Well it all started way back in 2000 when I found an online community at reddwarf.co.uk. I found some people on it who were also part of other Red Dwarf online communities such as the one at tordfc.co.uk and other which were news groups and the like. Anyway, as I was a member of the forums at reddwarf.co.uk I got chatting to anyone and everyone and made some pretty good friends both on the message board and the chatroom. It was absolutely brilliant.
One person I made friends with was a guy named Den. He was, at the time, a member of The Official Red Dwarf Fan Club or TORDFC team. He did everything from what I could see and looked after the club's online presence, as well as being the main Editor for BTL - or Better Than Life - the clubs 'fan' based magazine. After speaking with him I decided to join the club so I could get the quarterly fan club magazine, BTL.
I saw and chatted with Den in the chat rooms at both of the afore mentioned web site, I mentioned to him that the fan club web site wasn't really very good. I suggested maybe that I could redesign it, incorporating all existing content. He wasn't a web designer and used whatever FREE online tools and web services such as guestbooks, counters, forum scripts, javascript games as he was competent to use. I was a few years in to learning web design and web development and offered my skills; mainly as I could see great potential in a new fresh web site. After a lot of badgering by me, and I mean a LOT; one month he asked me - on the quiet - if I wanted to design a new site for the club, gratis. Yes he used the words 'gratis'. Payment was the last thing in my mind. Wow, I'd just landed a job to redesign The Official Red Dwarf Fan Club site. Being such a fan of Red Dwarf I was unbelievably excited.
Den sent me a copy of the current web site files in a ZIP file. After extracting them I was gobsmacked at how many pages had been written and how many images there were. All of the images were different resolutions, and file types, and of varying quality. The HTML files were laid out differently using broken HTML code and only then did I realise the mammoth task I had ahead of me.
I asked Den what he would like on the site and how he wanted it to work. He wanted a members section which would allow access codes to be used much akin to the members section on the original site. The codes would be printed in the current issue of BTL and would allow only 'current' fan club members access to all of the 'member only' information. This information included all of the extra articles written to supplement the magazine, a TV Guide and a few other bits and pieces. It's been so long ago now,, I can't quite remember. He told me one thing and this I stuck to this all through my career in TORDFC; and that was that the site could NOT contain any copyrighted Red Dwarf content, including photos, screenshots from the show, logos, even links to external web sites which contravened copyright.
This was going to be difficult and a little bit stifling.
I worked late into the night, sometimes ALL night and worked really hard on the site making everything look consistent and copyright material free. I was quite impressed, and so was Den. The original site, that den had registered was at tordfc.co.uk which he's registered for FREE with a company called FreeNetNames. I advised Den that to have the web site work it would need functionality which this free company wasn't able to provide and that the site needed it's own hosting. I approached FreeNetName to ask if we could take control of the domain, but as I persuaded Den to get some money from the club and I talked him through registering a domain reddwarffanclub.com and building hosting for the domain from one of the top UK Hosting companies 4D Hosting. We did this on the 2nd April 2002 and the site went Live a few days later. It was epoch making, and wonderful to see my design and all the hard work had paid off. I was the happiest man on the planet.
For years, the Fan Club team at the time didn't have a clue that I was actually looking after the site and updating it each month, with Den's new content, as well as creating my own. Not too long after Den had had enough of being in the fan club because he felt like he was doing all of the work. He had discussions with The Team and there were two people put forward to take over Den's position in the team. I lost out to Debbie and was absolutely gutted. She because known as the new 'Online' person, however she had about as much Web Experience as Den - if not less. So I was like compelled to keep the site running or let it die on it's arse. I was so proud of the web site that I had created, nothing on this planet would let me see it die. So I stayed in the background, updating the web site along with a little of Debbie's input. Debbie had a go at updating the site herself but more often than not broke it - sometimes beyond repair. It's a good job I had multiple backups of the site and still had access or it would have been a total disaster.
This went on for another few years and sometimes I felt very aggrieved, especially when Debbie got ALL of the praise for the web site in the club's BTL magazine.
Finally in 2005 just after that year's Dimension Jump my dream was about to come true. The new Fan Club Chairman James asked me if I wanted to join the Fan Club team. Hallelujah! I was on top of the World. I really wanted some recognition for the work I'd done, and James having known me as a fan for many years, knew the amount of time I'd given to the club. From the get go I was involved in writing content for the fan club magazine; working on the web site; and working on the next Dimension Jump. Writing for the magazine was possibly one of the most difficult things I've ever done.
The way the club was run was, in my opinion, not the best. Each member wrote certain parts of the fan club magazine and then emailed to the magazines Editor to put it all together. With the best will in the World each team member had their own lives to lead and with not a lot of new Red Dwarf (apart from merchandise and new DVDs) there was not a lot to write about. Although I found it difficult to come up with new content I did, however the other team members only started to talk about the content when the current issue was due out. This used to drive me insane. If there is content to be written, then working on it should not stop and then only start a few weeks prior to the next issue's release date?! It wasn't just one persons fault, it was everyone's! Along with writing content for BTL I did everything in my power to keep the web site fresh and as up to date as possible, and so spent almost all of my spare time working on it - which was much to the detriment of my family.
Working on Dimension Jump is possibly the most exciting and most exhausting thing I've done, whilst working for the club. I had no idea what was involved in running a convention and was a bit nervous but was given a tsk to do. For Dimension Jump 13 I was given the task of creating a game called Smeg or No Smeg. It was blatant copy of Deal or No Deal. The difference being that our boxes would be black and the value inside them would be in $£ (DollarPounds), the currency on Red Dwarf. I also had to make some kind of scoreboard for the big screen. The boxes were cardboard shoe boxes spray painted black. I created the numbers and monetary values on my PC and printed them all out in full col our - cut them to size and stuck them to the boxes. I created the scoreboard in PNG format at full screen resolution and it looked brilliant, even if I do say so myself :) Slight changes were made on the day to make it work better but it looked amazing on the big screen.
I redesigned the site again, keeping it fresh and modern - although some fans weren't happy and didn't take to kindly to changes. I took all critesism badly and a personal hit against me and my web design capability but over the next 12 month I had more important stuff to deal with as my daughter was born. It came round to DJ time again and I worked very hard this time on inventing and creating games for the Saturday afternoon. With it being cowboy-related I created wanted posters and other signage for the weekend. I also proof-read the DJ Booklet which is given out at the beginning on the weekend to each attendee.
After DJ ended, what's known as the DJ Blue's hit me in a big way. Because Dimension Jump is quite possibly the best weekend of the year being home and with it all finish made me feel really down. I decided that the web site could do with a new look, so went ahead and redesigned the site again. I asked the team for their input and was dismayed when i got the odd response agreeing that it's a good design and to Live with it. The minute I put it online it was critisised. A group of Red Dwarf Fans took it upon themselves to bad-mouth me on their web site and by Christmas I'd had enough. I wrote an email to the team exclaiming what had gone on and the lack of support from the team, who I'd thought were my friends, and quit the team in quite a big way. Two more long-standing team members also quit just after I did and followed suit. I have not heard much, if anything, from the team since and that was over 2 years ago. It just proves how important I was to the whole thing.
What started on a high ended on a low. I believe that I'm not the first to have felt let down by the club. However I wish the club all the best for the future.