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The History of the Gang of Five (2001-2019)

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Petrie.:
I had first considered the idea of building a site about dinosaurs (not LBT specifically) as early as 2001.  Free hosting only since I wasn't too keen about internet buying when I was only 17.  :P:  They were never anything big, and the topic largely was about Dinotopia.  None exist anymore, and there's nothing to be found of them online anymore.

2002

The start of 2002 was big for me...I actually went and stepped into paid webhosting, so enter treestars.net  That was largely made for the Land Before Time, but I had also made a section for Jurassic Park.  My original vision was fan art, fan-made creations, and screenshots (at the time you had none).  I still have those cheesy 320x240 vhs screen captures...they're cheesy because in this day and age with dvd screenshot capability, vhs captures are a thing of the past. :P:

In April I had also founded a message board, originally themed around Dinotopia.  It actually worked quite well from the start and I kept making changes to keep it going strong through the end of the year.

2003

I kept treestars.net going adding artwork I found or people had been willing to submit to me.  One of our prominent members here, Malte279, was one of those who agreed to let me post his artwork online.  By October, treestars.net had another significant addition: a feedback forum--which evolved into the Gang of Five in time.

The Dinotopia-themed message board ran into trouble....shady staff appointmets by me put the nail in the coffin and the entire board collapsed.  By that time I had broadened its focus to include Jurassic Park and the Land Before Time.  The failure of Hallmark to deliver a really decent Dinotopia film to the fans really didn't help interest either on the topic.  The plug was officially pulled at the beginning of 2004.

2004

The beginning of 2004 not only saw the demise of the broadly themed, old, Dinotopia board, but also a change in vision.  That vision no longer included a site which hosted artwork on LBT created by fans.  It wasn't proving popular...people were much more interested in screenshots or information about the films.  That was very depressing, but numbers don't lie.  I paid for the last month of hosting on treestars.net in February or March, and the site was closed.

By June or so, I had started up a new section, knowing what people really wanted. Thus, we start the landbeforetime.org years.  The Land Before Time Archive was created to give info on the films, screenshot pictures, audio and video clips--the whole kit and caboodle.  The design was entirely different from what was available on treestars.net, and learning more on html helped greatly.  The most complete character list at that time was created with the help of Malte, and according to the stats, it was the most viewed page of any of them by the end of the year.

As for the LBT message board, it was christened with a new name: The Gang of Five not long before treestars.net went offline permanently, and it would no longer be a feedback forum.  Some of the earliest visitors included Malte279, Tyrannosaur22, and JojotheLongneck.  Growth did not happen overnight; in fact it barely happened.  With ezboard forcing us to pay an insanely sum for a place so small to keep ads off of the board, I decided we needed to get the board out of ezboard.  It was moved to the site you're currently at now on September 5, 2004.  After the move, some members such as New Order (formerly AdriJobecq on the ezboard), Threehorn, and Nick22 became very active here.

2005

This year unfortunately saw the unraveling of the Land Before Time Archive.  Partially, the fault lies with me and the hosting company I put the board with...it because unstable and unreliable.  Moving the board to a new host proved equally troublesome as the entire place folded about four months after I had moved there.  With no webhost, and no place where I could continue to offer all the types of files that the Archive had at a cheap price or without huge ads everywhere, the Archive was put in cold storage in mid-2005 and has been there ever since.  I have told people if they want, I can give them all the code to the site as it looked before it went offline, but nobody has seriously taken up the offer, so the Archive remains offline.

The Gang of Five had a much larger success rate when it moved to a site with few ads and no tricks.  Free hosting for avatars and the like helped attract those who had little web experience gave a friendly atmosphere where the staff could help initiate one on one conversations with new members, and that initial helpfulness and friendliness is why many have stuck around.  For a brief time, the board could be accessed through the landbeforetime.org domain since I was able to point it towards the board with no added charge, but I soon took that down, knowing full well that it wouldn't be an option forever.

2006

January marked the end of the landbeforetime.org years as the domain expired and went back into public realm for purchasing.

The Gang of Five continues to soldier on quite successfully without any "mother ship" to attach itself to.  The only alignment of sorts is to the Network54 message board about Land Before Time (now owned by Malte279).  Affiliates have been welcomed, but thus far, there haven't been many takers, perhaps showing that only a few such communities about LBT are able to exist.  Some members have come and gone, a few staff changes have been made (addition of action9000, removal of Intrepid), new members have joined and quickly became very active (F-14 Ace, Cyberlizard, action9000 to name a few).  As of this writing (June 17, 2006) the Gang of Five has amassed over 30,000 posts and will hit its three year anniversary in October.  Thus far, it has been an amazing journey that the board continues to survive and thrive.

2007

By late May and early June, the Gang of Five has hit a magical number--50,000.  That's how many posts have been created on the board.  Some say its just a number.  I call it a dream turned reality.  Finally--I think it can truly be called a successful Land Before Time message board and I don't see any chance of it pulling a Titanic and sinking.  At 117 members and still growing, largely thanks to the introduction of the Land Before Time TV Series, the Gang of Five continues on through summer looking healthier and brighter than ever.  By December, with new members bringing role play back to the forefront, it made sense to bring one of these new role play pioneers onto the Gang of Five staff.  AvestheForumFox was chosen unanimously to moderate the role play section of the board on December 14th.

