Well, after countless people asking me how ChatCore was started, what was ChatCore before like, why did you decide to create another chat website, who were the old staff, why the downtime etc, I have taken the liberty to enclose all the above information and more in one document – this one!
Part 1 – In the beginning..
ChatCore was founded on the 11th February 2003, under its previous name, ChatNetz. The two people who founded it were myself (Nathan Scott) and Jonah (Ian Jones). It was primarily designed as an alternative to MSN Chat when they closed their doors to non-subscribers. We firstly ran Microsoft Exchange Chat 5.5, but we ran into issues when trying to create nickname registration and channel registration services. We eventually abandoned that attempt, and switched to IRCXPro. This proved to be much more successful, with many more options, which gave us a much higher level of flexibility. We ran proChat by Liam Conlan as the web interface for chatters who were not familiar with IRC Clients, yet still allowed access by clients such as mIRC. In the end, however, we had a very small user-base, and we were not growing whatsoever – the crunch point was when we were back-stabbed by one of our former staff members, causing us to have to close the doors to the public.
Part 2 – The Resurrection
So, for about a year, ChatNetz was just a domain pointing towards a blank page. Everyone, myself included, were busy doing different projects, and interest for development of the site just reclined. I became involved in many different chat-related projects: to name but a few, E9N, Phreik, SparkPea. However, in the summer of 2005, I re-ignited the spark, and decided to look for interest again. Needless to say, I found it whilst browsing xtcomputing forums one day. I stumbled upon a set of screenshots submitted by a Bench (Andy), of an ocx he had created for an ircd based system. I saw the potential this could have for ChatNetz, so I sent him an e-mail, asking if he'd be at all interested in helping out. At first, he wasn't, but he agreed to see what he could do. Yet, as time went on during development, he became more and more enthusiastic about the entire project, and so became my partner in ChatNetz, and one of the top members of staff we had. I managed to get in contact with Jonah again, and together we put together one of the first versions of ChatNetz. Please see the "SnapShots" page for screenshots of the history! However, it was at that point that we had a crisis – the ChatNetz domain was about to expire, and it was either renew it or think of a different name. So, we got down to thinking, and decided a new name was in order. After many attempts and submissions, (for example chatoven(!), chatshack etc), we finally came up with a mutual agreement on ChatCore. And so, from that day forward, ChatCore was born, created by its founding members: Andy, Ian Jones, Nathan Scott, Nicholas. Little happened after this point had been reached – we increased in size and userbase, and everything was fairly stable. Nicholas had to pull out for personal reasons, and Jonah was becoming more and more tied up with the daily grind of work, which basically left me and Andy to maintain the network. We, in the end, after all the comments about us being just an "MSN Rip", decided on re-designing the OCX. We got to a certain stage, but it was never completed – personal reasons meant that both myself and Andy had to pull out.
Part 3 – The future
And so, it is with delight that I can inform you that both myself and Andy have decided to re-open ChatCore with a brand new website, server and web interface! Now, instead of a control being embeded in an html document, you download (one time) a client to your computer, which has the same friendly layout you're used to from MSN Chat, but with enhanced features and reliability, and "tabbed" browsing of rooms (ie, you don't have to open lots of windows to be in lots of rooms via the web interface)
HERE'S TO THE FUTURE – INNOVATION THROUGH COMMUNICATION
(all content in this document copyrighted to Nathan Scott 2006)
