A little milestone worth noting today.
On February 17, 2015 the new Hornfans site was launched.
For those of you who have joined us since then and may not be aware of the history, Hornfans was started in 1999 by Robert and Katy Agnor. It was the early days of web forums, and HF was the Longhorns board for several years. There were a few others around, but nothing like Hornfans. It was hugely popular and successful, which brought its own challenges as well as benefits. Over time a few other forums came along and grew in popularity. Some folks stayed at Hornfans, others went elsewhere.
In October of 2014 Robert posted here that they were going to shut down the site in a few days. He and Katy had become very busy in their careers and after 15 years just didn’t have much time to devote to it any more. But there was still a core group here who wanted to keep the site going. I had been a member since 2001 and others here had been around as long, or longer. We started talking about what to do if HF shut down. I reached out to Robert to see if they would consider letting someone else work on Hornfans and keep it alive. He said maybe, let’s talk about it.
So my wife and I went to Austin in early November and had dinner with Robert and Katy at their home (Robert is a really good cook). We talked about a lot of stuff, and one thing they wanted was for Hornfans to remain a place for civil conversation. I wanted that too, as did many of the members here. I told them my thoughts on what needed to be done with the site. The existing forum software was old and no longer supported, so upgrades to it were non-existent, making it very hard to maintain from a technical perspective — it needed to be completely rebuilt, new software, new database, new server, everything. By the end of the night they said OK, do it.
In late 2014 I started work on a test site while the old Hornfans kept chugging along. Several members helped me with testing it before it launched — @LonghornCatholic, @BevoBeef, @jayakris, @NBHorn7 — these guys logged into the test site, made posts and replies, did some private messages, uploaded images, etc, and gave me valuable feedback on how things looked and worked. Quite a few generous folks also donated financially to help cover the costs of the transition. Without them it never would have happened.
Anyway, it’s just a day of reflection for me.
Happy birthday @Texanne.
On February 17, 2015 the new Hornfans site was launched.
For those of you who have joined us since then and may not be aware of the history, Hornfans was started in 1999 by Robert and Katy Agnor. It was the early days of web forums, and HF was the Longhorns board for several years. There were a few others around, but nothing like Hornfans. It was hugely popular and successful, which brought its own challenges as well as benefits. Over time a few other forums came along and grew in popularity. Some folks stayed at Hornfans, others went elsewhere.
In October of 2014 Robert posted here that they were going to shut down the site in a few days. He and Katy had become very busy in their careers and after 15 years just didn’t have much time to devote to it any more. But there was still a core group here who wanted to keep the site going. I had been a member since 2001 and others here had been around as long, or longer. We started talking about what to do if HF shut down. I reached out to Robert to see if they would consider letting someone else work on Hornfans and keep it alive. He said maybe, let’s talk about it.
So my wife and I went to Austin in early November and had dinner with Robert and Katy at their home (Robert is a really good cook). We talked about a lot of stuff, and one thing they wanted was for Hornfans to remain a place for civil conversation. I wanted that too, as did many of the members here. I told them my thoughts on what needed to be done with the site. The existing forum software was old and no longer supported, so upgrades to it were non-existent, making it very hard to maintain from a technical perspective — it needed to be completely rebuilt, new software, new database, new server, everything. By the end of the night they said OK, do it.
In late 2014 I started work on a test site while the old Hornfans kept chugging along. Several members helped me with testing it before it launched — @LonghornCatholic, @BevoBeef, @jayakris, @NBHorn7 — these guys logged into the test site, made posts and replies, did some private messages, uploaded images, etc, and gave me valuable feedback on how things looked and worked. Quite a few generous folks also donated financially to help cover the costs of the transition. Without them it never would have happened.
Anyway, it’s just a day of reflection for me.
Happy birthday @Texanne.
