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News and Events / Re: Carcassonne Central's New Owners
« on: February 04, 2022, 02:08:58 PM »
Hello everyone, your rarely-seen original founder here. 
In the original opening post of this thread, you see some of the history of CC. It's true, the BGG owners answered none of my inquiries, and because I'm an impulsive, just-do-it-myself kind of guy, I started Carcassonne Central. Matt Harper was indeed instrumental in the beginning, and without him I would have never moved from the idea to the execution. Thank you Matt for that. I had all sorts of ideas, some of which are still seen on the site now, but I'm even more amazed at how the members and volunteers have stepped up to the plate with some incredible activities here. This has truly become more than just a "rules & questions" site. It's the hub and heart of the Carcassonne community and it continues to thrive.
I was and still am not the best technical administrator of this forum software. It requires more expertise to run that I ever had, and our first serious issue that forced us to abandon the original forums was heartbreaking. I worked with the forum software developers and it looked like the issue was unrecoverable due to some Unicode database issue. I didn't know if CC would survive, but it did. I had Scott help in our earlier days, turns out he lived only half an hour from me, we both live in the Fraser Valley, British Columbia, Canada. We met once for coffee, though unfortunately his life became busier as many of ours do and he spent less time here. A lot of other people stepped up to the plate as admins and moderators, a few no longer regulars but great to see many have posted in this thread. A big shoutout to Scott, Carcking, kettlefish, Tacita, Whaleyland, Joff, Bixby, MrNumbers, Meepledrone... the list goes on and I haven't forgotten any of you but there are a lot to list. A big thank you to all of you for your contributions over the years.
A few technical backstories for you. I created the graphics for the site, and I'm no graphic artist I assure you. But I managed to find a font that looked just like the game's font and used that in our title. As well, you'll notice how you and everyone has a title below your profile name in your posts (ie Labourer, Duke, Vagabond etc), well I thought it would be a fun thing to increase people's contributions by awarding them these titles. There is definitely no order or relation between all of the titles from a historical perspective, I made that up and it's just for fun and I think it adds to the fun of being a member as you reach higher and higher (there are 23 levels in all). I also liked the idea of earning badges for special members that are also shown under your names on posts, so I created these myself (again, I'm no artist and I realize they're very cartoony). Perhaps some day the look and branding of the forums will be updated and improved upon and I look forward to seeing that. Can you guess who the #2 member was? Hint, it wasn't Matt. I'll reveal it a bit later. Finally, at one point back in our history, we were actually the 1 millionth largest website in the world. Pretty amazing considering how the web has grown and now there are over 1.92 billion as of Feb 2022.
We all have lives outside of our numerous internet personas. Sometimes I reveal my real name and contact information, other times I just want to be my persona. In case anyone is wondering where I came up with the name Gantry, I wanted to be an astronaut as a kid and instead of picking some astronaut hero's name, I picked gantry because it is a small but critical piece of a rocket launching tower. Good a name as any. Some of the admins and moderators know my real name, but I'm not going to share that with you just as some of you choose to not share your own, and I hope we can all respect that. One of the things that really amazes me is that, despite the decline of forums and growth of more instant forms of communication, we continue to survive. The reason for this is that we've embraced those other types of social media forms, not avoided them. There is a business marketing lesson in there somewhere.
I also want to address one key difference between Carc Central and BGG: annoying ads. My original goal was to keep the site ad-free, and free for users. Early on we did have a small ad banner across the top, but that did not last long. I never wanted anyone to see ads in between posts. There were a few times throughout the past where, for financial reasons, I felt that the cost of running the site would be helped by a few ads running and although I brought it up, we never implemented them. The benefit to you is a clean experience with no annoying ads. If the new owners decide to monetize the site in any way, I'm hoping they carry on this tradition and look for alternative ways. I think it's one of the advantages to CC.
Oh, and the #2 member? Meeplebot, my test user. Nice little fellow, rarely makes an appearance but if he does make sure to say hello!
