Editorials: I am just a glorified webmaster

Posted at 4:09 PM EDT (2009 GMT)

May. 3rd, 2006 -- I am just a glorified webmaster.

What people don’t know is that this is my 10th year running a Web site or a chat. If you’re one of our members who are around 15 or 16, I was just learning how to put together a Web site and run an Internet Relay Chat at that age -- when those of you in that age group were of kindergarten age. I got my start with using Linux and FreeBSD at that age as well. While I am only 26, it amazes me that it was so long ago already.

I know you older members are already thinking, “Yeah, wait until you get to 20, 30 or 40 years.” I understand, but keep in mind, 10 years on the Internet is almost like half a lifetime.

I eventually became an IRC Operator for a simulation group, which also has its own stereotypes, much like the coaster community does. I also became a webmaster for a friend who hosted these services (and offered web hosting). He eventually went on to offer online gaming servers, such as “Quake” and “Call of Duty,” and we parted. It was around that time that I started to post on Thrillride.com’s month-old forums while seeking out the thrill seeker in me.

Eventually, the site was taken down, but the forums stayed. We went through a bit of an identity crisis for a couple of months, but we emerged as ThrillNetwork.com, a separate news site to Coasterforum.com, in August 2001. Just before we emerged, I was brought on as the first chat moderator, having run IRC servers, which our chat was based upon. At first it would frustrate me because of the lack of coordination between chat and the forums, but it got worked out. I also witnessed a lot of turmoil as the future ThrillNetwork.com tried to gain solid footing.

As time went by, I was promoted, and by 2002, I was an administrator, sharing powers with Erik Johnson and Tom Zeliff. While both of them left to pursue other matters, I stayed on. We eventually found our solid footing, while dealing with bumps in the road (in the form of problem members, problem staffers, consistency and even other sites trying to cause pain), and the site grew. Eventually, I added the title of editor in chief, as I started to oversee more content.

In August 2002, we launched our first redesign of ThrillNetwork, which merged Coasterforum.com into ThrillNetwork. While I wasn’t involved with the design and construction, I personally hated it. It was hard to navigate and hard to expand. Plus it was slow, and the code was so bloated that some people thought we needed a new server then!

By January 2003, we resolved to redesign the site once again. After seeing how well SpeedZone (Version 3) was put together, we resolved to redo the rest of the site in a similar fashion. Taking from prior experience, I was able to manage the ground-up rebuilding of this site to what you see today. We launched on Dec. 3, 2003, seven months after our second anniversary. I didn’t look back after that.

We grew quickly after that, both in members and in content, and the growth (combined with security issues on our old server) led us to our first major hardware upgrade -- from a Pentium III server to a Dual Xeon server, running on a 64-bit operating system. Downtime was kept to a minimum, and we’re now seven months into running off of that server.

Most of you have noticed that I have stepped away from being an editor in chief. This was necessary, as I no longer have the time to oversee the littler aspects of content. While I continue to help decide the direction of this site alongside Alex, in the end, I am still, to this day, just a glorified webmaster.