Happy Anniversary!

[ladymako71]

6 months ago today a nice boy from PEI decided to make a fun forum for fans of the ANADAF. Since then way back in Feb when the idea was concieved, there have been 107 members added, over 5200 posts on just about everything under the sun, not to mention the goodies!

The current series creators took notice! One of them even signed on and when he can, answers the questions of the drooling masses. The artist one day just decided to send in scans of pages in their pencil form, which are absolutely breathtaking. Interviews have been nabbed with former creators!

Long time mates have gotten to know each other even better and newer fans have been welcomed with open arms. So on the 6 month anny I suggest we kick back, say thanks to Ben and pop open the bubbly! (or plain grape juice for certain people who have been in the hard stuff already this weekend.) ^^

Here's to seeing the one year!

[kozzi24]

We have our Alpha
And all its laughta
Then what do we get
But Alpha Flight net
all by work from Ben
A god among men

The site's actually MUCH older. When did you start it, O mighty Ben?

[Ben]

Thanks Jo! I was gonna bring the subject up after putting the last touches on the landscaping I was doing, but you beat me to it. :)


Thanks to Jo and Kozzi for the nice things being said, but really it wouldn't have been anything special without all the great people that came on board.


The site's actually MUCH older. When did you start it, O mighty Ben?

That's quite a can 'o worms there my friend, so lets break it down. Back somewhere around...ohhhh 1995 (can't remember exactly) I joined the Alpha Waves mailing list. Back then, it was just about 15 email addresses that you saved in you address book to email. I fellow I got to know quite well, Seng Mah had a website that blew me away, called Net Alpha (it actually used to be called "The Unofficial Alpha Flight Fan Site" or some such thing) I was quite in awe of the web site he made, and was inspired to make my own. I had never made a page before, so I just grabbed some of his HTML code, and tore it apart, played with it, and figured out how it worked. It was then that I made a fan page about Sasquatch. When that page was done, I wanted to do more, so I expanded my site to be about the Alpha Flight characters in general, and called it "The Alpha Flight Character Database" AFCD for short. It was around this time that I was passed the mantle of running the Alpha Waves mailing list. It's membership was 20 when I started, and about 100 when I left. Over time the site grew, and became about more than just the characters, so I renamed AFCD to Alpha Zone. That site was rather popular, and well received. Eventually my life became to hectic, and crazy to have the time for either the mailing list, or the site. The mailing list I passed on to Phil, and the site I kind of just let sit, not getting updated. Geocities (who was my host) was bought by Yahoo, and they did crazy things with the usernames. When I tried to properly migrate my geocities username over to Yahoo, they told me it was taken, and in doing that I lost control of my web site. I could no longer log into the control pannel page, FTP, Nothing. The site i had worked on for years was now completely lost to me. As a kikker to that, they put a new advertising script in place, and it conflicted with a banner script I was running on my site, and it just completely broke the index page. They wouldn't let me fix it, and were real asses about the whole thing. So I forgot about it. My life was still nutz at that point.

Over the next 2 years or so, I would occasionally pop onto the mailing list and see what was happening, but I was taking thing in my life too seriously at that time. In due time I figured myself and my life out, and became interested in trying to get a site going again. It was then that I found out about ANADAF. I thought that was perfect timing for me to start fresh. I first tried hosting a the forum with a few members on a free lycos.uk server. when I started they didn't have adds, and eventually the adds made the forum difficult to navigate. I bought the domain of alphaflight.net, and got to work.

The reason for the forum, was that I found when I was busy, the mailing list was hard to keep track of. It wasn't easy to look back and see what others had said about something, and it could be very overwhelming with a bazzilion email in my inbox. I liked how well organized forums worked, so here it is. I do feel a little guilty about the fact that the mailing list seems all but dead, and it seems to have put a dent in the traffic to the Alpha Flight message board over at the second string, but at the same time, it's really helped bring fans all into one friendly place.

Ok, so I just wrote a book, and am gonna shut up now.

Ben

[ladymako71]

Thanks Jo! I was gonna bring the subject up after putting the last touches on the landscaping I was doing, but you beat me to it. :)

Thanks to Jo and Kozzi for the nice things being said, but really it wouldn't have been anything special without all the great people that came on board.

Denada Mija. Anyhoo, because of last week at work, me sleep schedual was even wonkier then normal. I think I beat you to it because I was up way before the sun over there on the other side of the world! lol

But seriously, this has been a blast for the last two months for me seeing as this is the first comic book forum I've ever seen that is FRIENDLY! And WELCOMING! And just as insane as I am...maybe more in some cases. ^^

[Remedy]

... hmph ... and they say that comic books and computer stuff makes people ANTI social?

I'm so glad that our crew of wonderful and fun-crazy folks can prove all the statistics wrong!

So BOOYAH for US!

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

*waves little Alpha Waves flags!*

[beetleblack]

6 months? Cripes, it seems like only yesterday that we were all eagerly anticipating what the new AF would be like and started posting on here.

Well, a big thank you to Ben for all his hard work as it's a great site and also a big thank you to everyone on the board for being so friendly and a bunch of good eggs.