What is the history of this site?

[Dr Evil]

I just drifted in to this forum a long time ago but can't remember when, but my reasons were the BOF was down or neglected a few years ago, they forced people to keep to the official line and all the cool people seemed to have defected here.
But how, when and why did this site start, and was it some kind of protest regarding the official forum?

[tonywojo]

I just drifted in to this forum a long time ago but can't remember when, but my reasons were the BOF was down or neglected a few years ago, they forced people to keep to the official line and all the cool people seemed to have defected here.
But how, when and why did this site start, and was it some kind of protest regarding the official forum?

always knew i was cool

[JackT]

I just drifted in to this forum a long time ago but can't remember when, but my reasons were the BOF was down or neglected a few years ago, they forced people to keep to the official line and all the cool people seemed to have defected here.
But how, when and why did this site start, and was it some kind of protest regarding the official forum?

The forum part of it formed during that BOF interregnum you mentioned, but VT was the premier bunnymen discography site for years before that.

[tonywojo]

The forum part of it formed during that BOF you mentioned, but VT was the premier bunnymen discography site for years before that.

interegnum?

[Mr. Brian]

Most of the content was originally just a tabs, lyrics and discography site on various free hosts with no proper domain name since August 2005. I had installed some forum software at my paid hosting site but I never turned it on or made a link to it. I didn't think anyone would post since there was another site called bunnymen.info at the time that had a forum and no one used it either.

In October 2007 the BOF had a long outage and several others prior to that as I recall and people seemed generally unhappy with posts being censored for various reasons and I seem to remember people having to re-register multiple times.
When it looked like the BOF outage was going to go on for a while I decided to finally register a domain name. I settled on VilliersTerrace.com for no other reason than it was available as a name as I looked though bunnymen songs and albums and it was a "place" that would sound good (as opposed to bunnymenfans.com or something like). Then I just turned on the Forum and sent out a few e-mails and the Seven Seas mailing list. I really thought it would only last until the BOF came back online or a short time after but people stayed and here we are 2 years and 42,000+ posts later.

[kook]

What date was it two years ago?
We should mark the occasion.

[Frank The Bunny]

Brian's waaaay too modest.

I thought VT had been running for some time longer than that. A quick tri to the wayback machine shows your site existed in October of 2005 http://web.archive.org/web/200510261830 ... rrace.com/

I do remember Brian agonizing over whether or not to start a forum in '07. I'm glad he did...

I'm going to spill a little inside info here, and I hope Brian doesn't mind. Actually, I don't care. He deserves the recognition.

Even prior to this site, Brian is owed a HUGE debt of gratitude from the online Bunnymen community. He helped a lot with the discography on bunnymen.com back when I ran it. However, he REALLY earned his stripes when I put all the streaming content online back in the day - "Meet the Bunnymen", the videography & music clips ate a TON of bandwidth... even moreso when I put ianmcculloch.com online...

Brian copied every single multimedia file to his servers for me. I balanced bandwidth load between his servers and the bunnymen's hosted servers until the initial huge demand dropped off. Brian helped me make it seamless for the community. It was Brian who kept my version of bunnymen.com afloat. I'll always be grateful for that.

Brian -
you are indeed da man

-i.

[black francis]

get a room you two.

[Frank The Bunny]

get a room you two.

oh, we'll get a room... but you gotta bring the camcorder

[black francis]

and a bottle of oil?

[Mr. Brian]

I don't mind the history lesson, that was good times!
FtB is correct, it was longer ago than what I said. I looked at when I registered the domain name VilliersTerrace.com and it was August 29th 2005. The Forum was started on October 18th 2007. Prior to August 29th 2005 I used a free host for about a year.

So, I'm pretty sure this site existed in some form since the summer of 2004.
VilliersTerrace.com was started in 2005.
The forum was started in 2007.

And to answer one of the original questions, I never thought of this forum as a "protest" since I never expected it to last long. It was just a reaction to that situation of there being no BOF for a while in 2007. I thought everyone would just go back once it was up and running again. Some did, some post at both and some only post here. We welcome all sinners and saints at VT.

[In The Margins]

And to answer one of the original questions, I never thought of this forum as a "protest" since I never expected it to last long. It was just a reaction to that situation of there being no BOF for a while in 2007.

It was a Bunnymen option when the BOF was an option no longer. The webmaster was mad because somebody posted something rude about somebody and pulled the plug. I remember a nasty email telling us that we needed to be taught a lesson, or something to that effect. It didn't look like the BOF would resume anytime soon.

And then along came Mr. Brian.

He set up the VT forum and users flocked to sign up. It gave the fans an outlet, plus there was no censorship (which policy continues to this day). The BOF reappeared quite quickly (in reaction to the competition?), but with stipulations. That forum was never really spirited, but the heavy handedness really took the wind out of it. It also doesn't help that they created the "rules" but they don't follow them.

[black francis]

Mr. Brian is a saint in my book and a fine roommate and drinking buddy. Other than that he's next to useless.

[kook]

It was a Bunnymen option when the BOF was an option no longer. The webmaster was mad because somebody posted something rude about somebody and pulled the plug. I remember a nasty email telling us that we needed to be taught a lesson, or something to that effect.

Who said what? I always thought Spooky's assertion that she was responsible for
the forum being taken off line had something to do with exploded self-importance.
I didn't get the mail. what did it say?

[black francis]

I think the e-mail was sent out to the "good ones" but it did boil down to teaching us a lesson and it would be back in about a week or so.

That spooky myspace thread was getting nasty! rowr!