Community Forums Background & History
From Checkmate Community Forums Wiki
The Checkmate Community Forums website and message board was officially launched on September 17, 2002.
The message board itself has utilized three distinct software packages since it's inception.
September 17, 2002 - November 15, 2002 - EZ Board
November 15, 2002 - March 15, 2006 - Infopop Eve, (now known as Groupee)
March 15, 2006 - current - vBulletin
"EZ Board Era"
Initially the site was launched and consisted primarily of a EZboard hosted message board which was dedicated to the discussion of all things "Checkmate". This initial EZboard phase ran from September 17, 2002 until November 15, 2002. During this intial phase, the forums were hosted on a EZboard message board server and domain and the forums did not utilize the current domain name of Checkmate-Boats.com. All posted messages from the EZboard had to be abandoned when the site moved to the Eve platform, as importing software was not available at the time of the move.
"Eve Board Era"
The second phase of the forums began on November 15, 2002. On this date, a Infopop Eve message board (now known as Groupee) was launched, utilizing and operating on the domain name of "Checkmate-Boats.com". The Eve board was hosted solution, so both the hosting and message board software were provided by Infopop. The existing posted messages from the EZboard were not imported over to the Eve platform as software for this purpose did not exist at the time. As a work-around, many of the threads and messages were manually recreated on the Eve board by the original posters. With the move to the Eve platform, many new message board user features were introduced. The new platform also included hosting space, which allowed the site to expand by adding additional webpages seperate from the message board itself like the splash page as one example. The hosting space was also utilized for hosting member images and site graphics.
"vBulletin Era"
The third and current phase of the forums began on March 15, 2006 when the site officially opened up utilizing vBulletin software. The move to the vBulletin platform also necessitated the site be moved to a new stand alone server unrelated to the software provider. All data from the Eve board was imported into the vBulletin plaform. Therefore, all users, threads and posts carried over with the software and hosting move. Current features of the site include a vBulletin message board, a Photopost Photo Gallery and Mediawiki.
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Chris' comments about the origen of the site
The site was started, literally, on a rainy day in September 2002 as I sat at my cottage kitchen table wishing for better weather. It was one of those days, when it seemed like it would never stop raining and would just continue to pour forever. And as I sat there wishing for it to stop, I started to think about how the boating season was quickly coming to an end for another year. So as I sat browsing the old Checkmate bulletin board, the idea for starting a dedicated Checkmate message board began to take shape. The sole motivation for starting it being, to give Checkmate owners a dedicated brand website to hang out, interact and share tips with their fellow owners. Rain, snow or shine!
Initially when the site was launched, it consisted solely of a EZboard hosted message board, but what was different about it, was that it was dedicated to the discussion of all things "Checkmate". It also had the advantage in that it was far more sophisticated than that of the factory bulletin board which was essentially a threaded bulletin board system. To recruit members and get the word out about the initial board's existence, I posted a message and link to the forum on the official site's bulletin board. And many of the board's initial members found the original EZboard by that message that was posted on the factory bulletin board.
But at the very beginning, even with the link on the factory bulletin board, it was very difficult to get the original board active. After the first month or so and the initial little burst of interest, there wasn't much activity on the little EZboard and it started to look as if it would just die. And then suddenly, almost out of nowhere, people started to join up. Part of the reason was that word started to spread on Greg Terzian's site Scream and Fly. JW and 175Checkmate a couple of "regulars" from Scream & Fly who had also joined our site, started to spread the word about our board and since, we've never looked back. We certainly owe a lot of thanks to Greg, who willingly allowed us to spread the word about our site on Scream and Fly. But without the hard work and contributions of JW and 175Checkmate (Gus) and our original members, I seriously doubt our site would be in existence today. Also, we owe a lot of thanks to Kip, Mike and Bill Combs for their support of our site since day one. Kip Combs was one of our original founding members and he remains an active poster on our forums today. Kip has kept us going by providing us with a steady stream of factory prototype pics, brochure scans, and news tidbits which has made our site a destination for Checkmate information.
By the end of October 2002, a few months into the forums running on EZboard, I ran into an issue as my personal hosting space that I had been utilizing for storing images, was completely full. This necessitated that I find additional hosting space for images. While looking at options, I found the Infopop Eve solution and to me this seemed to fit the bill perfectly. The Infopop solution offered us a more sophisticated message board system, our own server space, and it also allowed us to utilize our own unique domain name making it easier for people to find us. The domain name I chose was Checkmate-Boats.com. What I really wanted as our domain was CheckmateBoats.com but since it was already registered by someone, Checkmate-Boats.com was the next best thing I could think of, so that's what I went with.
