Webmaster:	Andrew Bailey
Additional Site Administration:	Oliver Lenz
Coding and Scripting:	Andrew Bailey, Don Heap, Stewart Campbell, Matt Mecham
Forum coding:	The Ikonboard Team, Andrew Bailey, The Invision Board Team
Forum moderation:	Oliver Lenz, Andy Taylor
Images:	Andy Taylor, Nick Sterling, Andrew Bailey
Staff writers:	Andy Taylor, Oliver Lenz, Andrew Bailey
Web hosting:	Dietmonday (truly excellent, but unfortunately now closed)
Design assistance:	Oliver Lenz, Dana Young, Andy Taylor, Kevin Knight
Thanks to:	Joshua Wright, Casey Lilly, Kenneth Ellis

A Short History of Trek-UK.com
In approximately April 2001, Casey Lilly publicised a new web-hosting business he was starting at the Section31.com forums.  I noticed in the specifications that he gave, that he was offering the ability to run CGI scripts with Perl as part of the free package.  CGI and Perl were both new to me at that time and I had recently discovered the Ikonboard package.  I had played with a demo of the Ultimate Bulletin Board system, prior to this, but didn't have the money to buy the full version of it - Ikonboard was a way in which I could play with Perl, CGI implementation and forums administration without paying.  I decided that I wished to further my knowledge and explore Perl and its application through CGI, so I signed up for an account there and then.  I had also been toying with the idea of creating a Star Trek website for some time, so I decided to begin here.  With the address of http://tcn.twbhq.com, "TCN's Voyager Season Seven" was born.  This was simply my normal internet alias (TCN) combined with a description of the site - it was on Voyager's seventh season.  At the time, the seventh season of Voyager was airing both in the States and here in the UK.  I decided to follow the airing of the season, by posting schedule information and theoretically, writing regular reviews, posting images from episodes etc.  Unfortunately, as is common with things that relate to computers, I underestimated the immensity of this task and things didn't move quite as fast as I had hoped.  I found too much of my time dedicated to "TCN's Board" - the site forums as they then were.  After all, the reason that the package had caught my interest was because I could play with my new "toy" - Perl.  After two months had passed, the free trial at TWBHQ.com ended.  I was now left with two choices, if I wished to stay with TWB - I could post adverts on all of my pages, or I could pay $5 per month to remove them.  I chose the former, since I wasn't willing to put money into this project at that stage.

I stayed with TWB for some time longer, until they were forced to close, due to lack of applicants.  This left me in the situation of having to find a new host.  I considered many, many a host, to find countless that were not accepting new applications, countless that didn't meet my requirements and an unbelievable amount who had a "sign-up" page that didn't work.  In the end I came across Hobbiton.org. which kind of amazed me at all that it was offering.  I had a new toy - "Telnet" - to play with, which I took a firm liking to, since it gave me an opportunity to improve my knowledge of UNIX.  I also had 100MB per day of bandwidth to use, which, of course, I never came anywhere near to (we're talking about 3GB per month here and this is a free host).  There were also no banner advertisements, and I had my precious Perl and much more available.  http://tcn.hobbiton.org became the new site address.  In fact, this address is still valid, since my current host was an administrator of Hobbiton and was kind enough to get my address to point to the current server.

Hobbiton lasted for a few months.  Unfortunately, the server began to go down more and more.  Eventually, pop-up advertisements were added to try to cover some of the costs to allow for a more reliable ISP for the server.  However, the "buckland" hard disk failed, funds ran lower and lower and the mighty Hobbiton fell lower, lower and then finally crashed.  Sadly, Hobbiton died (which was a great shame, for such an excellent host - view http://www.hobbiton.org for more information on what happened), and "TCN's Voyager Season Seven" was forced to move again.

Actually, a move to a domain name was something I had been considering for a while at the time - I had been planning to move on to domain name hosting at Hobbiton, on their available pay services.  While the server at Hobbiton was down, I was looking for new hosts, just in case (I held on to Hobbiton for a long time, because of how much I liked it).  When it became clear that Hobbiton wasn't coming back, I made my decision.  I had been privately offered 2 months for free on http://www.sunvivid.com, with my domain hosting.  Kenneth Ellis helped me decide on the name Trek-UK.com for the site and I registered the domain name and replied, taking the owner of Sunvivid up on this offer.  The hosting company hadn't properly launched at this stage - I was on trial with them - this was why it was free, as opposed to the eventual price of $38 per year.

Unfortunately, eventually, Sunvivid appeared to be sucked into the great hole of disappearing hosts.  Fortunately, this was literally days from the end of my trial.  I tried contacting the owner of Sunvivid via several methods to sort the problem.  I never got any reply.  I even attempted to contact him to settle a possible bill for some extra bandwidth that I consumed one month (which he had given me for free, if I was going to stay on, which I wasn't at this stage, since the server had been down for a long time without any reasonable explanation and I still had no reply).  Still nothing.  I was left with no choice but to move hosts once more.  Bring on Dietmonday.com.

I chose Dietmonday.com because it was run by one of the people responsible for Hobbiton - Don Heap.  I was not only impressed with the way Hobbiton was configured, knowing I'd get something similar at Dietmonday.com, but he had also been helping me with a large number of technical questions, without me having anything to offer back.  I knew that, if I went to Dietmonday.com, I would get excellent support from Don and would be able to approach him with technical questions, queries, even script debugging, rather than just technical issues with the hosting itself.

I was not disappointed.

Trek-UK.com continued the way it always had for a short while, with the odd few additions.  However, the new site design and many other new elements were being worked at continually, especially in December 2001 and January 2002.  In January 2002, the time of implementation of that new design came and Trek-UK.com became what it is now.

Who knows?  I may create a "memory lane" section of the site to view old site designs.  And in a year or so's time, we may be looking back at this text itself in such a section...
Written in January 2002

Update (July 2002): In July 2002, the site was forced to move away from the Dietmonday.com penelope server, to seek new hosting, eventually settling on MDIT.net. This was as a result of closure of Dietmonday.com. You will be missed... While the site was moved, some of the existing coding was re-worked. As a result, the site is now powered by a custom written PHP templating system. Additional cross-browser support was implemented and a few new design features were introduced. In addition, the forums moved from the Ikonboard system to the Invision Board system.

Brief technical information on Trek-UK.com
Trek-UK.com is hosted on the MDIT.NET network at present.  The main site pages are based on a variety of technologies that intermingle.  The pages are driven by a custom written templating system in PHP.  Some elements are also controlled by Perl.

The Trek-UK.com members' information is held in a MySQL database, which is accessed across the site, including on the forums. The database also powers other administrative aspects of the site.

Pages are created or edited in varying fashions, most commonly by using "PHPEdit", which also has excellent HTML support, but also with use of FrontPage, or UNIX and Windows text editors.  Some Perl coding is edited using the Perl Code Editor, when edited locally. Aside from the BBS, which is only partly modified by myself (written by the Invision Board team), most of the site's coding is custom written.

When working, jazz music, Instant Messaging with friends and the company of my family and piano help keep me sane. ;-)