The History of BAO

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The History of BAO

Postby Mint » Friday 23 May 2003 3:01:36pm

Bao - did I spell that right?

Anyway, I always wanted to know how this forum came to be. Why Paul started it in the first place, who were its first users. Why did people like it here so much that it became so big. Things like that.

*Mint lights candles, sits down and prepares to listen to the story* :angel: :rolleyes:
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Postby Blaise Zabini » Friday 23 May 2003 8:45:45pm

::Pulls up comfy armchair and joins Mint::

Woohoo! Story Time!
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Postby TDM » Friday 23 May 2003 9:49:03pm

i love stories with a happy ending! *jumps into room, and sits in the direct middle of it*
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Postby Willow » Friday 23 May 2003 10:37:06pm

I think this story will have a happy ending.

*sits down on the floor, wrapped into a blanket*
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Postby Wilwizard » Saturday 24 May 2003 3:53:30am

I want to hear this one. All i know about bao was that there used to be a bunch of chicken worshipers and then we came.
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Postby Holly Golightly » Saturday 24 May 2003 8:31:17am

*Holly pulls up another confy chair, and snuggles in close with her doona...*

So, all we're waiting on now is a story-teller...

Paul??? :-?
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Postby Beccaroo » Saturday 24 May 2003 1:51:57pm

Chicken worshipers? Scary. :o
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A Brief History of Broomsticks And Owls

Postby Paul » Saturday 24 May 2003 8:30:41pm

Back in November 2001, the internet probably had a few decent Harry Potter forums but where were they? Some sites may have had something that looked like a proper forum but with posts in the single-digits. Others had forums with quite a few members but pop-ups attacking users from every angle. And some places had thread-style forums without much organisation.

I'd been thinking of doing a forum for another site of mine (which is still without a forum and needs severe work done on it now - basically its a finance/stock market info site but currently without much up-to-date info). I'd been looking at various types of board software, trying to ideally find something written in PHP (as I've used PHP to program another site before). I'd found PHPbb and figured that I'd give the internet something that I'd found lacking in the first paragraph of this story, whilst at the same time seeing how PHPbb worked. So in a way, the Broomsticks And Owls forum was an experiment, but also was meant to make Broomsticks And Owls as a whole much more of a useful and hopefully friendly site.

The forum was born on the evening of November 5th 2001 (Guy Fawkes night in the UK). The first member was...er, me. I mentioned the forum to an online friend of mine in Carolina (Greenshep) to who I'm grateful for taking the place of first member after me, although she's never posted here yet. Saz1241 joined on the same day as Greenshep, 10th November 2001 but also hasn't posted. 12 Days later Quidditch_Potter joined and quickly became the first Moderator. After Quidditch_Potter in the memberslist is dragonica - that's me again - a non-administrator screenname I just use for testing purposes to make sure things work correctly on the board. Chaser#2 was the next active member, followed by keeper 4 Gryffindor, betwichin (a relatively prolific member in the early days) and Fenny, and with all these folks it started to feel that the forum was definitely taking off and some kind of small communnity was very slowy starting to be built.

Moving into late July and early August 2002, Wedge and The Rabid Chocobo joined. If the board has ever had anything like the Weasley twins, these were the guys! They're good people, fun and for some reason a strange obsession with chickens started. Gryffindor Student, Chocobo's girlfriend, joined a little later which made even more of a community feeling as this was our first real couple.

In August the board went through a big upgrade - yikes, that was a tough one. Took me about 16 hours non-stop, with more crashes of the board than I could count. I was determined to upgrade from the old PHPbb version 1.4.2 to version 2 though, which offered avatars and some nice extra feature, (some of which I've only last week figured out what they can do - watch out for more info soon about the Sorting Hat...but that's the future). An early archive of the Broosticks And Owls forum on PHPbb 1.4.2 can be found at http://web.archive.org/web/200206040646 ... com/forum/ from back in May 2002 if you'd like to see how things were in the early days.

Our current top poster, Sonkem, joined on 11 September 2002 and quickly started bouncing off the walls of the virtually empty Hufflepuff common room before setting up a hugely successful Join Hufflepuff campain which has turned Hufflepuff into one of the most active houses (possibly the most active house) on the board.

A few months later, I found out that members of another board seemed to know BaO in a friendly way as The Land of the Chicken Worhippers :) . Thankfully some of those board members decided to join and most that I know of are still with us today.

I've always said, and truly mean it, that it's thanks to the members that the board is a place where I hope folks feel they enjoy. In many ways the forum has still only just begun. There's still a lot that I want to do.
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Postby azn wizard » Saturday 24 May 2003 11:16:16pm

wow...*sniffles* sucha happy story1!!
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Postby Holly Golightly » Sunday 25 May 2003 9:01:42am

ooohhhhhhhhhhh,

*Holly gets child-like grin on her face...*

I just love stories!!! :D

Thanks Paul!
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Postby Mistress Siana » Sunday 25 May 2003 11:23:33am

oh, thanks Paul, that was so nice! I forgot to eat my ice cream, and now it's melted!
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Postby Blaise Zabini » Sunday 25 May 2003 5:41:42pm

Lovely! Was an excellent story!

::Is still v. intrigued by this mysterious clan of Chicken Worshipers::
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Postby Neo » Monday 26 May 2003 5:15:20am

Great story Paul, it seems you have a lot of patience; probably if one month after I have created it no more than 100 persons had join I would have give up (okay, maybe I exagerated a little but I made my point)
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Postby Willow » Monday 26 May 2003 7:22:12am

what a nice story *sniff*
it really makes me happy *sniff*
to know who the first *sniff* were
overwhelming...
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Postby RavenEye » Monday 26 May 2003 5:11:23pm

:: sniff sniff ::

That was touching, very touching. Especially the Hufflepuff part. :grin:
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