
   Initially the forum ran on a small Cobalt RAQ server. The software I used was something called PHP BB, a PHP based Bulletin Board app. It is still available today.
   
   
3. Any statistics on the forum's size or growth over the first year would be of interest.
   I can't specific cite member growth numbers, but I can tell you that the little Cobalt RAQ server was overwhelmed within the first year. After a few months of operation I began to notice that the performance of the forum was slowing down. I logged into the admin section of the server to look at some of the performance numbers. The CPU (the Central Processing Unit) was running at 100% almost all the time, and the server was being hit with forum page requests every few seconds!
   
   At the time, PHP BB offered hosting services on their servers. So we paid the extra money to move the forum to their servers, which solved the performance problems.
   
   
4. When was the first OGR Forum meeting in the York Grandstand?  (I recall the forum membership being small enough for each of us to introduce ourselves.)
   This one I can't answer. Someone who was there may be able to nail down this one.

Thank you, Rich!

I recall those days happily (although not with complete clarity).  You created a great, powerful, and beneficial tool for all 3-railers with this forum!

George

Some of the first forums I ever joined used phpbb. I remember seeing it at the bottom of the screen.

I'm glad I joined the forum! I'm only disappointed that I didn't join sooner!

I was one of the original Forum members. My recollection was joining in August of 2000. I honestly don't remember my original Forum "handle", but using a clever pseudonym was all the rage in those days.

I seem to recall that the Forum also displayed a member number by your name  which corresponded to the order in which you joined.

One of the pivotal events took place in 2005 when there was a server change and everyone had to re-register. Sadly we all lost the all important tag line..."member since  (insert joining month) 2000, thus designating an original or charter member. It was important to many of us. A real source of pride and bragging rights but I guess it couldn't be fixed.

We have many of the original folks still here. I really miss the "elders" that have passed through the veil. I'm sure I'll have my memory jogged by the other's reminisces and look forward to seeing those posts.

This is an enjoyable and useful thread. @G3750 thank you for starting it

John

@Rich Melvin posted:

1. When (date) was the OGR forum launched?
   I don't have an exact date, but I think it was some time around 2000.
   

I think it was June or July of 2000. I lurked for several months before joining in December 2000.

I joined the summer/ fall of 2000. In early 2001 I asked to change my forum name and at the time the only way was the delete me and I rejoined.

Oh no not the elders.   Some folks thought too highly of themselves and coined the term “Forum Elders”.  I pretty much laugh every time I hear that now.

@John Meyncke posted:

...One of the pivotal events took place in 2005 when there was a server change and everyone had to re-register...We have many of the original folks still here. I really miss the "elders" that have passed through the veil. I'm sure I'll have my memory jogged by the other's reminisces and look forward to seeing those posts.

We have had to change servers and platforms several times during the evolution of this forum. As we added members, we steadily outgrew the servers and the platforms we were using.

The move in 2005 was when we moved away from the PHP BB software and went to the Eve platform. We had outgrown the capabilities of PHP BB app, and the forum performance was suffering for it. Eve offered much more robust servers and more features. Because the PHP BB app was so different from Eve, there was no way to migrate members and posts from PHP BB over to Eve. Believe me, I tried, but it just wasn't possible. We successfully used Eve for many years before we outgrew it's capabilities too!

After several  years with Eve, the same company that built and hosted Eve (Social Strata) came out with a more robust app that they called Hoopla. Because it was within the same company, we were able to migrate all  forum members and all the Eve threads into Hoopla. Hoopla added features we didn't have in Eve (embedded video clips, for example). Hoopla then became Crowdstack, and that's what we are using today.

We have grown from that little Cobalt RAQ server that served a couple of thousand pages per month, to having our own, high-powered, dedicated server at a major data center in Seattle that served almost 10 million pages last month! During the fall and winter months, we regularly see over 12 million page views per month here. The recent maintenance window we had back on June 24 was to move us to an even bigger server, with more disc space and RAM.

I, too, miss many of the "elders" as Bob Coniglio named our early members. Bob was a key figure in the early development of the OGR Forum. For several years when we were on Eve, Bob posted new threads here on a daily basis, and they were good threads, from a very fertile mind. Bob used to email me every once in a while in recent years, however I haven't heard from Bob for many months now.

Good thread!

I suppose you can laugh if you want to Marty. I was unaware of a derogatory connotation to the term "elders". I was trying to pay homage to folks like Bob C. whom I think you would agree did not think too highly of himself and was/is an all around good guy...

John

Thank you George for the question.  Thank you Rich for all the work you have done the last 21 years to make the forum available to us!  I first learned of the forum in June 2012 and joined the same day.  While I wish I knew of the forum and magazine sooner, but I’m glad I was better late than never!!

George......here's a picture of the 1st Forum meeting.....Fall 2000? I'm in the back with my son, Charles.....he was born in August 92....8 years old looks about right.....

....there's Allan in the 2nd row with a big smile....maybe he can pinpoint it.....

Peter

Thanks Peter!!

I lurked through the latter part of 2000 and joined in January 2001.  I think the first OGR grandstand meeting I attended was April York 2001.  The group was a bit bigger than pictured, but we still went around and introduced ourselves.

George

@Putnam Division posted:

Hello Peter. I always enjoy your contributions to the forum. This is another great one. This group of folks put down the foundation of a conversation that is now now 12 million inquiries a month. Wow - do the math!  Awesome stuff.

I think that this forum started late in the spring of 2000.  I started lurking early on and finally registered in August,2000.

The forum was really free wheeling back then.  There some real characters that participated and sometimes discussions sort of took a turn!  Ha,ha.  But in the end every thing worked out.  There was a whole lot of info coming into the hobby then  and the OGR Forum was,as now,the best place to get it.

Unfortunately some of the most interesting members have been long gone.

Norm

Great photograph, Peter!  Our two daughters sandwich Charles in age; June '91 and May '93.

From humble beginnings…

I joined on October 31,2000. Whatever happened to Mrs. Eileen Cozzi? I really enjoyed her column and even got her autograph one time. I hope I got the name correct.

I was at York for the first meeting but I lost track of time and missed the meeting which is why I am not in the picture. I remember merging Myron Biggar and Barbara. They were such nice people. I hope they are doing well.

This image is from the "Eve" platform I mentioned above. Note that five of the posts on this front page were authored by Bob Coniglio.

@Norm posted:

...The forum was really free wheeling back then.  There some real characters that participated and sometimes discussions sort of took a turn...

Yes, there was a lot of trouble here at first. The old AOL boards that were popular back then were essentially un-moderated. Political discussions, personal attacks, threats, and name calling were commonplace there. Many who registered here in the early days thought they could bring that same kind of uncivilized behavior here. When we deleted posts and banned members because they refused to follow our rules and behave in a polite manner, it generated a lot of turmoil for a while.

Thankfully those days have passed. We now have a truly wonderful group of people here who are genuinely interested in talking about O Gauge trains and helping people.

Some of the "discussions" were so bad, you could not help but keep up with them. One got so heated that i stayed home from work to keep up with it.  I even got a e-mail threat  for making a comment on it.

Doug

Very interesting for us late comers to the Forum.

It looks like all of the subjects need to go through a spring cleaning.  Many posts are long out of date and if possible should be deleted.  This isn't meant to be negative but why keep so much stuff posted when it's no longer needed?

Joe