Fifth Anniversary!
Site news, by Dr. Cossack on 6 May 2005 at 10:01
Well, here we are. Five years ago today, the first updates to the Mega Man PC Website went live! Five years is a long time for a fan site to live on the Internet. If this place is still alive and open for everyone to see, it's thanks to everyone who has been coming back again and again. Thank you, all! I would like to add a special note for those who've been visiting almost since the beginning (you know who you are!), since they've always been supportive. The hit counter currently stands at about 385 000. While this isn't as impressive as other sites who reached millions, it's definitely MUCH higher than the average, especially when you consider that most of the work here is being done by myself alone. Of course, I don't want to ignore the hard work of the various moderators who help to keep the community under control since I can't be everywhere at once. They are working for all of you, too, so another thanks goes to them! Here's to the past five years and all of the upcoming ones!
Website history
As promised, here's a recap on the history of this website, with a list of the main events that happened through the years. I've separated the various events in four time periods, since each of those had me working in a different mindset.
May 2000 - March 2002: Most of the website's major and still available features are opened: the message board, oekaki board, Rockboard translation, MegaChess and others all make their debut here. While some of those were primitive compared to what is now available, their popularity made sure that they would stay around.
March 2002 - May 2004: On March 24, 2002, the BIG CRASH occurs. Due to a major server problem on my web host's side, the data hard drives and backups are completely lost. During that event, all of the site's content and data was destroyed. While I had local backups of the content itself, the data (like message board posts and oekaki pictures) couldn't be saved, which meant restarting from scratch in those areas. Also, several sections were begging for an update so I decided to rebuild a large part of the website from the ground up. It took over 2 years to see that everything would be entirely remade, but most sections were taken care of in the following months. A side effect from the crash was that rebuilding sections took a lot of precious time away from creating new content and maintaining existing sections. Since then, the rebuilt sections haven't had any dramatic changes since they are working well and I just like their new versions.
May 2004 - Today: Since everything previously available was restored (and some new stuff was added in the process), it's now a lot easier to look ahead by adding new sections and updating existing ones as needed. Some features that are now popular, like the list of available PC games, have been added during the last year. I'm now trying to add new and improved means on interacting with fans in different ways, like the addition of the oekaki drawing contest shows.
You can review all this (and more!) by browsing through the old news updates.