UBB.Developers Forums General Discussion Chit Chat History of ubbdev

I know ubbdev used to be another site (I'm bad w/ urls :D), but I'm curious: how exactly did a Texan, a Pennsylvanian and a Wisconsinite conjure up such a creature?

A long time ago, in a land far far away...

I bought my first UBB in Sept-Oct '99 after reading a story about it in INC. Magazine about someone touting how good it was for site "community" - the catchword of the day at the time. My favorite site glassdog had just installed one too... so it sounded like a good idea for my stand318 site. It was 3 months before I even installed it and opened it to the public.

I read the first couple of posts at SK about a new "hacking" site going up in early January, but wasn't interested at the time because a) I figured they wouldn't last long after IP found out about it... and b) I could barely set my ubb up, let alone make changes to all that code that I couldn't make head or tails out of... When they were still open in February, I began visiting, wanting to learn how to do some of that cool stuff.

In March I signed up and installed my first "hack" - "welcome last user to register" - very difficult at the time... But after reading countless hours of cal's, charles', ilya's, etc. posts, it began to make sense.

In early May, the above people had had enough with the current owner of ubb chh, someone who even preferred to call himself "Spaz" - that should tell you something about him, I'm sure. They split and formed ubbcodehackers. In their wake, spaz's friend "slick chicken" (we had all the strange people at that time ) joined as an admin. To this day no-one knows who slick chicken was or where he was from - I still think he worked for the web host we were with. Anyways, I offered to moderate some forums since by then I was on all the time and slick was desperate enough to say yes... By June it was apparent that slick knew even less than I did, spaz had started becoming scarce, and in the rotation of people slick was letting be admin, I jumped in the fray and joined up. And the rest is history...

Digital Boy was asked to become a moderator around that time, because, frankly at the time, he was the only one who actually wrote any new modifications. Our web host began requiring us to display ugly banner ads for them, as a result of some shady deal between spaz and them. Spaz had disappeared, and slick chicken was running around, well, like his head was cut off. (I liked to call him "chicken little" - mainly cuz he liked to about once a week make a hurried announcement in the private forums that he "had 'suspicions' that we were about to be hacked, so everyone change their password pronto!". Spaz showed up often enough to add fuel to the fire. heheh

June of that summer someone who always seemed to have an encouraging word, never complained, helped wherever she could was asked to join us as moderator. Deb has been instrumental in our success ever since.

Late July, DB and I had enough of the crap (is that better Greg? I said crap ;)), slick was disappearing for weeks at a time, and the banners were getting uglier. DB was promoted to admin, and we plotted our escape.

We wanted to bring more professionalism to the site, to the staff, everything. So, we bought the ubbdev name to remove the word "hacking" from our name, built the site, and moved in the dawn hours of Labor Day weekend 2000.

Sept 12th , Deb joined us as an admin, mainly for the things she brought to our admin staff as a whole - class, professionalism, and hygiene. She had spent many hours assisting us with the build-up to launching the new site and has been instrumental in our developing other areas such as our nice graphics database that other forum sites keep taking graphics from, we know who you are...

They can give you their background and correct some of my mistakes in memory recall up there, I have probably said more than you wanted to know anyways...

1) I don't think Slick Chicken was Spaz's friend
2) The name 'Spaz' is from Jazz Jackrabbit 2 (just bought that recently...)
3) Just a note, Slick Chicken added 3 admins, me, Allen, and eon. eon resigned sometime, I resigned (mainly 'cuz I don't use UBB anymore...), Slick disappeared, only Allen was left.

Actually it was ubbhackers.com

Nice story Allen wow! I'm here since may, but it feels like I'm here for years. There has been a alot of things in a small period.
And Deb was Deb~ for a long time do you miss the tail Deb?

I checked this now, it is still there;
http://ubbcodehacking.com/ubbchh.swf

a present from slick chicken ...

aaahhh...

once upon a time, there was the ubb freeware code hacking ...

I knew I missed a few things...

*wakes up*

Sorry, thought it was a bedtime story..

cool beans though, I knew some of that but not all.. And Allen, didn't you miss out all the exciting parts like getting hacked, or the mass mail telling everyone to go to Ubbhackers and things like that.. Intrigue, that's what your story needs now

Alot of crap went on. (Thank you Allen!)

I resigned because of the crap going on in MY life and with the site. I then sent a message to Allen (this was when Slick Chicken was head admin, and allen the lacky) asking to be mod again, and thats where i came back.

I've been here since Feb 2000.

That is a different story completly.

oh how well I remember Spaz...
How fondly I remember all the moderators conspiring against Spaz, and that wonderful irc chat...
*shudder*

ok, getting too nostalgic here

No way!! That's exactly what I was hoping for -- thank you thank you.

Hmmmm.. I seem to remember seeing something INC too for some strange reason. Anyway, I bought my first license in '98 and another in '99. I've always been around... behind the scenes more than in the foreground. I do remember the site getting hacked a few times.... far too well, and trying to fix whatever I could or contact whomever I could at the time.