I'm very humbled that so many of you not only joined us, but stayed. I am also very humbled at the thank yous I've received, but I feel that I've let so many of you down not only with the outages (some lasting unacceptably long) but also by my lack of participation. Suffice it to say, work and serious family health challenges over the years have taken a lot of my attention away, and for that let me say I'm truly sorry. I had been thinking that you, our members, deserved better, so I told a few of the admins I was going to shut down the site because I couldn't continue to care for it. Actually, I knew it wouldn't come to that
not because I wanted to give up on it but because I knew so many people cared enough to not give up on it. I am so very happy that the new owners can give it the care and attention that I never could. Carcassonne Central is in good hands now. See you around
In the original opening post of this thread, you see some of the history of CC. It's true, the BGG owners answered none of my inquiries, and because I'm an impulsive, just-do-it-myself kind of guy, I started Carcassonne Central. Matt Harper was indeed instrumental in the beginning, and without him I would have never moved from the idea to the execution. Thank you Matt for that. I had all sorts of ideas, some of which are still seen on the site now, but I'm even more amazed at how the members and volunteers have stepped up to the plate with some incredible activities here. This has truly become more than just a "rules & questions" site. It's the hub and heart of the Carcassonne community and it continues to thrive.
I was and still am not the best technical administrator of this forum software. It requires more expertise to run that I ever had, and our first serious issue that forced us to abandon the original forums was heartbreaking. I worked with the forum software developers and it looked like the issue was unrecoverable due to some Unicode database issue. I didn't know if CC would survive, but it did. I had Scott help in our earlier days, turns out he lived only half an hour from me, we both live in the Fraser Valley, British Columbia, Canada. We met once for coffee, though unfortunately his life became busier as many of ours do and he spent less time here. A lot of other people stepped up to the plate as admins and moderators, a few no longer regulars but great to see many have posted in this thread. A big shoutout to Scott, Carcking, kettlefish, Tacita, Whaleyland, Joff, Bixby, MrNumbers, Meepledrone... the list goes on and I haven't forgotten any of you but there are a lot to list. A big thank you to all of you for your contributions over the years.
A few technical backstories for you. I created the graphics for the site, and I'm no graphic artist I assure you. But I managed to find a font that looked just like the game's font and used that in our title. As well, you'll notice how you and everyone has a title below your profile name in your posts (ie Labourer, Duke, Vagabond etc), well I thought it would be a fun thing to increase people's contributions by awarding them these titles. There is definitely no order or relation between all of the titles from a historical perspective, I made that up and it's just for fun and I think it adds to the fun of being a member as you reach higher and higher (there are 23 levels in all). I also liked the idea of earning badges for special members that are also shown under your names on posts, so I created these myself (again, I'm no artist and I realize they're very cartoony). Perhaps some day the look and branding of the forums will be updated and improved upon and I look forward to seeing that. Can you guess who the #2 member was? Hint, it wasn't Matt. I'll reveal it a bit later. Finally, at one point back in our history, we were actually the 1 millionth largest website in the world. Pretty amazing considering how the web has grown and now there are over 1.92 billion as of Feb 2022.
We all have lives outside of our numerous internet personas. Sometimes I reveal my real name and contact information, other times I just want to be my persona. In case anyone is wondering where I came up with the name Gantry, I wanted to be an astronaut as a kid and instead of picking some astronaut hero's name, I picked gantry because it is a small but critical piece of a rocket launching tower. Good a name as any. Some of the admins and moderators know my real name, but I'm not going to share that with you just as some of you choose to not share your own, and I hope we can all respect that. One of the things that really amazes me is that, despite the decline of forums and growth of more instant forms of communication, we continue to survive. The reason for this is that we've embraced those other types of social media forms, not avoided them. There is a business marketing lesson in there somewhere.
I also want to address one key difference between Carc Central and BGG: annoying ads. My original goal was to keep the site ad-free, and free for users. Early on we did have a small ad banner across the top, but that did not last long. I never wanted anyone to see ads in between posts. There were a few times throughout the past where, for financial reasons, I felt that the cost of running the site would be helped by a few ads running and although I brought it up, we never implemented them. The benefit to you is a clean experience with no annoying ads. If the new owners decide to monetize the site in any way, I'm hoping they carry on this tradition and look for alternative ways. I think it's one of the advantages to CC.
Oh, and the #2 member? Meeplebot, my test user. Nice little fellow, rarely makes an appearance but if he does make sure to say hello!
I'm very humbled that so many of you not only joined us, but stayed. I am also very humbled at the thank yous I've received, but I feel that I've let so many of you down not only with the outages (some lasting unacceptably long) but also by my lack of participation. Suffice it to say, work and serious family health challenges over the years have taken a lot of my attention away, and for that let me say I'm truly sorry. I had been thinking that you, our members, deserved better, so I told a few of the admins I was going to shut down the site because I couldn't continue to care for it. Actually, I knew it wouldn't come to that
not because I wanted to give up on it but because I knew so many people cared enough to not give up on it. I am so very happy that the new owners can give it the care and attention that I never could. Carcassonne Central is in good hands now. See you around
