I was not the best webmaster at it. Just had the luxury of shepherding AO when the web really took off. Back in 1994, Kevin Hisel and CUCUG.org pretty much ruled the Amiga web. They even tried to register the Amiga.org domain, but luckily they thought of it about a month or so after I already had it registered. (back then, domain registration was a convoluted and expensive thing).
Where Amiga.org really took off is that I looked at CUCUG.org and saw the shortcomings where they were basically building nothing but a list of links to news items. No comments, no forums, no interaction. I tried to mimic that for a while, hand-writing links and searching for news, but then again, I had a lot more free time 20 years ago, so it all worked out.
Then, I stumbled across a piece of software called PHPNuke and the rest, as they say, is history.
In truth, in the later years that I was involved, I probably did more harm than good to the community. When Gateway bought the Amiga trademarks and promised to take over the world, my sole purpose in life became to support them, and -- if possible -- to get a job supporting the community through them. Gateway fell, McEwen and company rose up, and I continued to push the idea of a three-tiered community support platform (developers, users, user groups) with the idea of it becoming a full time job.
At the time, there were tens of thousands more Amiga users than today, and had Bill McEwen actually been able to pull off more than just building a mobile app company, it might have actually been something worth doing. The idea of being a part of that was seductive and incredibly enticing...
Alas, once Amiga Inc pretty much died in full view of the Amiga world, my obsession changed from helping to drive and support the Amiga community to one of cashing out. Google Ads, etcetera.
It was painful to sit and watch the Amiga community die on the vine like so many stale grapes but then Genesi came around, promising once again, to save the community (which was still my passion), and to give us a computing platform we could actually use. We all know how that turned out, both for the community, and for me...
Getting in bed with Bill Buck (proverbially speaking) was my worst mistake, and did more damage to the Amiga community (and to AO) than I could have imagined. He ripped me off, still owes me over 10k, and helped me -- at least obliquely -- to lose my marriage... Well, in sequence, my mom died, Buck ripped me off for 10k, then she left, but that's splitting hairs.
Once that was done, I really didn't care any more, and in the end, the only thing keeping Amiga.org alive were the donations and the advertising revenue, so really, I count my experience with Amiga.org as a failure, because I failed the community, and I really believe I'm responsible for fostering the current "rabid" "attack everyone" mentality that killed the community...
I was incredibly glad when Bill P stepped up, because I thought he might have actually done something to change things for the better. Fresh blood and all that. Unfortunately all we ever did was sit and let it continue on Autopilot for five years, and nothing short of a complete reboot can save it now. Trouble is, you can't reboot because the Amiga is stuck on a 10-year-old HTML 3 standard and you'd have the 1% of users who use Amigas screaming for more blood, so I really feel for the new owners.
Wayne
, not some guy with a cheesy grin...