The (Chequered) History of Talkin' City Dot Com
Talkin' City began life around March or April of 2000. I'd been doing the Blue View website for at least a couple of years but, a few months after the Rivals takeover, things didn't really work out so I set about doing my own thing. After coming up with a name, designing graphics, buildiong a site etc, I created a message board that had no users. At the same time, disillusioned with BlueView, Chinnor had set up his own City board. Seeing as we''d been mates for a good few years it seemed logical that we combined forces, which we did, to create a (in our vision) "thinking man's alternative to BV. Over the years we like to think we achieved this, going from strength to strength and adding Skint, Rocket and Tragic to the "team"along the way. A couple of years ago however, things weren't going too well. The site was taking up more and more time and causing more problems than it seemed worth. It was this, along with personal stuff, that led to our decision to close the board. Temporarily or permanently was never really discussed, we just closed it and that was that. Colin (Wookie), who was a TC admin at the time, graciously offered to provide a "home" message board for TC users on his website (which I think he called TC exiles initially?). This home, over the past couple of years, has become a very good City board in its own right and one to which all of TC's admin and most of our users regularly contribute to.
We decided on a Talkin' City comeback in January 2008, for no other reason than it was time. We haven't come back to step on anybody elses toes or anything - in fact we've made great efforts NOT to do that, we came back "just because"...
We use the Talkin' City name because it's ours. I own talkincity.com - as has been the case since the very early days of the site. We still had the server, the webspace and the bandwidth required so we thought "why not?". The site is totally self-sufficient - paid for these days by hosting other sites: a couple of City ones, a small cricket club, as well as hosting the official website of a (soon to be promoted hopefully) non-league side from the conference south. This, of course, means TC will continue to remain advert and sponsor free as we have throughout (90+% of) our history. We don't make any profit or gain whatsoever from Talkin' City, never have and never will, it's never been about money for us (unlike some). By the people, for the people and all that. We've got a great service provider who gives support 24/7 who we've been with for a long time (after living a somewhat nomadic existence for the first 3 years or so) and everything is in place to improve and expand should the need arise.
I personally am very proud of what the original TC site achieved and grateful to the people that helped make us the number one City board on the net. Whether we will reach those heights again, only time will tell; but we're rather hopeful that this time around, people will get on with enjoying using the site for what it is and leave us to quietly and unobtrusively run it in the background, thus benefitting everyone in the City community.
Hope this answers any questions and helps clear up a few misconceptions.
Cheers,
Steh
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Topic: The (Chequered) History of Talkin' City Dot Com (Read 6912 times)