4degreez.com
4degreez.com Update Log
Jan. 10, 2000
Revived and updated the polls. They now work within the navigation system, support icons, and have a feature to disallow people from voting multiple times.
Created new section: Fun Stuff. This section will house all the miscellaneous features of 4degreez.com.

Jan. 6, 2000
Most recently asked non-private questions to the Advice Bunny are now displayed along with the responses of the Bunny and the Duck.

Jan. 4, 2000
Created the Advice Duck, aquaintance of Advice Bunny. Advice Bunny now has 59 different responses. Advice Duck has 57.

Dec. 24, 1999
Created the Advice Bunny, complete with 37 different responses.

Dec. 2, 1999
Created the Great Internet Snowball Fight.

Nov. 17, 1999
Added 69 new icons and upgraded the icon selection script to support different icon categories. The total number of icons to choose from is now 246.
Fixed the book reviews *again*.

Nov. 15, 1999
Netscape error in poetry admin fixed.
4degreez.com News page created.
Book reviews fixed.

Nov. 8, 1999
Long-awaited poetry section completed. It features a poem of the day, daily featured poets, and extensive admin features for each poet.

Nov. 1, 1999
4degreez.com "breaks even" for first time. ValueClick revenue covers cost of server space.

Oct. 27, 1999
Fixed the Joke Station so that it displayed member-submitted jokes correctly.

Oct. 20, 1999
Updated the appearance of The Joke Station. It now has almost the same appearance as the members jokes section.

Oct. 4, 1999
Completed the Speak Out! section.

Oct. 1, 1999
Created the 4degreez.com Members Directory.

Sept. 29, 1999
Recreated appearance and layout of members main sign-in page.
Minor alterations on 4degreez.com main page.

Sept. 22, 1999
Completed the appearance change on the members jokes section.
Fixed a problem with the profiles that was not allowing new members to add or change theirs.

Sept. 21, 1999
Nearly completed the appearance change on the members quotations section.

Aug. 28, 1999
Deleted all private messages in order to upgrade the private message system. Private messages now support icons.
Update log created.

Pre Aug. 28, 1999 history
Back in late October 1998, the chat boards were born. At first, they were supposed to be a part of another site I was working on, a site that focused on alternative music. This site was never completed, however the boards themselves had real potential.
Rewind to early October, 1998. I was working on my first completed interactive site employing Mivascript- The Quotation Station. It featured a searchable quotations database, random quotations, etc. Rewind to June 1998. The Joke Station was created. Rewind to March 1998. The first of the "stations," The WAV Station, was created as a test to determine whether or not money could be made from advertising banners.
Fast-forward now to December 1998. It was becoming increasingly clear that I was not going to complete the alternative music website. I had a better idea. Why not tie all these other sites together into one super site? The popular chat boards would serve as the centerpiece. The concept of 4degreez.com was born.
With the advice of some of the visitors to the boards, I decided to call the site "4degreez.com," a variation on the name I have been going by for awhile now, Four Degreez. In January 1999, I registered the 4degreez.com domain name and began pulling all the various sites together. As of this writing, it is still obvious that the sections of 4degreez.com were once independent sites, i.e. they don't share a common layout and look. This will change as I continue to bring them all together, however I am making sure that they each still can operate as independent sites as well.
4degreez.com attempts to cover its costs with ad banners. When I started with The WAV Station I used Eads, but I now use ValueClick, which seems to be the best service. I decided early not to flood everything with ads, so I created a tasteful rotating banner script that displays them. To break up the boredom of rotating ads, I have the script tap into The Quotation Station's quotation database (why not, right?) to display "random thought-provoking quotations" for your enjoyment. Despite displaying ads, 4degreez.com has yet to cover its costs or even break even (as of this writing). Hopefully that will change in the future.
The boards themselves have gone through 3 major updates since their creation. At first, there were about 12 boards. As of this writing, there are 26. More will be added as membership increases.