Saugus.net Origins

Our post on Monday generated a couple of e-mails regarding Saugus.net's origins. Basically all our servers were organized and put online in January of 1998, our domain was made live on February 9, 1998, Saugus.net was incorporated as an independent not-for-profit entity on May 1, 1998, and the first daily entry was made here on May 4, 1998. We've already held ten Ghost Story Contests, participated in ten Saugus Founders' Days, and covered local elections in eleven calendar years. We usually consider May 1^st our official birthday.

Astute readers may wonder what the site looked like prior to the introduction of the daily entries, or even how the site was accessed before the name "Saugus.net" went live. The answer to the first question is that we had already created several pages (some as early as 1992) that were scattered across the Internet, and these we pulled together and organized to form the original Saugus.net (we'll let you guess which ones are that old). The answer to the second question is that for the first month or so we accessed the site directly by IP number. It certainly wasn't a friendly way to operate, but at that point it was only being used by people actively working on getting it ready for public release.

There's a bit more information about Saugus.net's history on the About Saugus.net page and the off-site pages it references (many of which will allow anyone to add information to them). We'll also happily answer any more questions you have.