Introduction: It may seem a bit odd for a website to have a museum. And it was indeed
a spur of the moment sort of thing when I decided to create this section.
Basically it is a
brief trip down memory lane to trace the evolution of this website. Thus, the NFC museum presents
some of the old layouts used on the site and an assortment of files that used to be hosted here.
There's also various other things, such as statistics and stuff that visitors of the site have
submitted. This section is not particular useful ... but with a little luck it may just give you a few laughs!
Notice: Pretty much all the links found within the documents here (old main page layouts
and whatnot) are no longer valid. Thus, please do not click on any of them.
In June 1996 I made a member fanzine thingy for a little nerdy group of
friends calling themselves "Dansk Net Klub" (Danish Net Club). I was looking over this file and noticed
that "The Danish Nirvana Page" [DNP] had been visited 2,232 times, in June 1996, a couple of months after
it opened. Today, this site has more than 8,000 unique visitors daily. If you for some
reason have an urge to see screenshots of this web-based fanzine-thingy click for screenshot
#1, #2 or #3.
[Everything is written in Danish]
In early July 1997 myself and a good friend, Andreas Ericson, created a
quiz for NFC. Andreas was the webmaster of a popular Nirvana site that opened a little while after
mine, back in 1996, called "The Swedish Nirvana Page." Funnily enough this old quiz
looks a lot like the most recent ones. Check out this old quiz here.
Of course, its not possible to actually try the quiz at this time!
I believe I've had five different quiz's online. The first one is lost, the
second is described above and the third can be found here. Check
the answers to this quiz here. You can even find a list of
winners of it, right here. This one also reminds a lot of
the 4th quiz, created in June 1998. The 5th quiz, made in 2001,
is still in use.
In late March, or early April 1997 rather, when I created nirvanaclub.com I
put up a notice about it on the old location of DNP at intercity.dk. Even though I hadn't used this
ISP for over two years, the temporary page was still online for years. It is no longer, but can be viewed
in the museum here. [It's nothing fancy ...]
Would you like a Kurt Cobain equipment FAQ that hasn't been updated for almost 10 years?
You got it! This one was last updated November 27, 1994 and was made by Ralph Smith.
Check it out here.
During the autumn of 1997 you could cast your vote for your favorite Nirvana song
at the NFC domain. The complete list of votes can still be found here
and the original voting form is now presented in the museum here. A
more easy-to-read list of the winning songs is available here.
In January 1998, and during half of 1997, I used a design for the main page
that is quite like the one I use today. The story is that when I opened NFC in 1997 I just
used a boring design where the files were presented as a list and on the right would
be a couple of pictures - like this design.
In fact the design 'oldboring' was used for people who had browsers different from
Internet Explorer and Netscape, since an index page specifically for each of these
two browsers was also available at this time. So, a total of 3 index files were
actually up. Anyway, later I changed to a design using tables, then to a design using an
imagemap and then finally I changed back to the table design you can
see today. Anyway, if you'd like to see the 'first' table design used in
late 1997 and early 1998 just click here [Slightly edited to avoid a conflict
of interest]. The html of this file was slightly edited to reflect the current browsers, and the original
images were provided when possible. This 'oldtable' design was actually used for quite a while, and was
probably the one I liked most out of the designs I've used.
To see the design I used with the imagemap, just click here.
These two designs, the one with the table and the one with the imagemap, are the two that have been used for
most of this site's lifetime. I changed to the design in use today ... hmm sometime in early 1999. Please be
aware that all of these old index files offer a BUNCH of defunct links, pretty much all links are not working,
and some broken images. I recommend NOT clicking any of the links provided on these presentations of old
'main page layouts'. This design, using the imagemap, was slightly edited to serve the purpose of the museum
and the original images have been restored when possible.
In June, July and August 1997 I presented full songs at this website. The reason I
didn't have those songs up for very long is of course because I received a polite E-mail from Geffen
in mid 1997, prompting me to remove all full length material. This ultimately resulted in
me removing the member area and switching away from nirvanaclub.com's first host, Tierranet. Anyway, for an example of
how the 'full song of the month' page looked, click here.
