jthorpe

I just got done looking through the "Way Back Machine" and found some interesting links....

DTR in October 2001: 183 members
http://web.archive.org/web/200110220.../YaBB/YaBB.cgi

Jan 02:
http://web.archive.org/web/200201181...ge-diesel.org/

July 03: 10,000 members
http://web.archive.org/web/200403240...kresource.com/

Sept 04: 13,000 members
http://web.archive.org/web/200409240...ge-diesel.org/

Just thought that was interesting

35" 05'

That is awesome! Wish idda been here the whole time. '01...what kinda computers did we have?

ofcmarc

What happened to the "WAR ROOM"?

rustyshakelford

those are pretty cool...its amazing how the site has grown so much so quickly. good job with keeping up with the changes jack...honestly too, im not trying to suck up either...dont want people to think i do that, becuase trust me thats not my style

brett

jthorpe

well, all I know is that at the time, DTR was sitting under my office desk running a piece of junk spare computer that my old work gave me. It was slow, it was big and it was ugly. Once I got over a couple hundred members, I figured I'd better find another one to copy stuff to. It had no backup back then, now power redundancy, nothing to make it fast. It was running on a flat file based forum system which was bulky and slow.

kevellis32

BRING THE WAR ROOM BACK...thad be the best forum yet

jthorpe

a long forgotten marketing gimmick never to return

kevellis32

Jack,
Just curious, did you ever have to do any advertising to get your first couple hundred/thousand members or was it just a tell your friend and tell him to tell his friends?

dodgediesel

How many members now???

jthorpe

I was a long time member of TDR, which was the Cummins Diesel Website back then. Before that, I was a member of ford-diesel.com which is now thedieselstop.com. In 97, I had a powerstroke and I was member 124 on TDS, which is now close to over 100,000 members. At the time i bought my Dodge, they let me post my site URL there, and advertise a little bit. It took me 3 months to get 150 members at the time in 2001.

In 2002, I barely grew by 1500 members for the whole year. We now get close to 2000 per month. The growth of the site was very slow the first three years but once Google and Yahoo had us sorted out, the growth was exponential. Word of mouth played a large role as well.

jthorpe

43,283.

we grow by anywhere from 50 to 100 per day.

westcoaster

Hmmm.... I joined Oct 02 Before I was westcoaster I was west coaster (note the space) I didn't set a proper email address on that other account so I couldn't get my password back for that one. (I think that happened after a forum update)

Along with the war room went penguins, sheep and three word stories.

The HAC has been dormant for quite some time. seamed everyone wanted to join that. I think a couple wound up getting banned simply because they didn't know when to concede victory to Hoss.

jthorpe

You've surpassed the statute of limitations. LOL

PistolWhipt

Good God ..... that's a LOT of traffic.

It wouldn't have grown so much if it wasn't for the way this site is operated. By far the best moderated site I have seen.

Keep up the good work Jack.

Cheers,
PISTOL

westcoaster

Whew!, here I thought I was going to be suspended for multiple accounts

See, it pay's to come clean