Pre-History
From boards.ie Wiki
| History of Boards.ie |
| Pre-History: Before boards.ie |
| History: boards.ie Past and Present |
| The Future of boards.ie |
Quake
The beginnings of boards.ie lies in the Irish fanbase of a game called Quake released by id Software in 1996. One of the features of Quake was the option of multiplayer games. Players could enter an arena, and fight computer controlled bots, or other human opponents. While this is both common and standard these days, in 1996 it was still relatively new and novel. Popularity of Quake grew largely due to the quality of this multiplayer facility. Unlike Id Software's previous major release, Doom, the maps and characters were rendered in 3-D, and were generally of better quality.
Quake Mailing List
By harnessing the internet, communities were created all over the world to organise online matches and LANs. In this respect, Ireland was no different. Initially, e-mail was used among Irish Quake players as the community base. In time a mailing list was set up on iol.ie by Shiva. This was the first centralisation of the Irish quake community. The following e-mail was sent to Quake players to build the community:
Received: from GPO.iol.ie (root@GPO2.GPO.iol.ie [194.125.2.197]) by mail.iol.ie Sendmail (v8.8.7) with ESMTP id WAA02590; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 22:54:10 +0100 (IST) Hi Guys , Anyone who`s interested in carrying on discussions or just generally talking about games can now subscibe to a new IOL mailing , rather than having a whole buncha nicks stored in your mail client . Just send an email to listserv@listserv.iol.ie , with *no* subject and the following line in your message area :- subscribe [Name removed] Seeyas , Shiva
From the quake.ie WWWBoard to the Cloud Boards
The first use of a bulletin board system in the community that grew and changed to eventually become boards.ie was located on the Irish Games Network domain. In February 1998, the WWWBoard was set up at wwwboard.quake.ie. Most of the posts made from this time are still available by searching the boards.ie archives. Although the archive of the first post (from 12th February 1998 [1]) on the boards has been deleted, Cloud promises to restore it at some point [2] (Edit: It's here! Cloud.):
Posted by John Breslin on February 12, 1998 at 15:36:23:
The first of many messages I hope!
John.
* quake.ie - WWWBoard [3]
While boards today is a composite of many sub-communities, in February 1998, there was just one forum: Quake. Within a short time (by November 1998) the boards were using UBB (Ultimate Bulletin Board) software. With growing membership and disussion topics, new forums were added from time to time.
By 1999, the "Cloud Boards" had expanded to five forums, moving from the Irish Games Network to Cloud's own server in UCG and back again due to various legal and bandwidth issues. Growing concern that Eircom (Then TInet, or Telecom Internet) were going to pull the plug on quake.ie prompted a move of the boards onto John Breslin (Cloud's) machine in Galway at lacerta.ucg.ie. The college then firewalled Cloud for a while prompting the move back. The earliest known archived version of the boards in this form is located here and dates from 13th October 1999. There are 588 registered user accounts at this time.
Tom "DeVore" Murphy had created another forum for the gaming event QuakaPalooza in late 1998 (this forum also served as a backup when the Cloud Boards were moving servers). DeVore saw a future for such Irish discussion forums beyond gaming. He declared to an unbelieving Cloud that he would be able to register the domain name "boards.ie". At that time, it was very difficult to obtain generic .ie domain names (since to register this domain you would require a company called "Boards Ltd."). As a bet, it was agreed that if DeVore could get Boards.ie registered, Cloud would take technical care of the site. The IRC log follows:
(16;56) (dev) you there? (16;56) (Cloud-Warrior) lo (16;56) (dev) lo there (16;57) (dev) have an idea (16;57) (dev) might be a runner (16;57) (dev) might not (16;57) (dev) ok (16;57) (Cloud-Warrior) k shoot (16;57) (dev) you know yourr boards ;) (16;57) (Cloud-Warrior) yup them things (16;57) (dev) they are very successful (16;58) (Cloud-Warrior) k (16;58) (dev) so I got to thinking. (16;58) (dev) why not do (16;58) (dev) www.boards.ie (16;58) (dev) and just slowly build a site of general stuff (16;58) (Cloud-Warrior) and how would you get that url then? (16;58) (dev) well not even a site (16;58) (dev) watch me ;) (16;58) (Cloud-Warrior) you'd need a company or trademark ;/ (16;58) (dev) watch me ;) (16;58) (Cloud-Warrior) i have boards.ign.ie (16;58) (Cloud-Warrior) ;-) (16;59) (dev) yah but boards.ign is still games related (16;59) (Cloud-Warrior) Yep (16;59) (dev) im talking about general boards (16;59) (Cloud-Warrior) Yeah the technology ones etc. (16;59) (dev) noooo (16;59) (dev) ;) (16;59) (dev) like baby discussions (16;59) (dev) cars (16;59) (dev) footie (16;59) (Cloud-Warrior) Heheh! Sports! (16;59) (dev) whatever (16;59) (dev) start it out as a cult corner thing (17;00) (dev) let it grow (17;00) (Cloud-Warrior) So you're talking a standalone site then (17;00) (dev) yah (17;00) (dev) low maintenance, high volume (17;00) (dev) just the boards (17;00) (dev) no "site" as such (17;00) (Cloud-Warrior) yeah i had that boards.ie idea, but i've had so much difficulty even getting cloud.ie i forgot about it (17;00) (dev) well watch me get it ;) (17;00) (Cloud-Warrior) they're looking for tax/bank statements now ffs (17;01) (dev) but what I'm saying is we could work on this togeteher (17;01) (dev) spinsol and clouds (17;01) (Cloud-Warrior) yeah? (17;01) (dev) share the watching work and we can get a sevrer (17;01) (Cloud-Warrior) sounds good, i need to think it through (17;02) (dev) well a domain is 150, server is 200 for a month (17;02) (dev) (it can even be unix if you like ;))) (17;02) (Cloud-Warrior) unless you have your own server like i do ;-) (17;02) (dev) whats that server called? (17;02) (dev) clouds? (17;02) (Cloud-Warrior) i dunno how ign would be about that though, losing the boards (17;02) (dev) can you do that? (17;02) (Cloud-Warrior) cloud.ign.ie (17;02) (dev) NOOOOO (17;02) (Cloud-Warrior) it's my own pc like (17;02) (dev) not losing the boards (17;02) (dev) leave the ign with the games boards (17;02) (dev) we can even link to them (17;03) (Cloud-Warrior) well you know, making them commercial for spinsol/cloud like (17;03) (dev) im talking about stuff my dad would like to write into (17;03) (Cloud-Warrior) ah a new set you mean (17;03) (dev) yes ;) (17;03) (Cloud-Warrior) k i get you ;-) (17;03) (Cloud-Warrior) k first thing to do is (17;03) (Cloud-Warrior) analyze the boards that are there already, like local.ie, erm goireland.com etc. (17;03) (Cloud-Warrior) and see what sections are most popular, or not catered for at all (17;03) (dev) wilco (17;04) (Cloud-Warrior) i'll have a look see too (17;04) (Cloud-Warrior) if you get boards.ie though it would be sweet (17;04) (dev) yah I WILL get that url ;) (17;04) (Cloud-Warrior) what would be nice if we have like those general boards (17;04) (dev) (so long as its available ;) ) (17;05) (Cloud-Warrior) and on the main boards.ie page a link to the ign games ones (17;05) (dev) yah I dont have a problem with that (17;05) (Cloud-Warrior) so that the games people will still go to the old site (17;05) (Cloud-Warrior) and if needs be merge them later on, all parties willing (17;05) (dev) I know the plan is to link to the quake board from the new qamex too (17;05) (Cloud-Warrior) good stuff (17;05) (Cloud-Warrior) i think the tribes one is getting quieter now tribesplayers.co.uk has started (17;06) (dev) welll the games boards are small potatoes compared to the volume you could be talking with general population (17;06) (Cloud-Warrior) but apart from that they are still busy (17;06) (Cloud-Warrior) yep true (17;06) (dev) ok let me get onto it (17;06) (dev) I'll look at getting the url (17;06) (dev) im probably going to get dissed (17;06) (dev) in a min (17;06) (Cloud-Warrior) yep that's the main problem really, hosting is easier (17;06) (Cloud-Warrior) okie np (17;07) (dev) um I seem to be still connected ;) (17;07) (Cloud-Warrior) good idea anyway ;-) funny we both thought of boards.ie but when you're so boards obsessed as we are ... ;-) (17;07) (dev) hehe (17;07) (dev) yeah I think it could be one of those sites (17;07) (dev) if it took off... (17;08) (Cloud^CA) cool, i'll think on it (17;08) (Cloud^CA) bbl (17;08) (dev) k (17;08) (dev) bbl
DeVore won the bet. To get the domain name, he legally changed the name of his company "Spin Solutions Ltd" to "Boards Ltd." for one day. In February 2000, boards.ie went live. By this time there were around 20 forums and 1,500 members. During this time a user Freak_BrutheR created what are now known as the "Boardsmen".
Originally posted by CuLt If Dev was God, boards was the world and it took 7 days to create board in all its glory... Cloud is the guy who would give God the bandwidth to do it. [4]
Proceed to read the history of boards.ie.
