10 Year Mark Approaches & Disbanding the offline Sonic Club Options

[Sonic Club]

As some of you may know, Sonic Club existed offline a few years before hitting the internet. On the internet there has been attempts to bring the membership of this group to life. While this may or may not be done, one thing has been decided for sure this year. The Sonic Club that once existed offline will be disbanded completely and cease operations. What this means is our old outdated "paper records" will be destroyed and a new online system will be considered. So this does not mean an end, but a true migration for Sonic Club into the paperless era. We somewhat abandoned the old system years ago, but after some consideration we decided to close the doors of the real "club".

To conclude this could mean we can get more organized and do much better on this project within the near future. Sonic Club is in the revival phase, not ever dead, but just dorment. The re-awakening will happen, and our goals haven't changed. In addition to our old plans, we have many new ones to make us well known to the community like we were back in 1999 and the few years following that.

When early 2009 comes, it'll soon hit our 10 years mark. That's right, Sonic-Club.Com will be 10 years old, one of the longest lasting Sonic sites out there. We've withstood the test of time, and hopefully we're now ready to take our place back at the top where we got so close to being at one time. This dream never died, nor did it fade. Expect a hybrid of the past and the present as we like tradition and will not dismiss Sonic's greatest years from the spotlight.

10 Years Approaches! Are you ready??

[Sonic Club]

I realize that members haven't ever been able to reply to these announcements, thus furthering the demise of Sonic-Club.Com with the seemingly dead appearance. I have fixed this so now you guys can join in.

Now that the news is out and there seems to be more than a few excited about this news I will try my best to pull it off. I would like user input on what our loyal visitors would like to see on the resurrection of Sonic-Club.Com


So far I have come up with a few excited ideas to kick things off:

• Sonic Club Radio to begin airing again
• VMU Downloads (something other Sonic sites no longer have)
• Archiving of any and all information and resources relating to Sonic for preservation (and proper credit given)
• Top 10 Sonic Sites previously ran by Sonic Fun Zone to come back
• Much anticipated Sonic Site Archive
• More dedication to the classic Sonic, still accepting of the new one, but giving the old stuff the recognition it deserves
• Other things that have been lost from current day Sonic Sites

In other words we plan to follow through with our original plan to be at the top of all Sonic Sites if at all possible. The dream is still alive. A resurrection of Sonic-Club.Com, but with a new set of motives from the previous, or rather; in addition to.

We will also see about embracing the new technologies from past years such as podcasting, etc.

This is only the start of the flowing ideas. I also can't promise all this at once, but we're going for it this time.

Any input? (you must be a "Member" class to reply)

[BlueKnux]

It is nice that now your letting us reply, there was something that i wanted to say about the first post here, but i cant remember what it was, so ill just talk about the new post instead. I think they seem to all be good ideas, though i would like to know what are VMU downloads? I do like the more dedication to the classic sonic, because i do feel that the sonic games were the best in the 2D format, though some of the newer ones are good, they just arnt as good as the originals. If you need or want any help with any of it, im deffinately willing to help, just tell me =)

[Sonic Club]

It is nice that now your letting us reply, there was something that i wanted to say about the first post here, but i cant remember what it was, so ill just talk about the new post instead. I think they seem to all be good ideas, though i would like to know what are VMU downloads? I do like the more dedication to the classic sonic, because i do feel that the sonic games were the best in the 2D format, though some of the newer ones are good, they just arnt as good as the originals. If you need or want any help with any of it, im deffinately willing to help, just tell me =)

Yeh I always wondered why there were no replies. Never thought that maybe it was because the permissions.

Glad you like the ideas. I will try to make them a reality. VMU downloads are dreamcast memory card files. Downloadable Chao, game saves, and event files for Dreamcast games.

Thanks for your offer to help. I know many people are offering to help me and they have in the past. I should take people up on these offers. If I am doing most things on my own then I can't easily complain about slowness I guess. I need to think how I can allow others to help though. It has to be something I know that the person I assign to a task can without a doubt handle it. I'll let you and everyone else know if there's any staff openings. I know it's overdue to arrange something similar.

