A Brief History of the Village BBS

Phase I (1992 - 2000)

Although I had been an avid computer user (C=64) for quite a few years, I received my first computer with a Modem in the fall of 1991. It was an IBM PS/1 with a 2400bps Hayes modem. While the PS/1 taught me a few valuable lessons, it also introduced me to the world of BBSing. By 1992 I was hooked and decided to try running my own system. After looking at various BBS packages, I finally decided WWIV would meet my meager needs and The Village went online sometime in early September 1992.

The original hardware was something like this - IBM PS/1 (Model 41 - 386 16Mhz, 2mb Ram, 2400bps Modem, 40MB HD). After a slight advertising snafu (put the wrong number in all the original ads! oops!) we were up and running. As any SysOp will tell you, the first week or so is pretty much wait around and hope somebody calls. Luckily people did eventually find us. Our biggest hurdle at first was probalby the theme. Although I've always been a big fan of 'the prisoner' TV show and had been using the handle 'number six' for quite sometime, its still a pretty obscure thing to reference. The name 'Village' is rather vanilla and made many people think we really just really lacked imagination. Once people did give us a try though, they tended to stick around.

The first six months is really make or brake time for any board. Luckily the dedication was there, and The Village was able to find it's footing. In 1992 BBSing was at it's peak, and the 'WWIV' scene was flourishing. There were literally dozens upon dozens of WWIV systems in operation at the time. Luckily this gave us a great built in user base as WWIV people tend to stick to WWIV boards. With some agressive advertisement The Village grew rather rapidly. By 1995 - 1996 The Village was one of the most popular and active WWIV systems in the Tampa area. We added a second node and upgraded hardware to a zesty 386/33 with 6 MBs of ram and dual USR modems (A 28.8k on the 'High Speed' node and a 14.4k on Node 2, servicing the slower traffic). We averaged around 50-75 calls and 100-200 local messages posted per day. We were the host of Sub-EthaNet a fairly popular local network and we were the home of such 813 classic subs as 'Arch & Ryoga & Nit' amongst others.

While 1996 was probably our best year, it also would be the swan song of BBSing in general. By this time a "new" thing called 'The Internet' was growing in popularity. No longer was it only available to college kids or the techno savvy, by the late 90's everyone had an account. While the Internet community would take many of its ques from the BBSing world, it wasn't long before its sheer size and popularity started having a significant impact on the BBSing world. By the late 90s we lost something very valuable -- new users. No longer did your first time PC owners slowly find your number after getting a BBS list from a friend. More than likely they used one of the start up disks that came with their PC and bypassed our world entirely. One by one we lost the casual users to the 'net, and by 2000 many people no longer even had analog modems in their machines having gone totally over to either a cable modem or DSL. The BBS world was dying and dying rapidly. Boards started to drop by the dozens. Core systems that boasted over a decade of service dissapeared over night. While the number of WWIV systems alone in the 813 area code may have once reached as high as triple digits in the early - mid 90s, by 2000 there were less than 20 BBS's of ANY type left in 813/Tampa Bay Area.

Phase II (2000 - 2002)

The Village stayed in the traditional BBS world for as long was we possibly could. By 2000 there were precious few systems left and even fewer users. If we got more than 2 calls a day, it was a feat. Everything was dead, BBSing was slipping into the past. At this point I had a decision to make. Adapt to the new times, or take what had then become the longest running WWIV system in 813 history down.

We decided to adapt.

March, 2000 the Village went on-line. We were still running WWIV, but now available via Telent instead of dial-up. The new Village started off very strong and had activity levels that rivaled the 'good old days'. But this was not to last. Eventually the fad of logging into a WWIV system passed for most folks. Many of our users hadn't called in quite sometime and after stopping by and saying a quick 'hello' they forgot about us again. Many blamed the Telnet format, which wasn't perfect. Unlike dial-up, the Telnet setup was clunky and somewhat slow. Scrolling through messages took awhile and the board would seem to 'freeze' for a few seconds every now and then. It definitely wasn't the hardware, we were running off a T4+ line on a dedicated server.

As time went on the activity levels sunk and the board once again faced dormancy. Although Telnet WWIV gave us the ability to offer users that 'classic' BBS experience, it was a new age and it was time to grow beyond our old shell.

Phase III (2002 - Present)

Once again I was faced with the challenge of re-inviting the Village to keep it current. This new version of the board would be the most drastic change, leaving behind the only software we had ever run (WWIV). In 2002 I decided to take the Village truly online and into the World Wide Web. The Village Phase III debuted now running Ikonboard, one of many standard web-based messaging systems. We traded in the ANSI for point and click, and I think the results have been very positive. The first few web boards to hit the 'net back in the 90s were clunky and definitely not easy to navigate let alone use. However, the new generation of Web Boards are very user friendly and in some ways excel beyond the original BBS systems that most likely inspired them.

Today the Village is once again available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to a nearly unlimited amount of simultaneous users. We have familiar (and new) faces joining us daily to keep the classic Village feel alive. The Village was started almost twelve years ago! I think that's a pretty good run and I hope it will still be running strong for quite sometime! So, for those who remember the whine of a hayes compatible modem to the new generation of cyber-citizens who don't remember what people did before we had email addresses that ended in '.com'. I welcome you to the Village BBS. I hope you'll enjoy looking around our system and hopefully you'll stick around and join us. In the meantime..


.. be seeing you!

-number six-

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