So that is the background on the birth of what I call the "Eve era" of the forums. The new Checkmate-Boats.com website and Eve forums officially launched on November 15, 2002. Since the Eve platform was a hosting package with an integrated message board, the hosting aspect allowed us to begin to expand the site beyond being just a message board. The first addition was the splash page and over time, additional pages were added as needed. The Eve platform also allowed us more flexibility over the look and feel of the forums themselves. This allowed us to create our own forum header as an example and it also allowed us to create our own forum theme. With the new webspace, we also began the process of collecting, scanning and posting images of vintage Checkmate brochures in a forum we titled "The Showroom". To this day, we're still collecting, scanning and posting them! "The Showroom" has since been rolled into the Photopost gallery that was a later addition to the site.
The next era of the site is the current one which I call the "vBulletin era". The motivation for moving to vBulletin from Eve was two fold. Firstly, Infopop's hosting plan grew outdated both in price and features. At the same time, Infopop began to limit the number of total stored forum posts they allowed with the Eve platform. So as our total forum post count began to climb, the threat of being forced to delete content off the forums started to become a reality. So for these reasons, a search for new forum software began in early 2005. The main obstacle to moving to different software became the challenge of finding a software platform that was capable of importing the existing Eve database and content. After looking into a number of various software packages, vBulletin was chosen in part as they agreed to develop a import script that was capable of importing our existing Eve content.
After many, many, months of work, and many failed import and launch attempts, the vBulletin era of the forums officially began on March 15, 2006. Along with the new forum software package, a great deal of extra content was added to the site, including a forum portal. The portal itself added a number of additional features to the site. A few months later on May 14, 2006, a Photopost gallery was also added to the site and the task of moving "The Showroom" as well as many of the other site's images into the gallery was undertaken. Other features that have been added since have included a number of custom hacks as well as a blog (August 30, 2007) and a wiki (March 21, 2008).
Additionally, on June 11, 2007 after about six months of development, we launched our sister site Endless Boating, which is a non-brand specific boating website and forums. Endless Boating has a similar feel to the Checkmate Community forums in that utilizes similar software. It's content however is totally unique to itself and it also includes a Arcade.
Vintage archieved forum images
Here is the original header banner that was used on the original EZboard from September 2002 until November 2002. After the "EZboard era", this same banner was utilized as a banner ad which when clicked on linked to the official Checkmate website.
Here are a few of the various forum headers that were utilized during the Eve era.
The following pics are screen shots of the old board as it looked when it closed on March 14, 2006.
Current Statistical Details
Current Forum Statistics as of March 21, 2008 are as follows;
Members: 5,244
Threads: 10,644
Total Posts: 97,079
Membership Milestones and Dates
50 Members-Dec 21, 2002
100 Members-Jan 21, 2003
150 Members-Feb 27, 2003
200 Members-Mar 29, 2003
300 Members-May 20, 2003
400 Members-July 15, 2003
500 Members-Sept 7, 2003
600 Members-Nov 23, 2003
700 Members-Jan 16, 2004
1,000 Members-April 17, 2004
1,500 Members-Aug 18, 2004
2,000 Members-April 20, 2005
2,500 Members-Sept 3, 2005
3,000 Members-May 18, 2006
3,500 Members-Sept 7, 2006
4,000 Members-April 14, 2007
4,500 Members-July 28, 2007
5,000 Members-Dec 18, 2007
5,500 Members-June 7, 2008
Post-Count Milestones and Dates
1,000 Posts December 28, 2002
2,000 Posts January 20, 2003
3,000 Posts February 5, 2003
4,000 Posts February 21, 2003
5,000 Posts March 9, 2003
6,000 Posts March 26, 2003
7,000 Posts April 10, 2003
8,000 Posts May 6, 2003
10,000 Posts August 6, 2003
12,000 Posts October 9, 2003
15,000 Posts January 15, 2004
16,000 Posts Febuary 10, 2004
17,000 Posts March 2, 2004
20,000 Posts May 18, 2004
45,000 Posts October 14, 2005
50,000 Posts January 22, 2006
70,000 Posts February 13, 2007
75,000 Posts May 11, 2007
80,000 Posts July 23, 2007
85,000 Posts September 20, 2007
90,000 Posts November 29, 2007
95,000 Posts February 18, 2008
100,000 Posts April 27, 2008
105,000 Posts July 1, 2008