Obviously you'll not be able to download any of these songs. This page is also a perfect example
of the fact that it helps dick to display a copyright message, and a 'delete within 24 hours' notice,
in the bottom. That message doesn't make it any more legal.
I've never been fond of those 'latest update' files for some
reason. In April 1997 I made one though, but I stopped updating it again after May 1997. Of course I
didn't stop updating the site :) Anyway, instead of having a specific file
just listing updates I put site news directly on the main page (as I do today) and then
in June 1998 I created the newsletter which gave very detailed info about all updates to
the website. Check the first newsletter or the mentioned
updates file from April 1997. In October 1999 I created a
'latest updates' file again. But this time I didn't just have updates to the site but also
Nirvana news. That is probably the reason why the file (The NFC News Section) is still here today.
For the past few years I've done something special for Christmas, for the
site. Both in December 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000 I put full songs online during the christmas period. The christmas
section from 1997 can be viewed here and the one from 1998 can be viewed here
[Edited]. You may also view the 1999 NFC Christmas Present here [Edited]. Click here
to view the spectacular NFC X-Mas present that was served in December 2000. In 2001 there was no X-Mas present from
the NFC, due to hosting problems. However, a new sound gallery was presented instead. Click here to view the 2002 X-Mas present.
There was a time when I 'only' had 80 bootlegs ... to be exact, I had 80 Nirvana bootlegs in July 1997.
Today I have over 300. Just for the hell of it you may view my 1997 list of 80 bootlegs here.
In late April, or perhaps early May, of 1996 I created DNP. Back then I advertised
for it on the Nirvana newsgroup as everyone else probably would. To view the ad (dated May 9, 1996) - look here. From Dejanews.
Shortly after NFC was created, a WWWBoard for it was created as well. I managed to
save exactly 3648 posts from the board. But that is only a small percentage of the thousands of posts that were put
on the 'classic' WWWBoard from it's birth in April 1997 to it's demise in early July 1999 (when the NFC Discussion
Board took over). The saved posts
include one from an "Associate Informist" who demanded me to remove all full songs. Naturally I didn't take
this post seriously, but as it turns out, I received the E-mail from Geffen a couple of days after that post
was made - also demanding the full songs to be removed. Anyway check some of the WWWBoard posts from
1997; post #1, #2, #3,
#4, #5, #6,
#7, #8, #9,
#10, #11, #12.
A couple of those posts were made by 'CP' who still uses the board today, and a couple of posts
were by Dave L., who is the former vice president of NFC. I also picked out some random posts and threads from 1998
that I thought were pretty amusing. This includes a few posts from the legendary "I forgot my name"
character who haunted the board for a while. Post #1, #2,
#3, #4, #5, #6,
#7, #8, #9, #10.
Sorry for the foul language used in some of these posts. Be warned :o) More WWWBoard posts coming soon . . .
Now that we're speaking of the WWWBoard, in late 1998 one of the regular users
got the idea that I shouldn't be president of it anymore but someone else. So, the NFC Elections
were born and here people could select their favorite person for the job by casting a
vote. As it turns out, I didn't even win and it has haunted me ever since ... hehe. The
winner later turned 'evil' and was banned from the board, so I kept the job as maintainer
of the WWWBoard. View one of the posts, concerning the '98 NFC Elections,
here. Have in mind that pretty much everything I wrote in that post was a joke, so don't
take it seriously! The '99 NFC Elections started in July 1999 on the new Discussion board.
The 2000 NFC Elections started around July 1st, 2000 and among the hot candidates were the
"Purple party" and the "Mason Famil" ! I don't believe a winner was determined, as these elections
had to be cut short, because of hosting problems (that caused the board to be down for a couple of weeks).
The 1999 NFC Elections were won by a Matthew Bonato who would later leave NFC to create the site drainyou.com.
The various parties and candidates would each year, while the elections were running, create various threads
with hilarious gif animations depicting a competitive candidate's demise, or something to that effect. A couple
of these animations and pictures are available here; #1, #2,
#3, #4, #5 and #6.
