SP Happenings #154 - 7 Years of Sorcerer's Place!

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A new job I've started last week has been keeping me very busy and away from home for most of the week, so the majority of my previously near-future plans for SP have a more long-term perspective at the moment. I'll try to squeeze in time for SP when I can, but as it is, I hardly have the time to keep up with things around here, and to post the regular (bi)weekly features. Since I have so little time available for SP at this point, I'll try not to make any timed promises, since they'd be nearly impossible for me to hold. Things that depend on me will simply get done when I have the time to do them.

Consequently, I'm moving the weekly feature schedule around a bit. I'll post SP Happenings every Saturday from now on, and the Weekly Wizards of the Coast News Round-up every Sunday.

As luck would have it, today also marks the 7 year anniversary of Sorcerer's Place. Yup... hard to believe, but SP has been around for that long. Most of you reading this now haven't been around long enough to feel waves of nostalgia washing over you, but some of us old-timers could reminisce for a while...

If I had more time on my hands I'd put together something overly grandiose to mark the occasion, but since I don't, I've decided to hold another SPS Accounts special, extending all Sorcerer's Place Supporter Account subscriptions made in the next two weeks (ending June 24, 2006) for 6 months. In short, every account bought or extended over the next 14 days will get additional 6 months added to it completely free of charge. So, for example, if you go for the cheapest, $15 account (normally good for 3 months), it will be extended to 9 months.

If you've been holding back on getting an SPS account, or simply want to renew your existing account, this it the time to do it. Click your way to the sign-up page to take advantage of this limited-time offer!

As you probably know by now, the SPS accounts are my way of saying thank-you to those SP visitors who decide to support SP with a donation, which is always welcome. Regardless of the site traffic, bills connected with running SP keep coming in every month, and donations help greatly to keep SP out of the red. Thanks in advance to all of you who decide to help out!

By the way, we've posted an interview with Jason Compton about The Broken Hourglass a few days ago, so check it out if you haven't yet.

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So you had Sorcerer's Place up about a year before you added the message boards?

Kinda funny how this place has outlived some of the hosting sites you started on. You had to move hosts a few times over the years as I recall, and then finally settled on administering your own server and even hosting other sites.

Not bad. Here's to Sorcerer's Place!

 

Most of the questions about the history of SP are answered in the SP FAQ at http://www.sorcerers.net/Info/FAQ/index.php - so I suggest also reading that for the basic information.

As for the specifics...

teekc, I set the June 10 date as the official birthday last year at the 6th anniversary, after digging through a lot of old SP files and backups. It is probably not accurate to the day, just my best estimate of when I started the whole show.

As for where the site was located initially; it was one of those free sites with 20MB of space. Provided by my ISP (arnes.si) at the time - it's gone now. After I bought a domain and set the site up on it, the old site served as a redirect for a couple of years, until they shut it down.

As for the money; I didn't start asking for donations to help with the costs until 2002 or so... before that my hosting was either free, or paid by running advertising for the gaming network that hosted us at the moment.

BTA, yep... the message boards were a slightly delayed addition. And you're right on the moving hosts bit. There were quite a few of them over the years, before I started renting our own server. Most of the hosts were crappy and unresponsive. I can honestly say that the free hosting I offer to our own hosted sites now is light-years beyond any free hosting Sorcerer's Place ever had.

Splunge, as much as I'd like SP to be my full-time job, it doesn't bring in nearly enough money for anyone in the developed world to be able to live on it. But I'm happy as long as it at least pays for the running costs through advertising and donations.

Eldular, this is just a by-the-way remark, but you can send in donations via snail mail or bank account deposit too. All the details are also on the pages I linked in my original post. I know people often assume that it's mandatory to have a credit/debit card to donate, but this is not the case here. Anyone who wants to support the site can easily do it even without a credit/debit card.