A few final words

Dear forum community, dear guests and visitors, not so dear bots, and who else might visit this page....:

In January 2005, shortly after the release of Pepper's Ghost, I - Peter - created this forum. It was out of the pure idealism that the awesome band that ARENA is deserved their own web forum, everything less would have been a disgrace. So I went and installed one, to create some fan base maybe and give people a place to meet and exchange.

Back then I was working with an internet company, and although I was never involved with the actual product, it was inevitable as a techie to get in touch with the topics surrounding the matter. So, venturing into web hosting, PHP, MySQL, TCP firewall rules and whatnot came mostly natural.

In the beginning years, the forum kind of flourished, not as much as could have been expected, though. A small but steady user base established and people returned mostly around the album releases by our common beloved band, ARENA.

The most frequented area on this forum is the famous "Now Playing" thread. It has by far the most replies and views. Over time it has become THE place to find inspiration on what to listen to next.

Another very important section is probably the "Listening Profiles" board, where everyone was encouraged to make a list of their favourite artists and tracks - apart from ARENA, for sure!

Go and find out, there's much to read in there, maybe you will find a few gems of Clive's posts...

Nowadays, the will to use a browser, then go to a web page, log in with long forgotten credentials, has let the influx of souls dwindle down to not much more than the occasional rain drop in a desert. Lately there have also been a number of technical issues and uncertainties.

All of this led me to the decision to create a read-only archive of this forum, with static HTML pages, rather than full-blown PHP web app.

A big thank you to the most active and frequent users here. maddox, Teunis, PH, Nicky007, Steve Jones, Manatee, Appelmoes??, Bupie, Iggy, keyboardistmatt and The Butterly Man: you all know who you are, it was a good time, but we had it coming ;)

I would especially like to say a big thank you to Clive, who gave the green light initially to call this the "Official ARENA forum", which made me quite proud, to be honest.

If you would like to reach out to me or discuss something, don't hesitate to write an email (yes, another very ancient technology) to [the] . [shattered] . [room] at [gmail] . [com]

--
Cheers,
Peter.