I have often wondered what is the history of this site, but somehow never asked. So I am asking it now: How did this site come about? When? What were the growing pains? To the extent that this may be a common curiosity, maybe a sticky post can be made describing it and as time goes by additng to it as needed.

 

On the 7th day, when God was resting from creating the rest of the Universe, he got a little bored, looked out the window at his quad turbo'ed Cummins powered Ram...............

....and the rest is History.........

 

Now we know how he set everything in motion

Chris

 

MLAO! yeah, you could cetainly set somethin in motion with that puppy!

 

nice!!! I knew god drove a dodge CTD!!!!

 

Actually, it's a good question and I'd be interested in knowing the history as well.

chaikwa.

 

Me to.

 

I started the site on a small laptop in my office back in 2001 as a project for the company I worked for. I was tired of the "under" moderation of other sites and was kind of sick of being flamed all the time so I decided to do this for two reasons.

1. The project for work, so we could show potential customers a typical colocation cabinet configuration.

2. I wanted something more family oriented than what was available at that time.

After I got it running, it was horrible looking but it had a forum and we pulled some users from different locations. Many of the early users are gone now, but some of them are still around and it's good to have them. I moved the server into the server room instead of my desk and off we went. It slowly took off. I think we only had 400-500 users after the first year, but once word got out, we exploded to 3000 in the next year. After that, it just kept going and going.

I have been through three servers on the site now, and the one we're using for the forum is only part of it. The db, forum and email are all split off now, and the chat server is going to be seperated as well.

You can find more of what the site looked like back then if you go to http://web.archive.org and search for dodge-diesel.org and dieseltruckresource.com.

Lary came on in the second year I think. Last year we did the store officially and it has done well, providing funds for the site etc. the cost has gone up a lot, but we still manage.

We're averaging 1300 posts per day now, and over 1 million hits. I remember when we had 60 users online at once, we thought it was a big deal, and now we broke a record with over 1400 I believe? WOW.

It's all because of the users...

 

cool, i love strories

 

Thats about right, the place was in it's second year when I joined up and took over the day to day stuff here at DTR about a year later. It got WAY too busy for Jack to run as a hobby so we needed one full time guy to keep track of things.

I can remember emailing Jack all excited because we had 300 people on line at one time. our record now is actually over 2000 Hard for Jack to get that right off the top of his head as it changes so quick around here.

I know I look at the numbers all the time and can't believe the phenomenal growth we see here. What truly amazes is me is the quality of the membership as a whole. Sure we have problems from time to time, but percentage wise it is very low considering the sheer number of people who come through here daily

I am proud to be able to call a good many of you my friends, and it truly is an extended family around here

 

.....or you can believe all that stuff Jack said.........


I like my version better.

 

Its ok shovel...I believe your version!!



Mike
















Jacks is believeable tho

 

I don't believe ANYTHING he says. He doesn't like my coffee, so how can he be trusted?

Thanks Jack and Lary for writing that all down. That is pretty interesting!

chaikwa.

 

This site is the very best on the web, There is no other site that is as informative or entertaining. Jack and the moderators have made it what it is today. I don't post much any more but i still come here every day. Why jack even had the best site in it's first month, Thank's to all you guys for what you have done.

 

Jack,

Did you ever think that this site would be as successful as it is today ?

That is sure a cool history lesson. It just goes to show how life can make a quick turn and take you on a whole different path than what you had planned.

Thanks for making us all a part of your success and here's wishing for many more years of DTR to enjoy !! It truly is a second family to me.

PISTOL