We ended 2006 with 19309 registered members. We ended 2007 with 22934 members for an increase in membership of 3625 members last year. I've not actually kept accurate records of yearly membership increases prior to that so cannot be certain but I feel quite sure that last year saw the largest increase of members registering since 2002 when we changed software requiring registration anew. That year we no doubt had a large registration but since the change was in November I doubt it was anymore but 2003 could have been.
The membership has made steady gains ever since we began the site back in 1997 and that was a truly humble beginning. For those who've been around that long you might recall that I had a photo of the home we lived in prior to moving here after a huge snow storm (a rare event here in Bama) as the opening page. To enter the site you clicked on the front door of our home to enter our home on the internet. Ever since that initial start we've looked on GBO as our Home on the Internet and have established rules much like those at our real home. We expect visitors to both to act in a lady or gentleman like manner, to behave themselves and to do only things that would be acceptable behavior in an average Christian home in the state of Alabama where we're located. That will never change here at GBO.
In those long gone days when you opened the GBO Home Page if you had your speakers on you were greeted to the sound of Amazing Grace playing. Some folks told me they loved to open the home page just to listen to the music. I did also.
Back then it was but a small site mostly some stuff about me and my interests and some tales of my hunts found in the Campfire Tales section which is still availble off the Home Page. Not so long afterward Matt found a free forum site called BraveNet and added forums to the site. At the time BraveNet only allowed a total of 200 posts to be displayed on the free forums they offered. Once that number was reached they would daily prune off the oldest to reduce it back down to 200. That resulted in the opening post of a thread being pruned while leaving posts below it since it was in a cascading format.
Very quickly we decided that was unacceptable so Matt wrote a new software program exclusively for use at GBO inititally but he sold permission to some few others to use his software and some did for awhile. We continued to operate on Matt's software still of the cascading type until the change that took place on November 20, 2002 when we moved to a software of the same general type we now use. Leaving that old cascading style for this new was a tough decision for me as I truly preferred it to this. But this was what folks all over the internet were going to and so did we.
When I first went online in early '97 I found darn few sites such as this. The four I remember best were Huntinfo.com, The Coffee Shop, SPAV and Shooters.com. Of those so far as I know only Josh's Huntinfo site still exists. Both the Coffee Shop and Shooters died painful deaths as they tried to grow too big too fast and took on a large staff of folks who had to be paid from the income of the site. The income just didn't match expenses and they folded and went away even tho at the time they were likely the largest such sites on the internet. I have no clue what happened to SPAV and it might even still be around but the last time I clicked my bookmark to it I failed to find it.
We purchased the content of the old Shooters.com site and Matt has said he will put it back up one of these days as a reference or content site. I hope we are able to make that happen in 2008 as I think the content of that old site is very much worthwhile and would be a fine addition to what has now become one of the oldest and largest such sites on the internet.
I've now forgotten the names of many of the folks I posted with back in those long ago days at those sites. Some of them opened their own sites about the same time I did give or take a few months one way or the other. I think Marshall might have been first in opening up HuntAmerica which I believe is still in existence but under different ownership altho I'm also not certain of that as I've not been there in years. Some of the old members of the CoffeeShop bought the domain I believe and are now operating it not quite as it was but have resurrected it to at least some extent. Josh Still runs Huntinfo but the forum portion of it is about dead. It is still an excellent resource for hunters tho with the Hunt Report Database he has. Others from those days have opened their own sites and are quite successful in their own right with sites such as Jesse's Outdoors and The 24 Hour Campfire. I'm sure I'm leaving out some of the gang I posted with in those early days it's not intentional I just can't remember them all and likely am not even aware of some who have opened their own sites since. There has been a true flood of such sites in the years since and millions of sites have come and gone since I joined the internet.
It's not been an easy road getting from there to here. There have been many ups and downs along the way and we hit several pot holes along the way that kinda jarred our teeth a bit. Some folks have taken strong objection to the way I run this site but never the less I've continued on the course I set back in '97 and have remained true to the promises made then to keep it a clean wholesome family oriented site where Christian families could allow their children to browse safe in the expectation that what they see here will not offend or shock them. I feel we've done a good job of that and that is in great amount due to the excellent folks who have joined and helped to maintain the high standards we've set. We've had a lot of good folks volunteer to moderate the forums and help us maintain those standards. Without them it would not be possible to run a site that has grown as this one has. One I read every post on every forum ever day but the site is far too large for that today so having help in maintaining it is an absolute necessity.
In all the years we've run this site it has been operating on leased or rented servers owned by someone else. Today that is still the case BUT we do own two truly modern servers each with a capacity perhaps 100 times that of the leased servers we're still on today. That will change this month as Matt will be moving us to the new servers soon real soon I hope. There is one thing we have to do first and that should take place perhaps by the end of this week. Once that is taken care of we'll be poised to move onto our new servers and to begin yet another new era in the site with the capacity to be the fastest and most stable on the internet with room to grow for many many more years to come. We will have the capacity on those servers to host perhaps a couple thousand or more sites should we find folks who would like to be hosted. Matt even has the software loaded onto one of them to set up our own VOIP phone service which we might offer to the world this year. At least he plans to do so.
We're also poised to enter a new realm of income if the negotiations currently underway work out as hoped. If it does the Google ads will likely be removed which should make some of you happy. I hope we're able to do that and yet at the same time maintain a healthy revenue stream that will assure the site continues to grow and prosper long into the future even after I'm no longer with you. It is after all a family owned and run site and other family members will exist to run it long after this old fart passes on to a hopefully better world some day in the future. The site is not me and I am not the site even tho I began it. It will long outlive me I'm sure because of folks like you our members who make it what it is and will continue to make it what it becomes in the next decade of live it is beginning this the 11th year of the site.
Happy New Year to you one and all. May you prosper and grow in the new year and let's hope so will our great country. I must admit the crop of Presidential hopefuls don't fill me with a lot of confidence things will get better but perhaps GOD will continue to bless this great land and it will all work out for the better even if the list of candidates looks rather gloomy.
