Digital Spy
Digital Spy's Early History
30/03/2006 05:15 PM Filed in:
Miscellaneous
For those of you who know Digital Spy well, the site offers an official history page which documents the
early formation of the site as well as other more recent
activities.
Unfortunately I must admit to finding their history page more than a little lacking in relation to the period of January 1999 - May 2001 so I thought I would share my own recollection of events during that time with the assistance of old emails, Usenet postings and other fond reminders from days gone by...
17th January 1999
The digiNEWS site is launched by Iain Chapman.
28th February 1999
ONfaq, a site originally run by Chris Butcher, partners with digiNEWS.
21st July 1999
Having become good friends with Iain Chapman via the DALnet #SkyDigital IRC channel and offering to host his site for him, the digiNEWS site moves from its early Freeserve host to a virtual server hosting the new diginews.org domain name. In the same month we also saw the first appearance of the extremely popular digiNEWS forum powered by the extremely buggy Microsoft FrontPage 98 Discussion WebBot.
Note: This was the first of many virtual servers I provided and maintained for the site until June 2001 when growth dictated the necessary move to a dedicated server.
1st November 1999
Cable News UK, a site originally run by Chris Norris, joins digiNEWS and ONfaq in the formation of the digiNEWS Network.
1st March 2000
The first appearance of the Digital Spy brand occurs with the relaunch of the digiNEWS Network forum using Ultimate Bulletin Board v5 as the forum's backend.
3rd April 2000
TVzone, a site originally run by Neil Wilkes, joins the digiNEWS Network.
14th August 2000
dvdnews.co.uk, a site originally run by Mark Hughes, is the final site to join the digiNEWS Network.
19th May 2001
The digiNEWS Network evolves from a collection of micro sites into the new Digital Spy site.
Note: The new site design was powered by RAMS (Remote Access Management System) a content management system that I developed for the site along with the new CSS based design wrapped around RAMS.
Unfortunately I must admit to finding their history page more than a little lacking in relation to the period of January 1999 - May 2001 so I thought I would share my own recollection of events during that time with the assistance of old emails, Usenet postings and other fond reminders from days gone by...
17th January 1999
The digiNEWS site is launched by Iain Chapman.
28th February 1999
ONfaq, a site originally run by Chris Butcher, partners with digiNEWS.
21st July 1999
Having become good friends with Iain Chapman via the DALnet #SkyDigital IRC channel and offering to host his site for him, the digiNEWS site moves from its early Freeserve host to a virtual server hosting the new diginews.org domain name. In the same month we also saw the first appearance of the extremely popular digiNEWS forum powered by the extremely buggy Microsoft FrontPage 98 Discussion WebBot.
Note: This was the first of many virtual servers I provided and maintained for the site until June 2001 when growth dictated the necessary move to a dedicated server.
1st November 1999
Cable News UK, a site originally run by Chris Norris, joins digiNEWS and ONfaq in the formation of the digiNEWS Network.
1st March 2000
The first appearance of the Digital Spy brand occurs with the relaunch of the digiNEWS Network forum using Ultimate Bulletin Board v5 as the forum's backend.
3rd April 2000
TVzone, a site originally run by Neil Wilkes, joins the digiNEWS Network.
14th August 2000
dvdnews.co.uk, a site originally run by Mark Hughes, is the final site to join the digiNEWS Network.
19th May 2001
The digiNEWS Network evolves from a collection of micro sites into the new Digital Spy site.
Note: The new site design was powered by RAMS (Remote Access Management System) a content management system that I developed for the site along with the new CSS based design wrapped around RAMS.