For a short time I had a 'private' WWWBoard online too, around August 1998, for
the regular users who were fed up with all of the repeating questions and discussions going on at the regular
and public WWWBoard. The Private Board was used quite a bit for a month or so but then the demand slowly faded
and it was removed. Check out some of the posts from it;
post #1, #2, #3,
#4, #5, #6, #7,
#8, #9, #10, #11, #12. (Some rated R!)
Back when DNP [Danish Nirvana Page] was up, I had the main page for the
Nirvana part as a 'nirvana.htm' file and then I had an obscure index file, shortly describing the
contents of the site. For a slightly edited version of this ancient file, click here.
This particular file is actually memorable as it was the very first HTML file I ever did -
for the homepage that would shortly after evolve into DNP. Thus, the design and HTML
used here is quite primitive (as it was in early 1996, I guess) and I was using Netscape
v1.2 at the time being.
Unfortunately I don't have the 'nirvana.htm' file anymore, with the first
ever main page for DNP. But as far as I remember I used a simple design where
the top was a picture of either the smiley face, or this one.
Next to that picture I had some text w/ an introduction to the site. Then followed
links to the files available at the site, and in the bottom I had some images. One
was of a Vodka bottle and there were also a couple of other pictures I don't remember
right now. I have a butchered and very early version of this file here.
For DNP I later used a table design that is similar to the one I use now.
If you happen to have saved the nirvana.htm file, I used as the main page
for DNP, sometime back in 1996 - please contact me.
It's probably not out there ...
Every day this server records how many visits it has received, how many times
each file has been downloaded and things like that. These stats also record how many total
page hits the site's had and how many bytes have been sent. On September 18, 1998 no
less than 117,259,728,622 total bytes [approx. 117 GB] had been sent by the server
(thus downloaded by you). More details here. On January 4, 1999
the figures looked quite different. The server at that time had received a total of
3,176,341 (3.1 million) page hits and sent 226,589,227,321 total bytes [approx. 226 GB].
These stats date from around April 1998 to January 1999. More details here.
I can't say for sure how many bytes and page hits we've reached today, since the stats have been reset
several times, due to switching hosts. I first switched from Tierranet to Prohosting. Then to Communitech,
then Addr.com, then Jumpline and then back to Prohosting whom I used for a while - and the same host I used
between April 1998 and January 1999. Though, in May 2000 I had to transfer again, this time to a host called
'canaca' who ultimately turned out to be a sub-division of Communitech. A sick twist of irony. And as it turns
out, canaca were just as corrupt and satanic as their "boss", Communitech. Thus, the site was shut down in July 2000 -
first due to the discussion board using too many resources, later because their own server was down. It would never
be available again. Or my site wouldn't, anyway. So after a couple of weeks of downtime, I switched to a more professional
host called vservers, who offered us a $250/m dedicated server. However, after the company funding this service (Musicfans)
went bankrupt, I had to change host once again. This happened in 2001 when I changed to Liquid Web which hosted most of the
main content, with Aurora-E-Solutions hosting the discussion board and various sections. Around the release of the Best-Of
CD and Journals in late 2002, the number of visitors reached enormous proportions and the bandwidth usage went through the
roof. I took a quick decision and purchased a dedicated server (through rackshack.net) which would allow NFC to use hundreds
of GB in bandwidth. Today, the NFC is still on this dedicated server and will hopefully continue to be.
Bandwidth was ultimately the reason I was kicked off by former hosts: Tierranet, Communitech, Addr.com, Jumpline, Canaca, Prohosting
and Liquid Web. Addr.com kicked me off exactly one week after I'd signed up with them - due to excessive
bandwidth usage :) I left Jumpline cause their "unlimited bandwidth" service was completely bogus, and even
though I didn't use very much bandwidth it was supposedly more than "unlimited". As for the statistics,
log analysis prove that - as per December 1st, 2000 - the site receives about 8-9,000 unique
visitors per day. In 2001, the discussion board also had to be moved to a domain of it's own, seperate from nirvanaclub.com.
