TechGear007 has been around in one form or another for a very long time. Over the years it became a home for IRC-related files, scripts, snippets, screenshots, tutorials, forum discussions, and a whole lot of things that probably seemed perfectly normal at the time but now qualify as internet archaeology.
Eventually, though, I made the decision to close the site.
A big reason was the forum software. TechGear007 had been running on Invision Community/IPB, and over time I became less and less happy with the direction it was going. It was getting larger, more complicated, and more expensive, while moving further away from what I personally wanted a forum to be. I didn’t really want to keep paying for an increasingly bloated system just to use a fraction of it.
At some point you have to ask yourself, “Do I really need 47 features to let someone post a message?”
Apparently my answer was no.
So TechGear007 went offline.
For quite a while I wasn’t sure whether it would ever come back. The IRC community isn’t what it was 20 years ago, and much of the content on TG007 is undeniably old. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that was actually one of the reasons the site was worth preserving.
A lot of old IRC websites, downloads, scripts, screenshots, tutorials and communities have simply disappeared. Servers get shut down, domains expire, hard drives die, and suddenly something that was once everywhere becomes almost impossible to find.
TechGear007 contains a little piece of that history.
So I finally decided that if I was going to bring it back, I wanted to do it differently.
Building It Again
Instead of installing another large forum package, I decided to rebuild TechGear007 and create the software I actually wanted.
That meant building our own forum system along with the other parts of TG007: members, messaging, files, snippets, screenshots, news, resources and the administration tools behind all of it.
Was building an entire forum system from scratch the easiest way to avoid paying for forum software?
Absolutely not.
But here we are.
The new TG007 is considerably more focused on what the site actually needs instead of trying to be everything for everyone. It also gives me control over where the site goes from here rather than having to redesign TG007 around somebody else’s software.
An Archive — But Hopefully More Than an Archive
A large part of TechGear007 today is an archive.
There are old IRC clients, utilities, scripts, screenshots, snippets and information representing a period of the internet that continues to get harder to find elsewhere.
And I’m perfectly fine with that.
If nothing else, I hope keeping TG007 online preserves some of that history rather than allowing it to quietly disappear.
But I also hope it doesn’t have to be only an archive.
If you're still involved with IRC, programming, scripting or related projects, I’d love to see people continue adding new files, screenshots and snippets. The forum is also there to be used, whether you're looking for help, working on something interesting, or just feel like talking about technology and IRC.
Maybe the old stuff helps somebody maintain a forgotten script.
Maybe an old screenshot brings back a memory.
Maybe somebody finds a program they've been searching for since 2006.
Or maybe someone opens a 20-year-old mIRC script and immediately remembers why we stopped writing code that way.
All of those count.
Still a Work in Progress
The site is open again, but that doesn't mean I'm finished with it.
I'm still working on the TG007 theme, polishing different sections, fixing smaller issues, improving the forum, and making changes as I see things that could work better.
There will probably be a few rough edges while I continue working on it. That is the downside of rebuilding a site instead of clicking Install and hoping for the best.
The upside is that I can actually change those things.
I plan to continue improving TechGear007 over time, and I'm always open to ideas. If there is something you think would make the site better, let me know.
And if you find a bug, definitely let me know.
Preferably before it develops self-awareness.
Welcome Back to TechGear007
I don't expect TechGear007 to suddenly become what it was during the busiest days of IRC. That's not really the point.
The goal is to keep the site alive, preserve what is already here, continue adding to it where we can, and give people who still have an interest in IRC and technology a place to use.
If TG007 grows into an active community again, that would be great.
If it remains a smaller community surrounding a useful archive, that's fine too.
Either way, a piece of IRC history stays online instead of disappearing.
And after all these years, I think that's reason enough to keep the lights on.
Welcome to the new TechGear007.