Ginever.net
From GineverWiki
| Ginever.net | |
 Ginever.net: "Making your lives slightly less pointless since 2005" | |
| Homepage | |
|---|---|
| http://www.ginever.net | |
| Information | |
| Parent service | Ginever Alliance |
| Founder | Robert Dennington |
| Administrators | Robert Dennington, Trevor Sparks |
| Date launched | October 14, 2005 |
| Current version | v4.0 (August 9, 2011) |
| Codebase | IP.Board v3.2.x |
Ginever.net, formerly known as The Ginever Block.com, and sometimes abbreviated to GV, GDN, G.N, GNET or TGB, is the flagship support website for the Ginever Alliance. The site is primarily managed and maintained by Alliance founder and chief executive director Robert Dennington, in co-operation with deputy executive director Trevor Sparks. It currently uses IP.Board v3.2.x as the primary codebase, with numerous add-on modules, and is primarily administered using GineverPanel. Since August 2009, the official tag line for the service has been "Making your lives slightly less pointless since 2005". The site, along with the Ginever brand, is currently legal property of RJD Enterprise Solutions.
In addition to providing support, Ginever.net is home to a number of other services. The site powers GineverAccount 4, a unified account service which allows users to connect to the Ginever WPMU Gateway and the GineverAccount Networking Gateway, providing multiplayer connectivity and invaluable support to games such as the Pokémon Crimson internal alphas and future versions of the Game of Inevitable Frustration. It also operates Ginever Alliance CLEMENTINE, a Hamachi network which is used to link Alliance computers together in order to more easily play games and run applications via the internet. Digital certificates from the Ginever Alliance Certification Authority are also offered to members with a high enough member rank.
Between February 2008 and August 2011, the site was named "The Ginever Block.com", which took its name from the "Ginever Block", a small educational study block located at S. Peter's Collegiate School in Wolverhampton. Several members of the site are former students of the school and this helped to influence the decision. The real-life Ginever Block is used to teach mathematics and physics to students aged between 11 and 19, and was named after the Reverend John Ginever, who was Rector and Rural Dean of Wolverhampton from 1970 to 1989. Controversially, the school decided to temporarily rename the block to "The Ginever Building" in late 2009, and it is commonly believed that the name change was carried out because of the existance of the website, although this was denied by the school.
In July 2011, the decision was made to rebuild the site under the name "Ginever.net". The new service was launched on Tuesday 9 August 2011. Since the upgrade, the previous abbreviation for the site, TGB, is still commonly used, despite it no longer matching up with the current name.
Contents |
History
2005
The service was first created by Robert Dennington in an attempt to learn more about the nature of internet forums and how they operate. In order to cut costs, a free forum hosting service had to be used. In early October 2005, Robert signed up with JConServ, but the quality of the service was inadequate. Seeking a better host, he found Greatboard, and the phpBB2-based RJD Community Forum officially opened on October 14, 2005. At approximately the same time, forum hosting service Forumer.com took over the management of Greatboard. After researching the services offered by Forumer.com, the members agreed to switch to Invision Power Board, and the service officially migrated to use Forumer's IPB 1.3 hosting service on December 14, 2005.
2006
Approximately one month later, in late January 2006, the community agreed that the Forumer.com service was unsatisfactory and offered very little room for customisation. It was agreed that the service should be closed and that alternatives to free forum hosting should be researched. While researching a potential future for the service, Robert founded B-Cool with Michael Denny in April 2006. Like the RJD Community Forum, it was hosted on a free forum hosting service (specifically Clic!Dev), and suffered from similar issues regarding the customisability.
