WayBackMachine Archives

In my last post, I talked a bit about the history of BigBlueBall.com. For shits and grins, I popped into the WayBackMachine to travel back through time and see what the site looked like “back when.”

Some of the captures on the WayBackMachine are missing a few bits and pieces — some CSS here and and image there — but you’ll get the gist.

1999 – A Web Portfolio

In 1999, this site served as an online portfolio of web projects that Jim Styles and I had worked on. It was hosted on Microsoft IIS with a SQL Server backend to give us flexibility to demonstrate our ASP coding skills.

2001 – Re-launched with a Focus on Instant Messaging

In 2001 the dot-com bubble had burst. The startup I had worked for shuttered. And I repurposed BigBlueBall as an online community supporting instant messaging. We were still running on ASP and using Snitz Forum software to drive the community component.

The site went through a number of redesigns as we tried to get it right. Blue became the prominent color.

2004 An Evolving Design

The interface evolved to a fluid design that could expand to fill the resolution of your screen.

Headlines started to look like headlines. And we migrated from a Microsoft platform to open source PHP and vBulletin forums (which still look frozen in time to this day).

2010 – Migrating to WordPress and bbPress

Fed up with vBulletin being hacked over and over, we migrated to WordPress for the CMS and bbPress for the forums. At this point, the site was pretty quiet, and the forums where a ghost town. Facebook took over the world, or a big chunk of it.

Next up… looking back at the key contributors

Were you a participant or moderator in the BigBlueBall forums back in the day?

Here are a few of the names that stand out (in no particular order):

I want to hear from you. Leave a comment with your BBB username and I will be in touch.