ExtremeHW: An Origin Story

[ENTERPRISE]

Hello all,

 

So I have been asked a couple of times why I decided to start this site and a little on my background, while I have some free time, let's get into it.

 

The musings for starting my own forum started late 2018. Having been a part of communities in the past and present as well as being actively involved in community management in virtually all aspects, I felt it was time to maybe look into venturing out into the wild. Feeling that I had the experience and know how to pull it off. My journey really began back in 2004 when I joined my first tech community Overclock.net. I spent many years with the site both as a member as well as going up through the staff ranks all the way to the top as the Head Of Operations (Fancy title right !). During this time I gained invaluable experience as well as being mentored by the original site owner between 2004 - 2012, of course at the time I grew and learned off of the other staff members during that time as well. I was surrounded by a great bunch of people, it was a great time and I considered myself very lucky (Still do). From 2012 on-wards many things changed in the community space I was surrounded by, some good and some bad.

 

On my journey I was lucky to experience both the, private/grassroots and corporate worlds. I say lucky as it gave me a much broader view but more importantly, perspective. During my time in the community management, going from privately owned to corporate, the difference is night and day. As I say, it is not all bad but it is not all good either. After experiencing the negative side of corporate ownership, it really did open my eyes with respect to how not to do things when it comes to running community sites. It is with that I decided that privately owned forums are whats best for communities. There are many reasons for this but the most important ones to me are: User privacy to be free or at least as free as realistically possible from trackers/ads, The ability to shape and grow a community quickly and in a way that betters the community as a whole and most importantly, making it about the people. You do not have a forum or community without the people to drive it.

 

Moving forward to 2018, always having had a passion for communities and actively enjoy building community sites that people enjoy visiting, it was time for ExtremeHW, my own venture. I guess you could say I get a kick out of people enjoying the content and the features of a site and it only made sense for me to carry on this trend. As with all things, this site will continue to grow both in content,features and people joining the family. I say family as when you stick around and enjoy a common passion with the same people for so long, they become a little more than ''that internet guy". I am sure lots of you can relate. With ExtremeHW I not only wanted to do things from a private/grassroots perspective like the good old days, but also to go in the opposite direction of what many sites are doing today. Farming user information and cramming trackers and ads into everyone's face, again something we can all unfortunately relate to. When it comes to ExtremeHW, it is not about the money and communities really ought not to be and this is where corporate gets it all very wrong. Any and all money made from this site via generous donations or from Premium Accounts goes back into the community. This relates to running costs of the site and services as well as sites current and future development.

 

As many of you will know this sites core software platform is Vbulletin, I briefly went over this in my Welcome to ExtremeHW thread. I decided to keep with Vbulletin main due to the overall familiarity I had with the systems from VB 3.X. Of course much has changed since that time to the version we are on now at the point of writing this (5.6). While the core is Vbulletin, I have endeavored to customize the software to fit community needs and wants. Another reason for choosing this platform is that it is easily customizable and fairly easy to work with when it comes to custom software and plugin development. So VB made the most sense to me. Luckily I have had amazing support when initially setting up this site as well as a fantastic developer, needless to say having a solid team is important.

 

My goal with this site is to have a thriving community that does not have to choose between their privacy and their membership. This is why one of the key focus is to keep all external site elements to an absolute minimum, we take user privacy very seriously. Further to this we wanted a site not only feature rich for content creators and browsers alike, but a site that is relevant to the times. This is why we will continue to build unique site features in order to stay relevant, useful and a pleasure to use.

 

On a more personal level, communities far and wide are important for us on a human level. It does not matter whether you are talking to a person next to you or thousands of miles away via the internet. Community spirit matters. Coming from a background that has had its fair share of ups and downs, I found a certain amount of solace talking to others. I am not talking about "self help" or speaking to a ''professional'' (Though they play an important role too) but by simply talking about a shared common interest and having some laughs along the way, it is something that can really keep you going through tough times. Ultimately that and my passion for technology is what began my journey from 2004 to date.

 

I am looking forward to the future ahead and working with the fantastic people that have already contributed lots of time and effort to the site and look forward to getting to know our current and future users that join the ExtremeHW family.

 

All the best,

E

[ENTERPRISE]

Released.

[axipher]

I started my internet forum days back on sites like freebasic.net which also had the private to corporate move and lots my interest very quickly. Like ENTERPRISE here, I also spent a lot of time growing with the community on Overclock.net having joined late in 2011. The community we built there was great and continues to contain a lot of amazing people and I found myself coming back not for just the content, but the people driving the content and the discussions that took place.

 

I worked my way from a member up the staff ranks to the never officially titled Folding Editor Manager, but to be honest, the Folding Editors were always a team who each took a small part of the load of keeping Folding@Home alive and competitions of all sorts running while all having different tech backgrounds. We never really had a manager, just a bunch of members passionate about Folding@Home wanting to do their part to help out.

 

 

 

I'm looking forward to the journey ExtremeHW has in store and happy to be part of the early days.

[ENTERPRISE]

I started my internet forum days back on sites like freebasic.net which also had the private to corporate move and lots my interest very quickly. Like ENTERPRISE here, I also spent a lot of time growing with the community on Overclock.net having joined late in 2011. The community we built there was great and continues to contain a lot of amazing people and I found myself coming back not for just the content, but the people driving the content and the discussions that took place.

 

I worked my way from a member up the staff ranks to the never officially titled Folding Editor Manager, but to be honest, the Folding Editors were always a team who each took a small part of the load of keeping Folding@Home alive and competitions of all sorts running while all having different tech backgrounds. We never really had a manager, just a bunch of members passionate about Folding@Home wanting to do their part to help out.

 

 

 

I'm looking forward to the journey ExtremeHW has in store and happy to be part of the early days.

 

We are certainly happy to have you here bud !

[StevoTheLeo]

This site definitely reminds me of the early days at OCN. I'm excited to see the site blossom and expect it to do so.