"Ex Cinis cineris Nos Orior oriri ortus"
A short history of JUOT-
On June 8, 2008 the tyrant Admin of JeepsUnlimited.com TJMagoo takes it upon herself to close Jeeps Unlimited Off Topic Forum.
In the immediate aftermath Justin creates a free "phpbb" based forum.
However within 48 hours of the initial and shocking closing I created JUOT.net standing for "Joe's Ultimate Off Topic" and to hedge my bets I also register "JeepersUnlimited.com" as I wasn't sure which would be the ultimate final domain.
Myself, Cliff, and Justin were initial Admins and both Cliff and Justin helped in the early days as I had zero Admin experience. I remember being frustrated I didn't even know how to change the look of posts from the default "horizontal" postbit to the much more common "vertical" postbit we were used to. For little things like this and installing mods Cliff's initial help was invaluable.
Treachery Afoot!
5 years ago we were all younger. We were living in a time when OverTorqued.net was still fresh in our minds. The names Eric and Chazz were actual users and not myths you scare your children with. After Cliff installed a mod to read other user PMs, and I realized I had no access to it, I noticed that someone (and Cliff was the only other person with FTP access) had changed the configuration file of JUOT to make himself a "Super-Administrator" and make me a regular administrator who could have been easily banned or stripped of power by a Super-Admin.
Still a novice I managed to change all the permissions back and block Cliff out before he could figure out what happened. Finally using the mod he installed against him I read his PMs and confirmed he was attempting to exploit the PMs of our members to get back into Eric's good graces.
A tradition of forgiveness begins!
Despite the initial reaction and some calls to ban Cliff outright I decided despite his questionable intentions JUOT would not be what it was today without his initial assistance. Rather than ban Cliff outright I instead simply removed him as an Administrator. And so began what would be a tradition of forgiveness and tolerance even for some acts that would be lifetime bans at other boards.
I appointed a number of initial moderators- some with prior experience on JU and some without. I am sad to say I have forgotten some of the names of the early mod staff. One stepped down when people started calling his home. Others, like Lulu, stuck it out but simply lost time to post.
After several weeks, perhaps a couple months, I forget exactly Justin decided to step down as an Admin so I was at the helm alone. I had learned enough at this point that I was comfortable as a sole site Administrator.
Growing Pains…
After several months JUOT had outgrown the shared server we were being hosted on at SiteGround. Unwilling to pay the $200+ a month they wanted for a dedicated server which they claimed we needed I found a new host, URLJet.com that said their shared package could handle our traffic at the time. So still a fairly new Admin I managed to move the site to a new host that could handle us for only $10 or so dollars more a month.
A house divided!
As we neared the end of 2008 there was a growing rift on the forum- mostly surrounding two cliques known as the “Bike Crew” and the Photogs. Back on JU there was an exceptionally long thread by the “Bike Crew” and that thread was reborn on JUOT and grew faster and quicker than any thread in JUOT history. As the thread neared milestone posts like post # 10,000 I ,as a joke, would post saying I was going to close the thread when it got to X posts or even that it would self delete at Y posts. These were jokes of course and I had believed everyone understood that. Apparently not everyone did.
In addition to the Bike Crew, a number of members fancied themselves as Photogs (with considerable overlap with the Bike Crew) and attempted to get a regular photo contest going. They could not manage to keep it going on their own and I thought it would be a good thing to make the contest an official feature of the board and offer real prizes to the contest winners.
The fine print…
As I had read “the fine print” of a number of other contests that requires users to submit stories, pictures, or other intellectual property to enter a contest, the entries become the property of the contest holder. I figured I would use the same wording for the JUOT Photo Contest.
Whambulance!
Although I did not attempt to hide the rules this struck a nerve with many of the forum Photogs who said they would never enter the contest. Worse they used it as an excuse to leave the forum. After hearing their concerns and looking deeper into the rules that govern such contests I changed the rule from the photo becoming the property of JUOT to simply granting JUOT a license to re-use the photo which is absolute boiler-plate stuff on virtually all sites where you upload content, let alone willing to give you real prizes.
However it was too late. The Bike Crew and the Photogs citied my attempt to "steal" their photos AND my threats to delete the Bike thread as proof I was not fit to be an Administrator. In the weeks following it came out that several of the more popular members of these cliques were already in contact with the Administrator of WebWheelig.com and were simply looking for an excuse to leave and bring a number of members with them.
It should be noted that WebWheeling was up and running for a long time before JeepsUnlimited closed down and would have been able to receive JU’s Off Topic members had hey wanted to, but their Admin did not want this crowd at the time on his site.
