|
A brief history of Farscape Fantasy In a way, this site originated on March 21, 1999, the day after Farscape premiered in the US and the day I bought my first modern computer, an iMac. Having heard a great deal of hoopla about the Internet, but never having been on it myself, I hooked up the computer and got on the net for the first time. Since the show was on my mind, and I had no idea where else to go, I visited the official Farscape site, downloaded the opening credits and checked out the Sci-Fi message board. My obsession with Farscape and my experience with the Internet started at the same moment; the existence of Farscape Fantasy was inevitable. In March 2000, despite having only a vague direction in my mind of what this site would contain, I decided it was time to dive in, and work commenced on building this site. For two months, I spent every free moment developing Farscape Fantasy. By mid May the site was "finished" and was ready to open to the public. You can ready my official announcement opening the site here. You can see what the site looked like back then by clicking here. I noticed that after about a week, people stopped coming to the site. I was facing a problem that vexes many amateur webmasters: how to generate traffic to their site. In June 2000, the second season resumed on Sci Fi and I posted episode images to the site the day the episode aired. Traffic increased. I started posting fan fiction and wallpaper Scapers sent me, traffic increased. I quickly realized that for the site to grow, it would have to be updated often. I also figured out that Scapers love multimedia of all kinds. Around late summer 2000 I started posting brief video clips from the episodes; they were very popular with Scapers. In fact, the clips were a little too popular it turns out. In January 2001, just after the season two final four aired, my site was disabled by my hosting company for a thing called "bandwidth overage." I didn't know what the hell they were talking about, but I soon discovered what it meant, Farscape Fantasy was going to cost me some money. Undaunted, but with a smaller bank account, I brought the site back up and decided to keep the clips. Shortly after the Zhaan episodes, SIW, parts 1 & 2, aired in March 2001, I posted my first music video to the site, a tribute to Zhaan, and invited Scapers to post their videos here as well. The videos trickled in at first, but over time the music video archive has grown to the largest of its kind on the net. Eventually, The Henson Company "requested" that I remove the episode clip. But the music videos stayed, and this site moved to its very own dedicated server in March 2002. My current bandwidth (data transfer) limits far exceed current use; Scapers can download to their heart's content. Today, Farscape Fantasy is one of the largest Farscape sites on the net, and if measured by data storage, currently over 5 gigs, it's probably the largest. There are hundreds of music videos, fan fiction, wallpaper, fun and resources for everyone. Updated daily, there's always new content here, most of which is posted by Scapers on their own. In terms of traffic, this site generates about the same number of visits it did when the show was new, which is surprising. As for the future, one can never tell. The mini-series is coming, probably late this year, which should help generate more interest in the show and this site. However, due to my rather demanding job schedule, I can't devote nearly as much time to the site as I once did. It's inevitable that FF will enter "archive" status one day, I simply have no idea when. So the ride has been fun - it's not over - and even when it's time to move on, our love for Farscape and the community it has inspired will endure. Long live Farscape! David
|
|
Hello, my name is David, AKA Dallascaper. Contrary to the misconception that some Scapers on the net have, I am a guy. I'm a member of a management team at a large aerospace company in the Ft. Worth area. Fulfilling as it is, my career doesn't allow for much creative expression, which probably explains why this site exists.
|
