inthe80s.com, semi-detailed history

This is my first attempt at documenting the major moments in the development of the inthe80s.com website (and related spin offs). I'll try updating this as I remember new things. If you have any input, I'm more than happy to hear it..

Summer of 1990 - Mid 1995
I started my first (and only) BBS, The Information Society. Using a 2400 BAUD modem, a 40mb HD, and a my first IBM PC (a Tandy model 1000sx). I started off with games and files, and a messageboard.  One of the first topic areas was called "You Spin Me Like a Record Baby" for classic 80s tunes and song lyrics. The system grew over the years, eventually getting a faster modem, a faster computer (Compaq Portable II) and four CD-ROMs for downloads. I also had a small selection of song lyrics and movie reviews online. When the Internet started to gain attention around 1994-1995 I saw my core user base disappear and I eventually shut the site down due to a lack of site visitors.

April-June 1995
I started a website on my ACM virtual web hosting account. With a whopping 2 megs of drive space, I set up a personal page, a small page about animation, some stuff about my BBS, and an 80s site I called "ChuckyG's 80s Page". There were no more than a handful of 80s pages around, but a lot of pages about classic 80s TV's and bands. The site was mostly a collection of links to other pages dealing with 80s stuff. The focus was around a list I had created of my favorite 80s compilations, with reviews and track listings. The main index page was in use for about three years.

July 1995-May 1998
I quickly began to build a collection of pages dealing on 80s topics, such as my top ten favorite songs, a small collection of song parodies, misheard 80s lyrics, timelines, clothing styles, etc. Rodney Ho wrote the first review of the site (yes it was good!) around July 1996 for the Atlantic Journal Constitution (I think that's the name of the paper, gotta try and find that article, I know I saved it).

June 1998-April 1998
I got served an eviction notice from ACM, that they weren't going to provide their members with webhosting anymore. I purchased my first domain name (worcestermass.com) and bought server space. With the new server, I was able to set up a messageboard (woo-hoo!), a huge links section, and a classifieds program. I saw my daily page views drop for a few months due to the move (and the typical summer doledrums). By the time September rolled around, the traffic was reaching several thousand page views a day. I stopped entering information into my pages by hand, and wrote scripts to handle entries from site visitors and review them online.

May 1999-November 1999
The popularity of the site made me reconsider the domain name, and in order to make it easier for people to find me, I moved the 80s site to it's own domain name, inthe80s.com. (ChuckyG.com was taken at the time). The name came about while trying to find a short name dealing with the 80s, I kept thinking of stuff like "backinthe80s.com or stuckinthe80s.com, etc" and a friend (not positive which) suggested I just go with inthe80s.com which I thought was a great idea. So the site changed names, and got a new layout. I also began to accept advertising for the first time.

December 1999-October 2001
The website began making more than it cost to run, a lot more. So I figured it was time to branch various portions and try a make a go at my own mini-empire. I left my job, and I created inthe70s.com and inthe90s.com over the course of a couple months. I was planning on creating a joke of the day/debate of the day site, which I was going to call amiright.com.  After some research though, I found a lot of sites specalized in what I was thinking about doing, so I shelved it.  Around this time, I noticed the misheard lyrics portion of the website was growing in the amount of submissions (kept doubling each month). Since I already had a domain with webhosting I wasn't using, I decided it would be a good idea to split the site off on it's own (and write some better software for managing things). I also moved the small collection of song parodies which hadn't really gathered much interest on the 80s site.

Novmeber 2001-Present
I ended up losing my two primary webhosting companies for my various sites, and had to move them to a new provider. In the move, I found my messageboard software didn't work as well on the new servers. I upgraded to YaBB, which was a much more professional piece of software (and open source with a very active community). Around this time, the normally active messageboard exploded over night with traffic. The newer webhost didn't last very long (less than six months) before I outgrew them, so with the last move, the messageboard got spun off into it's own domain, inthe00s.com which I had never planned on using (but grabbed just incase).

On your 4th paragraph, it says "June 1998 to April 1998."  I'm guessing that should be 1999... I like it though!!  Cool to hear the history.  What did chuckyg.com used to be?  Now, it's a directory of all your sites, which i am bookmarking, instead of bookmarking

inthe70s.com
inthe80s.com
inthe90s.com
amiright.com
etc..
etc..

Very handy.

I checked out the domains you had listed.  Very nice.  ;D ::) Ever going to use em?

Well,Chuck my Man you had a good 7 years.I wish you the best of luck for another 7 years.That's if this site is still around in 2009.I hope so. -howard- 8)

Hey ChuckyG

Thanks for going to the trouble of recording how you to came be here and now.

That was a really interesting background look at how everything fits together.

Power to you !  Your sites make a lot of people happy.


FB  ;)

So doesn't it cost money to hold on to all those domains you're not using?  (Sorry, don't know anything about websites, just Geocities  :P)

Awww... I always thought "inthe80s" was a parody of the Village People song "In The Navy"  ;D


(Hmmm... maybe time to get the parody pen to work...  ;) )