Fanhome? A botched software upgrade.
barfo
The story is even in Wikipedia. Bizzare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanhome
Development of Fanhome.com
In
2001, the Fanhome identity was developed to merge five different
message boards—each one dedicated to one of the four
major professional sports, plus
auto racing -- into one. The Fanhome brand identity was developed by graphics designed Al Hidalgo and the company
VMA Interactive in Dayton, Ohio.
To facilitate the development of Fanhome, Matt Rogish was brought on as technical director and was responsible for the technical aspects that enabled the 4 independent communities to merge into FanHome.com. In those early years of the Internet, there were many technical challenges associated with running a site of Fanhome's size. This required the unprecedented step of porting the
mySQL based
vBulletin software to
Sybase as well as creating a sizable server farm to run the sites.
Scout Years
In October
2002, FanHome merged with the
Scout.com network (the online incarnation of Scout Media, Inc.). which claims to be the number one ranked independent provider of sports content on the Internet. <SUP class=reference id=cite_ref-0>
[1]</SUP>, and presently Scout itself has over 300,000 registered members who have written over 6 million separate posts.
During the Scout years, numerous problems cropped up including software problems. So many members of the basketball and hockey boards who had no publishers, i.e. revenue, were left to fend for themselves.
Independent Again
As of
November 14,
2006, Fanhome is once again independent, having severed relations with Scout.com<SUP class="noprint Template-Fact">[
citation needed]</SUP>. The new site resurrects the design and identity of FanHome which had been lost during the Scout years and also features
vBulletin software in place of
EZBoard.