[Sonic Club]

An update on our 10 year plan:


Though we registered the site originally sometime in late January 1999, it took time to take effect. According to the domain records which are very close to the time we first got started, it says 06-Feb-1999.

This means that the approx time we plan to launch the debut of the 10 year project, will be February 6, 2009.

On this day several things will be for sure:

- SCR: Sonic Club Radio makes it's return with an updated playlist. This means new Sonic tracks that have come out ever since SCR crashed will be added. It should also be noted that since the first times we used to stream SCR we only had 17kb per second upstream and could support quite a few users, but now we should be capable of providing slots for many many more uesrs than we previously could. Our upgraded connection is also much more stable than what we had before so hopefully less downtime. We also will also no longer host the station at sonicclub.dns2go.com. It's a decent service but DNS2GO is too pricy for the feature we got it for. We have an alternative that'll allow us to make use of our own domain for the station rather than a remote URL. In other words, though we are retiring our old stream URL, the service has only gotten better.

- Hotlinking is not a problem anymore. Previously we had problems with sites taking advantage of the files we hosted, and dragging us down because at the time our ratio for space and bandwidth was rather small. However, now it's quite vast and the programming experience has increased of us. We have come up with ways to stop outsiders from hotlinking and even if they do find a way we'll make sure we steal the visitors of the underhanded webmasters. We will also make sure we don't group the innocent people in with such bandwidth thieves.

- Revamped staff formation and strategy. We'll aim to make the staff not only strong and successful at what they do, but not put un-necessary stress on who works with us. There will be groups, and in some cases shifts. Also, we will take many precautions to eliminate the problem of "corrupt staff" and so-called "hackers" like other Sonic sites have seen in the past.

- Resurrected files and services. We will host rare files lost from the Sonic community, and back this up with thet "Sonic Site Archive" project. The backups we collected before will not go to waste. We are not only trying to be the best Sonic site, but we want the other great Sonic sites to get the recognition they deserve rather than being forgotten after a few years. Since we are slightly behind in the Sonic scene this will be a bit more difficult to do because we will need to hunt down a lot of file artifacts, some probably not able to be replaced. Leave this to us though. I think it's worth mentioning that we will try to always host our wallpapers as a high resolution download. I don't think anyone likes JPEG distorted wallpapers, and sadly this is very common on Sonic sites.

- Credit goes where it's deserved. In the past we've worked with some shady people who have caused trouble for us, and questionable theft of files or content occurred. Our goal is to archive and host all Sonic materials we can get our hands on weather it's from another Sonic site or not, but of course with the credits to the authors or site of origination.

- Staying true to the old style Sonic while still accepting the newer released stuff. Additionally we may also give information about other Sonic related things such as fanmade creations, and Sonic Team itself.

-


(More information coming as it's released)

[Sonic Club]

Preparations are happening.

Don't expect a big explosion of things, but it'll grow into something.

The 10 year project is in progress.

[Sonic Club]

The filesystem of the server is a mess. There will be a bit of a cleanup and sorting before things get too under-way.

Content-wise we'll be remastering some of the old features we had before. At the same time, the entire site will start at a foundation once again, where we start from nothing. it's not like we managed a large amount of content previously however. Bandwidth thieves caused us a great expense. This time around things will be different. In some ways it's good we took so long, the level of skill we posess and the options programming-wise give us many options.

In case something goes horribly wrong, we've done a full system backup.

[Sonic Club]

The motherboard of the server has problems and needs replacing. After we do this, SCR should atleast be streaming again.

Meanwhile, it wouldn't hurt for you guys to all debate over what you'd like to see on the site. Since a lot has changed in the last 5 years or so, it's possible that there's new things that other sites are investing in. Though we'll stay accustomed to the original Sonic, the design on the website doesn't have to be old, and shouldn't be.

Also we like to learn from the mistakes of others. So did any other sites do anything to make their visitors angry?

Again, anything at all would be helpful, just because we're waiting to RMA a motherboard doesn't mean the site can't progress in the planning aspect.

[Myles]

So far everything sounds good. You, me, and BlueKnux should conference on AIM sometime and talk about all of that. I like where you're going with it though.