Internet cigar community and OLH history (from my perspective)

[WadeFillingame]

[i]Warning - Rambling post follows[/i]

I was recently posting on a thread over at CF.  Though it was not an old thread it was an old topic.  After I posted I looked back at who was posting and glanced at a couple of profiles.  It got me to thinking, but more on that further down in this post.

It's interesting to me how large the internet cigar community has become.  I first started looking at cigar BBs in 1998 but only lurked.  Back then I was afraid to join one, anything on the WWW seemed risky and I just wasn't interested.

The first one I found was CA, and it was the first one I joined.  I may still have a membership over there somewhere if they haven't purged the inactive members, but I haven't been there in years.

In late 1998 I found Cigar Family, I didn't join, but back then they had a list of authorized Fuente Opus X accounts on the site and like many people I was searching for that almost impossible to find cigar.

Looking back at the dates that some of the older members joined up, if I had registered on the BB when I first found the site I'd have had member number there that was sub 1000.  As it would turn out I would not register there till Feb of 1999 and ended up as member number 1806. 

Many of you may not know why this site exists.  One of the long standing rules at CF has been that no prices are posted in their trading room. (this keep the site from competing with their accounts) In the wayback time a member over there DannyM (member #15 I think) had several adult websites and his own servers, so as a service to his friends on CF he created onlinehumidor.com as a place where they could post prices and not have to deal with the PIA of sending out prices on emails (this was way before private messges on BBs).  That site evolved a couple of times as Danny honed his coding skills.

Then in late 1999 or early 2000 Danny sold out his adult website business and his servers, and put OLH up for sale.  This was the first place I'd ever done a trade, and I thought I'd like to give the whole running a website thing a whirl so I bought it, and other than some cosmetics it ran the same way it had always run for the next few years.

In that time this place was running on a modified freeware guestbook software in PERL. In those days bandwidth was not as cheap as it is today, and I had to maintain the site pretty regularly to delete old posts.  Lots of FTP stuff.

Another thing I had noticed back there was that there were a few people who were moving or at least posting $10,000 to as much as $15,000 in cigars a month on the site, and a lot of others were putting up a couple of thousand a month.  The site was getting 750 to 1000 hits a day on the front page.  (We are averaging 350 or so unique users a day now so I think the traffic is about the same as it used to be, the old hit counter counted hits not unique users)  Back then I had a standing rule against retailers using the site, at least for free, but every time I asked one of these posters WTF they would tell me that they were not a retailer and just trying to offset their costs.  So, to try to get some control in 2002 or 2003 I put in a new software package, it looked a little like e-bay and it would allow me charge people for selling.  People hated it and BAM! the site died in 6 weeks.  I'm talking virtual tumbleweeds blowing in the streets ghost town.

Well I left it that way till about 16 months ago some guys at a herf in NH got on my case to bring back the place, so I did and here it is. 

Now, what got me to thinking about all of this was that we passed 700 members this week.  One of the other profiles I looked yesterday at CF was The Masters, his member number there is 13xx (he's only been registered 50 days longer than me HA!  :cool: )  I'm not sure exactly what it means if anything, but what occurred to me was that this site has over half as members as CF did back in Dec of 98.  My how our world has grown back then there probably weren't even close to 700 people actively using cigar BBs.  There were really only 3 BB choices (CA, CF, and JR).  Today CF has over 20k members, (even if over 10K have never posted anything) and there are several other active healthy cigar BB communities out there. 

Anyhow, just some rambling thoughts to scatter out there in the interweb.

[Tech]

Is there going to be a test?   :rotf:

Nice read, thanks for sharing.

[quote]Another thing I had noticed back there was that there were a few people who were moving or at least posting $10,000 to as much as $15,000 in cigars a month on the site, and a lot of others were putting up a couple of thousand a month[/quote]  
Holy Crap!

[Knuck42]

Nice read indeed Wade.  Is there a way to know what # member we are?

[WadeFillingame]

I think there was but I can't seem to find it now.  If you go to "members" and sort by date it sorts them by date and time joined.  I'm #1 on page 1, so you can figure it out from there. 

I would sear that at one point I could see it but I can't seem to find it now.

[TheJerkyMan]

Ah the good old days..  :bangin:

Yea Wade I was lurking on CF for about six months before I decided to register with my first handle... I use the banner as my time log.. Not sure when it was but CF came out.. Then gave it there first face lift.. (that's my time line, I showed up right before the  first face lift.)

 Second banner (first face lift) had a guy sitting at a table drinking a drink, smoking a cigar chatting with friends. Forget who that is but it's an actual CF member. I should know who but cant think of who it is for the life of me..

Then there was Danny's place.. or OLH.. Started out as kind of an insider thing. I think of it as the start of CF's insider BS. Now days that stuff twist and turns so much it would take a special trivia book to keep up with it all..

This place still represents the insider crew. If your not an insider you pretty much don't know about the place.  Gives it that special slant that no one can take away from you...

[b][color=red][size=10pt]OLH Were The Insiders Hang Out![/size] [/color] [/b] :cool:


Keep up the good work Wade! :bangin:

[OlBlue]

Let me start off by saying thanks for the hosting the site. Although still fairly new to cigars sites, mainly due to my developing an interest in cigars later in life, I didn't start looking at the cigar boards until about 2 1/2 years ago. The first one I found was Alt.Smokers.Cigars.

I found CF after attending the TAA in 2006.

OLH began registering members on 04-03-07. It opened with a respected referral by many CF members and I registered on 04-06-07. I was already member 214.

That's quite a following. Congrats on making the first year successful and best wishes in the future.
:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:


Matt

[WadeFillingame]

[quote author=TheJerkyMan link=topic=745.msg8652#msg8652 date=1207275958]


Then there was Danny's place.. or OLH.. Started out as kind of an insider thing. I think of it as the start of CF's insider BS. Now days that stuff twist and turns so much it would take a special trivia book to keep up with it all..

This place still represents the insider crew. If your not an insider you pretty much don't know about the place.  Gives it that special slant that no one can take away from you...

[b][color=red][size=10pt]OLH Were The Insiders Hang Out![/size] [/color] [/b] :cool:

[/quote]

I really hope this isn't actually the case.  In the old days everyone know about Danny's and after I took over it didn't really change.  When I browse the threads over at CF I do sometimes wonder why some people there still do the SS/e-mail for prices thing.  It's got to be a PITA.

[quote]
That's quite a following. Congrats on making the first year successful and best wishes in the future.[/quote]

That's actually funny, I didn't realize that I posted this on the one year anniversary of restarting the site.

Thanks again everyone for a pertty good year.  :bigup:

I need to find time to get some more smileys and make a few updates.

[anacostiakat]

:bigup:

Thanks Wade for hosting this site and keeping it going.  I think it is a huge positive and appreciate your efforts.  :kissa:

[Knuck42]

Thanks Wade.  I found it.  #168 BTW. 

"I need to find time to get some more smileys and make a few updates."

I've always thought there should be a drooling smiley.  Particularly when there are some desirable yummies F/S in the TSBCR.  Just my .02 FWIW. ;D

[opusXmarco]

Wow...one year already...

thanks Wade for bringing back the site.