2008

On May 11th the magical number of 100,000 post was reached. The fact that only about a year had passed since the 50 000th message goes to show the great increase of activity and number of active members of the Gang of Five.  By October, nearing our official 5th anniversary (counting the time the board was called the treestars.net feedback forum) the GOF has over 250 registered members and 125,000 messages posted.  The GOF changed its new posts/no new posts images for the first time since coming to IPB in 2004, and added some lovely dinosaur emoticons to replace the more generic human ones.

2009

As the GOF continues to grow and become more active, especially in the role play sections of the board, a second moderator was added to ease the load on Brian (Aves).  Gustav (Lillefot) was added as a forum staff member on January 31st. 

New public sections were created to address member ideas and issues in a public setting before being decided on by voting members of the staff.  The Rock Circle was added to the board in late July.  In addition to this section, moderators in the forums were bumped to a new staff level - The Circle to indicate their voting ability on board decisions, along with the admin staff.  The Great Valley Guardian joined this group in October when it was decided that another mod was needed to guard the role play sections of the board.

2010

2010 has been a very quiet, consistent year for the GOF.  Iris (Mumbling) joins the GOF staff as a global moderator to help advise and watch over the entire board in July. Relatively shortly after, she got promoted to Admin.

2011
We had to say goodbye to our admin Tim (Action9000), but also welcomed a lot of new faces on the Gang of Five. After much demand, the fanfiction awards were finally added to our awards segment.

2012
We were lazy this year.

2013
We had to demote two of our moderators in the Role Play section due to inactivity. Gustav (Lillefot) and Brian (AvesTheForumFox), thank you for being with us for so long. We have added Kor to keep an eye on this part of the forum now, together with Great Valley Guardian and Nick.

2014
Other than the infamous kitchen spammers, this was a very quiet year for the Gang of Five.

2015
Shall we call this the year of Path Light? Nah, let’s not. Again, other than some staff annoyances, not much happened during 2015. Many older members became inactive during this time, including some old-timers on staff.

2016
The lovely diamond parallelogram rhombus joined our team of administrators, immediately picking up all things staff-related. Welcome to the team!

2017
We were forced to transition from the invisionfree board to zetaboards at the end of this year. The conversion had been a long time coming (the option to convert had existed for years), but we were never truly quite happy with what zetaboards offered us in terms of customizability. Zero-point was promoted to admin to help with the conversion, welcome to the team! He also made sure we could use our old theme on Zetaboards, which was a big help! Other staff members that were now inactive (Littlefoot1616, Malte279, and Mumbling) were added to The Circle.

2018

Remember this little guy? KABOOM! Our team of Photobucket Obliterators (Ducky123, DarkHououmon, Fyn16, and Littlefoot505) worked hard for many months to make sure all images that were originally hosted on Photobucket were transferred to more reliable image sites, thus making sure that all image history on the Gang of Five, particularly in the Caption This! section, was preserved.

2018 turned out to be an eventful year. We decided to split the After Midnight section into multiple subsections to make sure it would remain an accessible place for everyone. Just a short few months after we had made our transition to Zetaboards, a new contender popped up. We were forced to move to Tapatalk, a new messaging boards system mostly focused on mobile devices with very little options for customization. Thought Zetaboards was bad? Think again!
 
After much discussion, we decided it was necessary to move to a self-hosted place and move away from free messaging boards. We set up a Patreon to cover the monthly costs and worked hard to set up a forum together with our technician James Gryphon and Zero-point. It’s been a learning process for all of us, but we are still very happy to have made the switch! Mumbling returned as an active admin, and Littlefoot505 and DarkHououmon were promoted from Photobucket Obliterators to Moderators.

2019
2019 saw the introduction of the Monthly Character Showcase. We made several improvements to our hosted forum to make it easier to use for everyone. After some consideration, Littlefoot505 was removed as a Moderator.

After 16 years (or 18, if you wish to count back even further), our founder Petrie has decided to step down, leaving the forum in the caring hands of Rhombus and the Discord channel under Mumbling's care. He's still around, but has been retired to The Circle as an honored long-time admin.

Last updated by Mumbling on 17/10/2019.

Additions welcome if they coincide with our history online. :)

action9000:
I read it. B)
That is quite the story, Adam.  Appreciate you passing it along. :yes
It is unfortunate that the Dinotopia stories released on video weren't up to par with the books (at least from what I've heard, and gathered from you).  The idea itself looks very intriguing.

Megatoph:
WOW! sounds like the history of america. (now all we need is a theme song)
I didn't know the GOF had such a history. this form has had alot of predasesors didn't it.

jee I wonder if your son is going to continue the saga of the GOF?

Petrie.:
Hehe, that's quite a ways off if it ever comes to that. :P:  Why would I want to give up control anyway if I'm still able to manage it?  It's not like we have thousands of members (yet) or anything.  B)

Threehorn:
Great to see that back online after a long time, maybe you can put in Big Daddy and the other new charcaters like Tria and the tinysauroues into the charucater profile :)

That would make that fully update with all that been and gone, soon we will have the Series version with new friends that will be in a few espoides :) keep the good work up Rogar you've shined through and will do so on :D

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