Has it really been 20 years?

[Rich Konopka]

I couldn’t help to notice that Feb 11 is coming up quickly. Is Feb 11 the 20th anniversary of SMC? I would love to hear more about how SMC was started. To Keith, forum administrators, and members thanks for all the shared wisdom and insights.

[Lee Schierer]

Long story shortened. There was a forum called Badger Pond that was pretty much the same as SMC. The owner got tired of running it himself and decided to shut it down. Keith decided to start up Sawmillcreek and many of us migrated here from Badger Pond.

The pond has grown, 143,566 members, and is supported by advertisers, contributors, Friends of the Creek and Sponsors. From time to time there are expenses that are incurred to handle the traffic and insure reliability, hence the need for support from the users instead of just Keith's pocket.

[Keith Outten]

The SawMill Creek software was installed on February 11th 2003. I logged in at 1pm creating my account right after my network administrator installed the software so i have account number 2.
At the time I owned a very small Internet Service Provider business so The Creek only cost me about 64 dollars for the software, I already had plenty of bandwidth on my network and my administrator was being paid by the company. A few years later when the big Internet Providers put all of the local ISP's out of business I announced that The Creek would be shutting down. There was a major outcry from Members here to save The Creek and funds started coming in to pay for the move of our server to my sign company workshop. We operated for almost two years on the funds we collected from the move and we continued to grow at an amazing pace. We were taking on new members so fast I had to upgrade our bandwidth several times and ultimately purchase faster servers to keep up with the traffic.

We operated with funds collected from advertisers for the next couple of years and in 2008 when the economy went bust we lost all but two of our advertisers. Aaron Koehl and I quickly revamped out advertising system to reduce the cost and Aaron created our rotating banner system so everyone shared the same amount of traffic. After many months we started to attract more advertisers, enough to continue on and keep up with our expenses. As time progressed we started to required more and more funds to keep The Creek alive and we were forced to revamp our system to provide Contributor accounts that were volunteers who helped us pay the bills but we still provided complete access to everyone regardless of their paying status. We started limiting access to just a few features here a couple of years ago and that has given us a more stable income. Our current server needs to be serviced and at the very least install new fans and the power supply. I am planning to shut down our server for eight hours very soon to do the service but I don't have the time right now to get it scheduled.

That's the short story of SawMill Creek over the last 20 years. We are still committed to staying online for many years to come as long as we have the necessary support from our Community.

[Earl McLain]

I'll send a "Birthday Card" as a Thank You to you, the moderators and all the contributors who have helped my hobby grow the past several years. Happy early 20th Anniversary!!

[Maurice Mcmurry]

Thank you Mr. Outten! for your efforts and this history.

[William Hodge]

Keith,
Have you looked at buying time on servers? My daughter does this. They call it writing software for "spinning up more servers" when traffic gets high. They use Amazon Web Services.
William

[Andrew More]

Keith,
Have you looked at buying time on servers? My daughter does this. They call it writing software for "spinning up more servers" when traffic gets high. They use Amazon Web Services.
William

I work in IT. Those cloud providers are basically renting servers with rates to match. As long as Keith wants to maintain the server himself he's likely saving a lot of money. Cloud providers can make sense for larger companies that don't want to support an IT staff, but even then it's not a slam dunk.

[Eric Arnsdorff]

This is terrific! Thanks Keith for providing this forum! Thanks for the terrific information and help it has provided!

[Mark Gibney]

Well done, Keith. Fantastic resource and information exchange forum, but also a place I for one drop in to after a day alone in the shop to feel part of a wider woodworking community.

[Jim Becker]

Keith,
Have you looked at buying time on servers? My daughter does this. They call it writing software for "spinning up more servers" when traffic gets high. They use Amazon Web Services.
William

It's been discussed previously. SMC uses more bandwidth by a wide margin than can be economically be bought on a shared server system compared to current costs. It's less expensive to own and run the server in-house for this high volume site.

[Derek Cohen]

I wonder how many others here were members of Badger Pond? It was quite emotional when it closed down. I still have a CD record of the entire site and its archives - nothing I own plays it, unfortunately.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Jim Tobias]

I was a member of Badger Pond and was disappointed when it was about to shut down......Keith came in and saved the day! Hooray!! I was at the time checking in every morning when I had breakfast and coffee........and I still do so to this day.
THANKS Keith for all I know you have done, and.... all you deal with that I and others are unaware of in handling this monstrosity of a website.

Jim

[John Kananis]

Just wanted to poke my head in and say thank you, Keith. I really enjoy being here and sharing with the community.

[Pat Rice]

I was a member of Badger Pond and very thankful for this forum. I am helping a young man build an entertainment center in my shop, I mentioned that Norm’s New Yankee workshop is now on YouTube, who said who is that? I am definitely getting old ��

[Keith Outten]

Keith,
Have you looked at buying time on servers? My daughter does this. They call it writing software for "spinning up more servers" when traffic gets high. They use Amazon Web Services.
William

Because SawMill Creek is a database intense system and most providers charge for the number of database queries it is not economic for us to use an outside provider. In the very early days this would have been an economical option but even then we were growing by hundreds of new members per day. Not long ago we were doing the same amount of traffic as Ford.com and were rated in the top three woodworking forums in the world.

Our success is a credit to all of you who share your knowledge and information every day plus a great group of Moderators who volunteer their time and talent here. You are the best of the best in 39 countries. Thanks for joining our woodworking community, I will be here every day to do my part and honor the promise I made to each of you many years ago.