In September 2006, Robert found the web hosting service 'Freehostia', which he believed would allow him to set up and customise a privately installed community forum. On September 20, 2006, he founded RJD Enterprise Solutions and purchased the domain name 'rjdonline.co.uk'. He then migrated both the former RJD Community Forum and the B-Cool Forum to the new domain, creating the RJD Online B-Cool Community Forums. After an agreement with Michael Denny, this name was shortened, and the service opened as the RJD Online Community on October 14, 2006, exactly one year after the opening of the original RJD Community Forum. The new forum was powered by a free copy of IPB 2.0.0 Final that Robert had previously acquired, and was hailed as a major milestone for the service. In an attempt to keep the B-Cool name alive, an affiliation ring known as the B-Cool Family was created in December 2006 in order for the RJD Online Community to easily affiliate with other websites.
2007
In March 2007, the RJD Online Community began providing support for an upcoming new multimedia service called Legend Killer Productions, which had joined the B-Cool Family as an affiliate. The partnership worked so well that in May 2007 an agreement was made to host the forum on legendkillerproductions.net. The service migrated to LKP and became the Legend Killer Productions Community. The relationship between RJD Enterprise Solutions and Legend Killer Productions strengthened over the course of the year.
In late September, the small free web server became crowded and could no longer support the forum properly, so a decision was made to rent a shared server from HostGator. By the end of October, the new server had been set up, and the forum was running smoothly again.
2008
In January 2008, there was a dispute over the ownership of the domain name legendkillerproductions.net. In order to help resolve the problem, it was eventually agreed that the forum should move to a new home. After lengthly discussions over what the forum should be called, members eventually agreed on the name 'The Ginever Block', which was borrowed from a small mathematics building on the campus of S. Peter's Collegiate School in Wolverhampton. Robert purchased thegineverblock.com and migrated the forums to the new domain on January 17, 2008. A simple redirect was added to the Legend Killer Productions home page which pointed to the new domain. It is now common belief that the suggestion to call the site The Ginever Block was in fact simply a joke, but that the name was chosen anyway due to nothing more suitable being available at the time.
Some weeks later in February 2008, Robert suggested that the board should be updated to the latest revision of IPB at the time, IPB 2.3, in order to resolve numerous issues with the outdated IPB 2.0 codebase. The idea became popular amongst members, and the forum was successfully upgraded in late February 2008.
2009
The service continued to operate successfully throughout 2009 with minimal downtime. After the release of IPB 3.0, members decided to migrate to the new codebase, and on August 15, 2009, the forum was successfully upgraded to IPB 3.0.2. Later in the year it was upgraded again to 3.0.3 and then 3.0.5.
In late 2009, Medessec, owner of the Medessec Organization, agreed to move support for his services to The Ginever Block, and became the site's second official affiliate. It was at this time that the nature of the B-Cool Family was debated, and eventually it was decided to discontinue the now-aging B-Cool franchise. This led to the creation of the Ginever Alliance. Medessec became the deputy executive director of the alliance and an assistant administrator of The Ginever Block.
2010
For the most part, the service continued to operate as normal during the first half of the year. After some agreement between the various parties it was decided to stop renewing the unused Legend Killer Productions domain, which expired in March 2010. During May 2010, the first staff election took place, allowing members to apply for staffing positions and then vote for the people they liked the best - as a result, some considerable staffing changes took place. On June 1, 2010, the forum was upgraded to IPB 3.1.0 and suffered minor skinning issues as a result - it took a further upgrade to IPB 3.1.1 and a skin release on June 28 for all of the skins to be reinstalled again. The site was later upgraded to IPB 3.1.2, 3.1.3, and then 3.1.4.
2011
In January 2011, the server hosting many of the sites in the Ginever Alliance, including The Ginever Block, underwent a major restructure that affected some areas of the forum and caused some services to be down for several days. After resolving this issue, the site then continued to operate normally for another 7 months.
In July 2011, the decision was made to rename the site to "Ginever.net". The forum software was upgraded to IPB 3.2, with the majority of old content being archived in order to reduce overhead on the server. As part of this upgrade, the Terms of Use were replaced with a single rule (to show respect to other users) and the account system received a major overhaul.
Future
Details about the future of the site are currently unknown.
