The History of ieXbeta
Published: August 14, 2004
Last update: September 20, 2006

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I. Major Events ... in no particular order

• Nanzy Sinatra is founder of ieXbeta.
• The ieXbeta web site was established on January 31, 2001, and the actual board was first installed on April 1, 2001.
• ieXbeta switched from Ikonboard to IPB in 2002, and shortly after the conversion the DB was lost and crashed. All of the sites topics, threads, news, etc were lost.
• The crash occurred on August 28, 2002 and the board came back on September 3, 2002. James was hosting the site on his behalf, when suddenly his hosting contract was cancelled.
• The board crash restarted the site, and the site began to expand and invite more members into the community. That night when the board was first brought back, lots of ieXbeta folk visited and posted while James was trying to reconfig all of the settings that were lost. Posts began sprouting and a race to become the top poster was on its way.
• Law suits against ieXbeta? Some claim a Stardock dispute arose - According to DJP, ieX was hosting a beta version of WindowsBlinds 3.0 which did not have a 30 day trial, thus making it a normal version.
• Several skin changes over the years.
• A board logo contest, one I remember was when Something Corporate won. A Neowin look-alike logo was also made, a few good laughs there.
• A crew walkout involving fretster, Tazwolff, and others.
• Download sections once were available on ieXbeta, but concern that the site would turn into Warez forced the closing of the d/l pages.
• A member group for respected members was the center of attention when users who were not worthy enough to be part of the group wanted in.
• A slew of bannings occurred after my first account, jpell7, was banned. This created some controversy. However, only a few accounts were given back.
• Money has always been tight with ieXbeta, and at one point a new server was needed. Money was collected from many members and it was able to pay for the needs. A Sponsors group was created, and a special site for sponsors was also set up. Donations soon increased.
• TamzBurdz had to be cleaned up to make it somewhat PG13... hey it's a beta site, not cheap porn!
• A dispute between European and American mods came about in the days before the Iraqi war, but when the dust settled everyone was friends again.
• ex-Dutch mods IceCold and Beast started a huge spam war against ieXbeta which gave the mods and admins a pretty hard time.
• The Hall of F(l)ame was resurrected On July 31, 2004. However, many members thought it was a bad idea and on August 24, 2004 the forum was deleted.
• To combat spam, a Rookies group was created on March 4, 2005 which restricts new users from accessing the Private Message system.
• The experimental ieXwiki was launched on May 19, 2005.
• For a variety of reasons (e.g. continuing content problems, increasing moderation time/work, and returning to our tech site roots), the Babe Lovin' forum was removed on August 4, 2005.
• An Arcade was added on July 27, 2005 for all staff and Sponsors.
• The ieXbeta web site celebrated its fifth anniversary on January 31, 2006.
• The most users ever online is indeed the 1,208 that was achieved & properly recorded on July 7 2006, 15:16.

If you have any other worthy events, please send me a PM and I will add it.

Admins, who have come (and gone) ...

• Betaguy9000
• Da (our original host)
• DJP
• icecold
• James
• Loda
• Nanzy
• PM5K
• Taco Bell
• Tazwolff

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II. A picture is worth a thousand words...

2001------------------------------------
May '01: Old home page shot
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Aug '01: board view
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Aug '01: forum view
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Nov '01: upgraded home page

2002------------------------------------
Jan '02: board view
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Aug '02: board view
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Sept '02: board view
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Nov '02: upgraded home page

The History of ieXbeta ... CONTINUED

(Screenshots from 2003-2006)

2003------------------------------------
Jan '03: upgraded home page
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Mar '03: Corona skin (thx DJP)
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Feb '03: board view
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May '03: upgraded home page
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May '03: board view
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Nov '03: upgraded home page
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Dec '03: upgraded home page
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Dec '03: board view

2004------------------------------------
Jan '04: upgraded home page
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Aug '04: first few hours after the upgrade to IPB v2.0

2005------------------------------------
(Work In Progress)

2006------------------------------------
(Work In Progress)

2007------------------------------------
(T.B.D., but for now basically the same as 2006.)

The History of ieXbeta ... CONTINUED

(Logos, links, and closing)

Logos------------------------------------


















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III. Interesting Links

ieXbeta legal troubles?
http://www.3dchips.net/content/story.php?id=776

DJP's ieXbeta pages
http://www.iexbeta.com/users/djp/flash/iexbetaboardold.htm
http://www.iexbeta.com/users/djp/flash/iexbetaboardoldie.htm

JoePacton's ieXbeta pages
http://members.cox.net/jpj75/iex.htm
http://members.cox.net/jpj75/iex-general.htm
http://members.cox.net/jpj73/ieXbeta

Archive.org's cache
http://web.archive.org/web/*/board.iexbeta.com/*
http://web.archive.org/web/*/iexbeta.com/*

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IV. Thank you!

Thanks to Loda, DJP, Taco Bell, and to all who supported this project (Topics: 1, 2). Much appreciated! Remember, if you have anything to add send me a PM and I will update.

I somehow don't think this belongs in feedback.

Nice work though

I am assuming it's in the feedback section because you are looking for some...

I am a recent member so I can't give a complete informed opinion on the history of this great site, but what I see I like. Very succinct and organized...

The scary thing is, I can remember some of those front page news posts.

Overall, nice job!