On the 28th of May, 1999 I decided to temporarily shut down the 'WWWBoard' due
to months of foul usage. View the announcement here. This was a turning point
in 'board history' as I shortly after this happened decided to switch to the Ultimate Bulletin Board script
permanently. This new script was implemented in early July 1999. The old WWWBoard script, by Matt Wright,
had been used on the server since the beginning in April 1997 up to the end of June
1999. The script used in the end had been heavily modified and had a lot of new features
added by myself. This included 'cookies', the ability to ban users, new board layout and
more. It's possible I'll put up the edited source code for download here later on, should
there be a demand for it. The UBB script we used had also been heavily edited - offering
many features not usually part of the script, and many small improvements and tweaks. In 2001,
after being fed up with the UBB script's security problems and instability, I decided to write
a brand new discussion board script entirely from scratch. This took a few weeks and it was
done in PHP, based on a MySQL database. The new script has turned out to be very efficient,
while offering roughly the same features that the existing UBB did. It has since it's launch
been continually improved with new features, such as the ability to send private messages, and
is currently receiving more than 100,000 new messages per month. The board has more than 9,000 registered members.
For a long long time, I've had a couple of Metallica related files online.
Most of these were recently removed and put in the museum. One of them is a chat log of a Metallica chat
session hosted by Apple on June 10, 1996. Unfortunately, I personally missed most of this
chat since it took me ages to download the software I was supposed to use for the chat. The
iChat plugin if I remember correctly. However, Apple had also arranged a live webcast of a
Metallica show, following after the chat. The show, from "Slim's" in San Francisco, CA was
aired around 7 AM local time so I was obviously a little tired at the time. Anyway, for a log
file of this chat, just click here. I also wrote down the setlist for
the show that was webcast live. I remember I mostly
got the audio part out of this, since I used some crappy software ... 'Stream' something, and
I only had a 14.4 modem at the time :) Speaking of chat sessions, since I got on the net
in 1995 I have had the pleasure of being in chat's with artists including: Metallica, Duff McKagan,
Slash, John Taylor, Fun Lovin' Criminals, Keri Russell, Anton Corbjin, Sweet 75, Foo Fighters [Nate
and Franz], Jeff Goldblum and Julianne Moore, Britney Spears (I left after 2 min!), Peter MacNicol,
Dale Crover, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, William B. Davis, Christopher Reeve and Jim Griffin
of DGC.
When I created NFC I had a file online, presenting the banner you could use to
link to this page. After the NFC FAQ got up and running this file was pretty superfluous.
You may view it here (notice that the banner is different today).
For a while I used a stupid Java script at DNP. View it here - if you for some reason want to!
Even back then I used the theory that I had the largest Nirvana site on the net. As you might have noticed, this label has stuck with me and
- though supported by many - is not necessarily the case anymore. But hell, I still like to think so :)
As mentioned earlier I used to have a member area online that you could enter by
paying a $10 fee. Fortunately, this was removed a long time ago but I still have the
file listing some of the things you'd get as a member. View it
here ... and don't take it too seriously, I sure as hell don't anymore :)
Claus Jensen, a fellow who has been an online friend of mine since early '96,
I believe, did an interview with me in November 1997 for his "Presidents of the United States of
America" website. The interview is pretty interesting and you can read it right
here. It was originally done on IRC.
One of the most critical moments of this website's history is what happened in
late August 1997. At this time, the technical director of Geffen Records was surfing
the net thin - looking for sites containing full songs of Geffen artists. Including
Nirvana. It was, and still is, illegal to put up full songs by this band. So since
I had a few full songs by Nirvana online at that time, I received an e-mail from
Geffen prompting me to remove them. The e-mail was also sent to my host at the time,
Tierranet, who could shut down the domain in a heartbeat. However, it never got that
far since I removed all full length material, and made peace with the Geffen rep. He
later expressed positive comments about the website. To view one of these infamous
e-mails from Geffen, click here.
Over the years a bunch of people have made banners and other various art for this
site. A lot of these files have been lost but I've managed to dig some of them up.
A lot of these have never even been used on the site before, actually. Unfortunately,
I'm not able to name all the talented artists who have created these files but I do
know that people such as Dave Wolinsky, AFTERMATH, Morten Bendix, 'MidKnight' and
Claus Jensen have helped making these. Check out the display
here! [This page will take a while to load!] Also check a banner for the 'NFC Awards' below.