Jeo... nope I don't miss the tail. Let the mice have it.

Aahhh the site hacks, I remember them well...

One in July, some old backups saved us from starting completely back over.. and another Sept 5, about 6pm. I had sent my pc through a reboot defragmentation and it was down for 3-4 hours... I couldn't get back online except from another pc, so I couldn't stop the damage until it was too late... whoever it was (and I am sure I know who it was now), just pruned threads, sent the email to everyone, but didn't bother the member files... what an idiot. We loaded old backups and started again.

The last time was in December, I had been lax in server extensions set up and someone signed on again and deleted everything except the member files (they are on another hard disk on the server). We loaded backups again and moved on...

Yes, each time Deb used her dialup connection and restored lots of it before I even could get signed back on. We now have daily backups of everything, would take maybe 5 minutes to restore if we needed to. Server security is finally taking precedence now as well... With the new v6, our backup file is now ~170mb, vs. the ~490mb file before.

It's alright for those of you who actually have bandwidth, isn't it *frowns at isdn and wishes someone would take pity on the hell holl she lives in and perhaps install adsl*

heh, does anyone remember Spaz's "Win a Moderator position" competitions? haha
oh, that just reminded me of something. When ubbchh was falling apart badly people spoke to him, everything would have been sorted out except he refused to get rid of his stupid "UBB Master and Ruler Of The Universe"esque title. and 50 stars. lol, what a lamer.


alright, think I'll lay off of the caffeine for one night and get some sleep

You see, I knew there was more to the story

I don't envy you guys running a site like this, I'm sure it's the target of a lot of knowledgable people, rather than the target of a lot of 12 year old morons like my site

12 year old morons can be as dangerous, imho...

actually, a knowledgable 12 year old moron is the most dangerous one...

[ March 01, 2001: Message edited by: CopyCat ]

OMG! i remember the whole thing, this was back when i was still a newbie. and before that I was a member of ultrasupport.org. i used too spy for new hacks here and the ultrasupport hackers would steal u guy's code and rewrite some too make it their own.

i still can't belive how long it's been.

'Spaz' liked to be known as 'UBBMaster'. Hardly a title he deserved.

I first vistied ubbchh just after it opened in jan 2k. I became a mod at the same time as andy (atom911). And yes, i remember those IRC plotting sessions

Just a thought

Memories

Old design by Allen

The old staff from way back when

That's a mixture of 2 designs... both ugly, and people were mad when we changed from them too...

How do you find this stuff?

wow. I remember the ol' days...

wow, all the old mods *feeling nostalgic*

Wow, I have always wondered where ubbdev came from. I am glad you broke up with ubbcodehackers.com their site looked like "crap".

This site is UBB CHH, although new domain and admins.

Allen - I found it when I was looking through an old ICQ conversation and found a link to the chat page. There was a link from there to the team page.

ROFL - http://www.ubbcodehacking.com/makaveli.htm

wtf is all that crap?

ewwwwwwww: http://www.ubbcodehacking.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number=10&SUBMIT=Go

that would be slick chicken

Just a thought

*Ouch* I see what you mean.

One of the more familiar color schemes?

http://www.ubbcodehacking.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number=14&SUBMIT=Go

methinks Interserver was playing with the colors...
the board worked awhile ago, but now Ultimate.cgi has no execute permissions, the threads are all gone, and the colors are all screwed up.

...so it's at an all-time peak functionality then?

Yes, I've never seen it run better over there...

best admin I've seen

"In life you either lead, follow or get out of the way."

- DB

Friends, UBB Hackers and visitors, lend me your ears. I come to talk about Spaz, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Spaz. The noble cal has told you Spaz was ambitious; If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously has Spaz answer'd it. Here, under leave of Cal and the rest, For Cal is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable, I come to talk about Spaz.
He is my friend faithful and just to me: But cal said he was ambitious, And Cal is an honorable man. He have started ubbcodehacking.com from scratch, He even paid for everything that was on the site. Did this in Spaz seem ambitious.
When the site needed help Spaz has helped it. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff;
Yet Cal said Spaz was ambitious; And cal is an honorable man.
You all did see at the beginning of the creation of the site he had chosen moderators for the site. Even when some of them were inexperienced or new to the community he let them in with open hands was this ambitious? Yet cal said he was a ambitious And, sure, he is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Cal spoke, But I am to speak of what I do know. You all did like him once, not without cause; What cause withholds you to be kind to Spaz now? O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reasons. Bear with me; I will remember Spaz as a honorable man, And I must pause till it come back to me.
Please change your attitudes about him.
That's all I have to say.
He knows that he has done mistakes so please forgive him and move on.

[ March 13, 2001: Message edited by: Manbury ]

Spelling like that means only one thing...

Hi Chris

How have you been, and what are you up to now-a-days...

This is not Chris nor is it Spaz. You don't have to assume that everybody that comes here is Spaz.

I am a close friend of Spaz.