Into Early 2009 many of JUOT’s most active members had become regular posters at WebWheeling and completely stopped or virtually stopped posting on JUOT except for occasional messages telling people to go to WebWheeling instead.
A blessing in disguise?
Although in hindsight I would have done things differently I am unsure whether anything could have stopped the divide as it was being planned even before there was a good excuse to implement it. However the decrease in traffic did help reduce our server load. The growing community was close to needing a dedicated server even on URLJet and I was not sure I could/would be able to pay those bills.
As 2009 continued on JUOT continued relatively quiet until May 2009.
Member’s Step Up!
Early in May 2009 I was having a lot of pain in my abdominal/back area. Unfortunately I suffered regularly from severe lower back pain as well as regular bouts with Kidney Stones that had sent me to the hospital in months prior. So I was unsure for a while where exactly the pain I was having was coming from- doctors were ruling out various things. Eventually I wound up in the Emergency Room with Pancreatitis. I didn’t plan on being out of communication for long and it didn’t occur to me, or anyone, that May 10th would be the last day of the life I knew and the first day of quite literally a year of hell.
Details of my illness aside, I lay in a coma in Long Island Jewish hospital. While my sister knew of the existence of JUOT no one in my family really had any clue I was the sole site administrator nor would they have had any idea what to do even if they did. Several members grew concerned after I hadn’t logged in or responded to text messages and PMs. HubJeep made contact with my sister (not like that!) and was given the bad news.
Worse, for the member of the site, we were coming up on our 1 year anniversary. That meant both our vBulletin software license and our domain names were expiring. In my absence and with the site facing shutdown and deletion a number of members pooled together both money and resources to keep JUOT alive- against all odds!
Social Engineering Saves JUOT
Money could not solve all JUOT’s problems however. vBulletin licenses could (and were) purchased by others but the domain name required access to my email accounts to renew. A member, knr, with the permission of my sister used various “Social Engineering” skills to crack into my email account. With that access he was able to add himself as a contact to the domain and renew it as well.
Throughout my prolonged hospital stay the mod and senior mod staff I appointed, with the help of the regular members kept JUOT afloat. Knr took over as the site administrator in my absence. My sister would make regular updates on my status. Hubjeep would print out the very long “Get Well” thread and put them in binders and bring them to me at the Hospital, even leave it with my family when I was still asleep.
It wasn’t until 2010 that I was well enough to resume my Admin duties at JUOT. Having heard (and then seen) all the work knr did to keep the site going I felt it only right to ask him to remain as an Administrator just in case something should ever happen to me again. After a year or so knr had moved on from JUOT and I appointed long time member abqtj to be my backup Administrator.
Money Money Money
In my life before I got sick I had a good job making good money and was well able to afford the shared hosting costs of running JUOT and occasional software and domain fees. However, after my illness I could no longer afford these on my own. I was happy to have a number of JUOT members offer and make donations to Keep JUOT afloat both during and after my illness. Rather than tracking individual donations after my return in 2010 one of the first changes I instituted was creating optional paid subscriptions for JUOT. While my hope always has been for JUOT to remain free, I created paid subscriptions for those willing provide financial support. Those who do are recognized with various user titles and things like extra PM storage and space for attached files.
Healing
As 2010 came to a close and 2011 progressed JUOT and I were both in a stage of healing. Slowly some members who had left from the Bike Crew / Photog split came back.
A second change that came about this time was the linking of JUOT with AnotherMessageBoard.com via what is called “The Network” forum. This began as a modification created by the AMB Admin that allows 2 or more sites to “share” a forum.
JUOT activity never reached the pre-divide levels again but it would sometimes get close- however the changing demographic of the forum did mean we have said goodbye to more members than we have said hello too.
Attacked!
In 2012 after a good year of relative stability JUOT found itself the target of a “Denial of Service” attack. This knocked the site offline and unfortunately left no options other than to shut the site down or pay significantly larger monthly fees for hosting packages better able to deal with such attacks. Since we already had a revenue stream of donations and money from link affiliations I did decide to keep JUOT alive at the increased expenses.
Five Years!
On JUOT’s 5th anniversary JUOT finds itself in at a crossroads. Forums as a whole, especially those not tied to any one topic, have seen large decreases in membership and traffic as social networks like Facebook and Twitter fill the need of many to post online. Also we were a relatively young demographic as members have gotten older, gotten married, (got divorced), and had kids it is natural their time spent online also subsides.
Despite the trend of fewer members, in recent weeks we have seen some “new to us” faces.
We should never forget from where we came, and despite both the changing reality, demographics, and technology JUOT will continue and the JUOT 10 year anniversary will be here before any of us know it! I look forward to seeing you there!
