Old AF —

How running websites has changed in the last two decades (for an Ars IT guru)

Ars' IT guru Jason Marlin has 20+ years in information infrastructure—game's changed a bit.

The Pit, a BBS door game. In this shot, Lee Hutchinson was attacking these guys. Or, maybe they're attacking him.
The Pit, a BBS door game. In this shot, Lee Hutchinson was attacking these guys. Or, maybe they're attacking him.
Lee Hutchinson

I was a true nerd growing up in the 1980s—not in the hipster way but in the 10-pound-issue-of-Computer-Shopper-under-my-arm way (these things were seriously huge). I was thoroughly addicted to BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems) by the time I was 10. Maybe it's no surprise I ended up as a technical director for a science and tech site.

In fact, I'd actually draw a direct line between the job of managing your own BBS (aka SysOping) to managing a modern Web infrastructure. And with everyone around Ars looking back given the site's 20th anniversary, let's make that line a bit clearer. It won't be an exhaustive history of websites, but here's how my own experiences with managing websites have evolved in the past two decades—plus how the tools and thinking have changed over time, too.

LOAD “*”, 8, 1

My first SysOp experience was powered by a Commodore 128 (in 64 mode, of course) running Greg Pfountz’s Color 64 software. I sent Greg my check—well, my mom’s check—and received back a single 5.25-inch floppy diskette along with a hand-bound dotmatrix-printed manual. It was on.

Color 64 was an amazing feat of ANSI-colored ASCII, not like most of the BBS software available at the time, which was bland and colorless text. With Color 64, it felt like you were crafting a user experience. I can’t recall the name of my BBS anymore, but I can assure you the theme was dragon and/or kung-fu related. I’m vaguely ashamed to admit that my handle was DragonMaster, but I was doing my part to solidify nerd stereotypes.

Unfortunately, my network infrastructure consisted of a single phone line, meaning I had to disable any ringers (read: unplug the rotary-dial hanging wall phone) and operate between the hours of 11pm and 5am. This also meant the BBS wasn’t terribly interactive. With only one line, and a single Commodore 1571 disk drive, users could neither chat nor download more than a single game at a time.

The Commodore 1670, still makes the heart race.
Enlarge / The Commodore 1670, still makes the heart race.

In my dreams, I’d soon be running a real BBS, like the famous Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas to which I was a very frequent dialer. I’d have 10 lines so users could chat in real-time, all connected to 1200—nay!—2400 baud modems. And there'd be an endless supply of games stored on the mythical 10 MB Lt. Kernal hard drive.

Alas, this was all far out of my reach, but I had definitely been bitten by some kind of new bug that included the unusual desire to build digital places where users could gather.

Channel Ars Technica