CamaroZ28.COM
December 1997
Being an old school BBS guy, I wanted to add something to CamaroZ28.COM to generate more of a community feeling. I had been looking effortly for a online message board system for the web, similar to what i've was accustomed to with BBS' for years. At the time I was helping run an ISP in the Metro Detroit area that spun-off from one of the most popular BBS' in Metro Detroit. One of my good friends was looking for something similar for a client we had at (I)ndustry net.
There were very few automotive enthusiast websites, and none of them had a message board. There was some things that were close, but it was more of a guest book type question and reply system with no threading whatsoever. Most messaing still took place on e-mail mailing lists and usenet newsgroups. Being an old member of the f-body.org mailing lists from 1993, I loved that community feeling, but it was all in e-mail - I wanted it moved to the web for easier access.
Finally, my good friend Chaunce and I stumbled across a new piece of freebie software that looked exactly what I wanted! It was written by a guy named Ted O'Neill in his spare time. The name of the software was called The Ultimate Bulletin Board software - better known as UBB now. After swapping e-mails quite a few times with Ted, I got the software installed on my then small little linux box running Slackware that hosted Camaroz28.com in my office.
So, on December 24, 1997 the CamaroZ28.COM Message Board went LIVE. We were the first Automotive Enthusiast website to deploy such a thing and I was extremely happy with it! Myself and Chaunce were the first two user accounts on the site, then I told Jason to check it out and he was floored
UBB's starting popping up all over the place then as it was becoming one of the premier Message Board packages on the net. It seemed like if you started a website, you had to have a UBB as well. Even though we eventually switched to Vbulletin I believe in 2002, UBB and it's creater still hold a very special place in my heart.
The rest as they say is history. We consider ourselves here at CamaroZ28.COM pioneers in the online enthusiast community. No, we didn't write the software - but we provided you all with the tools to make this community (and many other communities) what it is today.
