This page is still a work in progress.<\/p>\n
Sometime in 1997 id Software\u2019s<\/a> (now owned by Bethesda Software – who would have ever guessed?) Quake<\/a> captured the imagination of gamers worldwide.\u00a0 A few friends of mine started playing online and we decided to come up with a group name.\u00a0 I decided to call our team \u201cSOD\u201d based on the old 80\u2019s band Stormtroopers Of Death<\/a> (their official site is here<\/a> but is no longer maintained) and I assumed the nickname \u201csgt-d\u201d based on the band\u2019s mascot.<\/p>\n In 1998 (roughly) I registered sod.net for $100\u2026\u00a0 hard to believe how expensive things were back then!\u00a0 A billing error saw to it that the invoice was sent to somewhere in California (the idiots actually sent it to the administrator of our \u201cRed River\u201d Quake server) and after several disputes I ultimately lost the domain.\u00a0 SOD.net has online archives from December 12, 1998<\/a> to April 30, 1999<\/a>.\u00a0 Not much to see.\u00a0 I remember the site ended up being less about gaming and focused primarily on two topics:\u00a0 3Dfx news and drivers, and the original WaterVIS<\/a> project (see the \u201cclassic\u201d site here<\/a>) which was recently revived (and slightly renamed) as Quake Water VIS Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2002 Mike Scolaro (smokA)<\/a> and Sean Carter (IriSHine)<\/a> created a fully interactive website for the Quake III team and we parked it at sodpit.com.\u00a0 We went back and forth on several different site names but none really jumped out at us.\u00a0 We decided on sodpit because it reminded us of mosh pits, so basically a \u201cmosh pit\u201d for SOD news and members.\u00a0 The name sorta stuck.\u00a0 My brother Jeff Winter (jawz)<\/a> registered the domain and we were off and running.\u00a0 Click these links to view Smoka & Irishine\u2019s rendition of sodpit.com between May 7, 2002<\/a> and May 9, 2007<\/a>.\u00a0 Cool shit, I miss it.\u00a0 Great work, and again thanks for the hard work guys!<\/p>\n Hosting problems are sometimes inevitable, but the host I was using originally for sodpit.com (ReadyHosting<\/a>) was borderline impossible.\u00a0 They were very overbearing and everything I wanted to do (including subdomains) required an Act of Congress almost always resulted in additional monthly charges.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t manually alter anything\u2026\u00a0 DNS records, DNS zone files, nothing.\u00a0 I had absolutely no control.\u00a0 Every change had to be painstakingly approved by a ReadyHosting engineer which could take days\u2026\u00a0 and then I would have to wait 24-48 hours for the changes to propagate across the interwebs.\u00a0 If something went wrong I would again have to wait an additional 4 to 5 days.\u00a0 It was so horrible that I was finally forced to change.<\/p>\n In June of 2007 I finally switched to a very nice hosting company (Site5<\/a>) but it was Linux based using PHP instead of the Windows \/ ASP.net which meant that this change would permanently break the original sodpit.com site made by Smoka and Irishine.\u00a0 I had absolutely no choice.\u00a0 Initially on June 15, 2007<\/a> Sodpit was running a \u201cGoogle Site\u201d but by June 24, 2007<\/a> the site was running e107<\/a>.\u00a0 e107 was a manual installation for me every time, but I enjoyed it at the time and soon I was setting everyone else up with their own e107 sites.\u00a0 Almost viral.<\/p>\n For several years Sodpit.com continued to use the e107 content management system (CMS)<\/a> as the \u201cengine\u201d for the website.\u00a0 While there were no major issues with the e107 system, there were quite a few annoyances:\u00a0 News posts would spam all site users\u2019 inboxes worldwide and users didn\u2019t know how to stop the madness, news that showed up in email messages had invalid pictures and\/or web links, and there were constant vulnerabilities allowing hackers to gain access (I actually lost mIRCPowerPack.net<\/a>, another e107 site, for a short time to hackers).\u00a0 e107 was always quick to release patches, but the manual update processes were very annoying, especially when there are multiple e107 sites under your direct control.\u00a0 Nothing is perfect.\u00a0 e107 is still a very nice engine but for me it simply required too much of my time in manual maintenance without much benefit.\u00a0 The e107 version of sodpit.com is still \u201clive\u201d and available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Welcome to 2010.\u00a0 After years of problems and manual setups related to e107<\/a> I was forced to re-evaluate other site engines.\u00a0 I personally was running about five e107<\/a> sites and there were at least five others I had setup for friends and family as well.\u00a0 For years people had been bragging to me about WordPress<\/a> and normally I just blew them off.\u00a0 Finally a few months ago I decided to revive an old project (Quake Water VIS Project<\/a>) and decided to try WordPress<\/a> this time instead of e107.\u00a0 So far it has been nothing short of amazing.\u00a0 I am no longer constantly having to upload themes and plugins manually with FTP programs – it is all done inside the WordPress<\/a> admin interface.<\/p>\n While all of this has been going on, in the background I have still been very hard at work with my real job and on the side I still write Windows based programs (here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>).\u00a0 This might soon switch to web-based applications with the recent release of SpringSource<\/a> and Android \u201cFroyo\u201d 2.2<\/a> both released during this year\u2019s Google I\/O<\/a>.\u00a0 We\u2019ll see!<\/p>\n I\u2019m not done with the history behind sodpit.com, but the basics are all here:\u00a0 where \u201cSOD\u201d came from, how we landed on sodpit.com, and some of the hosting and site interface changes along the way.<\/p>\n Oh\u2026\u00a0 are we still gaming?\u00a0 The quick answer is:\u00a0 not really.\u00a0 I know a lot of the team still play games regularly, but I don\u2019t talk to everyone so I don\u2019t know who is playing or what they are playing.\u00a0 I was into Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142 for years\u2026\u00a0 in 2142 I hit general and all of the unlocks including the Northern Strike mod.\u00a0 Then one day I got sucked back into Linux (openSUSE 10.3) and I just stopped playing games.\u00a0 I waited in Linux for the UT3 but the Linux port never came (legal battles, surrounding PhysX if memory serves) which eventually brought me back to Windows.\u00a0 It\u2019s been at least 3 or 4 years now I think.\u00a0 I miss gaming, but I just don\u2019t have that kind of time anymore.\u00a0 That\u2019s not to say I won\u2019t play something else occasionally.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to get a Q4 server running, but at the same time I think Quake has pretty much seen it\u2019s day.\u00a0 Time will tell.<\/p>\n Anyway, now that this site is running a blogging engine it will be much easier for me to just type what\u2019s on my mind and post it online so the site will always have some kind of updates to it.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure what I will post about but I\u2019m sure there will be some techy-geeky things and news articles, jokes, who knows!\u00a0 You can follow these site updates (blog posts) through any number of RSS Readers<\/a> (including Mozilla Firefox\u2019s built-in Live Bookmarks<\/a>) by subscribing HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n More to come!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This page is still a work in progress. Sometime in 1997 id Software\u2019s (now owned by Bethesda Software – who would have ever guessed?) Quake captured the imagination of gamers worldwide.\u00a0 A few friends of mine started playing online and we decided to come up with a group name.\u00a0 I decided to call our team … Continue reading History<\/span>