Yeah, jpell asked me where he should post this and I wasn't sure. I thought Feedback would be good, but now I think Chit-Chat would be better, so ... **moving post**

The weird thing is looking back at that rollback in history and getting the feeling....GEE it's been that long?

nice job, jpell

If jpell7 was banned, whats the purpose of letting jpell come under the name jpell?

it's not against board rules to sign up under another user name

EDIT: besides jpell has made roughly 350 posts under this account (about 4 less than you to be exact), i'm sure if he was cruising for a banning under this account it probably would've happened by now. if he were to cause trouble under this account he would be banned just like any other member, so until then, give him a break.

What would be nice is if the events were in order as a timeline. You might be able to find the exact dates of newer events by just doing a search. I think some more stuff could be added though, especially in the pre-board crash days.


Exactly. I've been visiting ieXbeta ever since around May 2001. Over three years is a long time in computer years.

Yes I wanted to do this, but I also wanted to post this up as soon as possible. Dates were hard and many people didn't know the exact time range.

If people can get some of the time ranges for the events listed above, PM them over and I would glady restructure it.

wow i retract my post about not thinking that it would work...nice job jpell and to everyone else who contributed this information.

it was with me

oh well it doesnt matter: im back anyways

Acually it was a who mess involving the acual member group "Respected Members"
not that they wanting some kind of upgrade Sent ya a pm to fix that part. But great job on this

Fixed.

I was wondering more why they just didnt unban his old account.

insmod_ex: The reasons for that are none of your business Lets just let things stay as it is, as that whole dilemma is behind us and lets keep it like that.

Also, lets focus on the thread

Ahhh.. the memories. Wow it's been a long time...

Ah good times. I remember that censorship thing as well haha.

Nice work guys, I liked reading thast, and looking at the old ieX. It was worth while.

iexbeta was hosting a betaversion of windowsblinds 3.0. What we didn't know is that this betaversion didn't have a 30 days trial inside, it could function as a normal version.

Stardock's Larry Kuperman was going crazy when he saw that and threatened to take iexbeta offline


BTW here's the logo which looked a bit like, well you know.



I still think it looked very good though.

And here is how the original logo made by Killian looked like.

The good old days, days that won't be ressurected.

nice work thx

hwha???

lol

Could always ban anyone 16 or under

::Edit::
And yes, very nice thread indeed

i went through my very old backups and found the classic iex ikonboard clone i made in april of 03...

fully functioning, has the old color scheme and images, as well as the original announcements. none of the original posts of course, this was meant to be a fully-functioning recreation (although the original mods are listed for the forums )

of course, i have no place to host it, so i've contacted jpell via pm

me wants to see!

Once he gets it up live, we'll be posting links

@ DJP: thanks for the details, I updated the events list

here we go

http://betaone.org/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi

as you'll see theres not much there, but it gives an idea of what ieX was originally like

theres a few posts there cuz i created this last year for all of us to play with

thats just the beginning...i plan on recreating other milestones in ieXbeta history once i have time to do so

also a big wet one goes out to norm for use of the server and domain! thanks man!

edit: feel free to register and play around... check out the announcements forum, all the original ones are intact... now THATS ieXbeta history!

no i'm pretty sure you were the only one that spammed the board

Actually, there were many accounts by noob posters banned after mine. I clearly remember this, as I witnessed it.

Lets drop it, ok?

@ blanco: Updated the links section Thanks for linking us to that too

yup im still registered there!

just dont let GCNaddict find this link

no worries, thats why I'M admin!

and while we're at it...

basically what im tryin to do is take the archive.org pages and rebuild whats missing and make them somewhat more usable than they are right now

i re-assembled the november 30, 2001 archive and put it here... http://betaone.org/iexhistory/113001/index.htm

theres still some tweaking, and so far the only rebuilt page from that archive is the index, but i had some time to do so today since i got outta work early

check back here for developments as they happen!

nice work narf!

Detonator XP 23.10

haha someone signed up as soco.

they made 1 mistake though.

a) SyNtHeTic who is registered on that board is me, i change my name to something corporate after the big crash on iex.

oh well

i'll be gradually adding more pages (the download link at the top is now mostly working), so just look around and once in a while you might be surprised (but no more tonight tho, haha)

if anybody has the latestpost.cgi hack for ikonboard, please tell me where to get it

this will be one hell of a reconstruction!

thats the plan

Posting the link

hay so am i

just like the good ol' days...

ok another leg of the timeline is started here http://betaone.org/iexhistory/092202/index.htm

some of the images are still missing, but im only one man ya know!

Don't forget to mention that Taz came back as admin... and then left us again.

Still think it's a shame he didn't want to keep that position

(oh, and you left out the near dead experience of iex because of spamming from dutch ex-mods... But I can't remember when that happened, tried to erase that period out my memory)

Original logo...

Added

Some history of iexbeta

1. There was acutally a time when Nanzy was cool.. before the crash.

2. ex-Dutch mods IceCold and Beast started a huge spam war against ieXbeta of which i have to clean up most of the posts and some other mods.

3. An internal alliance were set up between beta1, iex and another site to catch Tony Narlock by me and a couple of people from beta1.

4. I organized the board rules, http://board.iexbeta.com/index.php?showtopic=16193. (yea im bragging)

5. During the tensions in the prewar time against iraq, US Moderators and European Modersators had a huge breakout in the crew lounge and shortly on the board but we all loved each other, don't we K2?


I'll post more if i can remember more.

Nice writeup. Well done.

Yeah, we found his phone number and told his mommy what he was doing.

I think she grounded him from the computer for quite a while