Back in March of 2004, a friend and I was pondering a website that allowed for all political perspectives to have a voice in a clean and unrestrictive atmosphere. At the time, we believed there was no place on the internet that allowed for anything other than *agreement* posters.
We originally thought that three groups (Liberals, Independents, and Conservatives) would each have their own forum with the caveat that each could view and comment on each others threads unrestricted and still allow for agreement within their own ideology. For example - a Conservative could only post in a Conservative forum, but *reply* to a Liberal thread. We volleyed back and forth on ideas. He is an Independent and I am a very strict Conservative.
The most important concept for both of us was Freedom of Speech. Everything else, we pretty much disagreed on.
The goal has never been to make any money; we just wanted to understand how and what makes each other tick.
25-May-2004
The domain name debatepolitics.com was purchased. We won the lottery, it had become available late March 2004. The original owner had it for years, but according to Wayback machine he/she did not do anything with it. The ball had started to roll.
~ June 2004
We created opened up a small forum using phpbb2. Unfortunately, the way Wayback machine works, the archival is unavailable. It proved only to gain a few members (mostly family, friends, and co-workers) to shut me up. The other original member did not contribute much, but purchased the original hosting for 1 year. Beyond that he stayed out of the picture.
October 12, 2004
I purchased vBulletin forum software and converted the forum. One of our members made a significant donation that helped us tremendously. We were able to get a psuedo dedicated host and move forward.
~ December 2004
Debate Politics now had it's first moderator besides myself - Pacridge. The other founder decided to jump ship and to date only has about 60 posts. He gave up any rights he had to the site as well as any possible monetary possibilities.
~February 2005
We changed the way the forums look and removed the Independent, Conservative, and Liberal only posting forums. We had a "Gay Marraige" forum that was gaining steam. Most new users found us through Yahoo! or Google about gay marriage. We later had to remove this forum as it was gaining very much negative attention.
December 2006
The forum layout slightly changed. Header pic and top bar changed. Had a server crash in November. Lost 4 hours worth of posts. Created new system from backup and new server was having issues for 3 days. Added a resources system, toggle left menu option and updated statistics display. Debate Politics 2.0
September 2007
150,000 posts!
October 2009
1.5 million posts!
February 2011
PO Box paid for by user.
March 2012
3.5 million posts!
August 2012
4 million posts!
This is a work in progress....
