2011

2011 on SBC. The first half of 2011 promised new heights of flourishing activity and community; the latter half, however, saw the collapse of SBC's staff and activity leading into 2012.

Previous: 2010

Next: 2012

Timeline

January to June

The Community flourished through this time, repeatedly getting between 300-500 posts per day. A new and improved "Stop What You're Doing" was hosted with a Beatles theme, followed by more themed-SWYADs. Good Noodles were introduced, adding new activities to the site. A new online-at-once record of 372 users was set. In April 2011, the site moved off of forumotion to phpBB3, but moved back to forumotion on May 14th, 2011, due to a huge lack of activity. The site managed to rebound from this thankfully. V6 Shark was announced hot off the success of V5 Dolphin, and released June 24, 2011. In this update, more functionality and features were added to SBC, such as a skin selector and an arcade. SBC soon picks up several fads, such as creating "Ask Me Anything!" and "Best ____ Ever" threads. During this time, the staff functioned efficiently, acting decisively on several member-related issues. According to statistical trends collected over the months between May and July, SBC had gained 10 new active members per month, and it was projected 100+ active members would be hit by the end of the year if the trend continued.

July to September

Towards the end of July, a series of attacks on the Community created chaos. Mass searches were conducted on SpongeBuddy Mania and iNick Online, two neighboring sites, in an attempt to find the hackers. Those behind the attacks were never found, and several threats made by the hacker prompted the site to consider alternative hosting options. It was announced SBC would move to a paid host with vBulletin as V7 Clownfish. However, the transition onto the new site was handled sloppily. Hundreds of bugs were reported, with many users unable to even log into their account. Problems plagued the site well into September, and an invasion of spambots furthered issues on the new site. Users also complained of noticeably slower speeds in comparison to that of Forumotion, slowness that stayed until the site finally moved to IP.Board with Orca in June 2012.

October to December

October brought Octerror Fest, which brought activity up a bit, but ultimately flopped because of the few amount of people that participated in games. Several features were added, and it appeared that SBC may pick back up to the pre-attack days. Meanwhile, unknown to the community, small fights were occurring in the Staff Lounge, foreshadowing larger cracks in a staff that had previously brought the site up to its highest peak in its history in June and July.

In November, the community was upgraded to the newest version of vBulletin, unleashing a whole new wave of bugs. Sparks began to fly in the Staff Lounge as tvguy and 70s arguments progressively worsened. Eventually, after yet another fight, 70s decided to take a break from the Community. Not too long later, tvguy de-admined 70s. This started a whole other slew of fights, mainly between 70s and tvguy. When CDCB and Steel were fired, more arguments and fights occurred, leaving nearly all of the boards on the site in flames. This series of fights and arguments over power is speculated to have killed off more than half the board's activity, leaving the Community with a flimsy 10 users still posting and logging on, a drop from the 30+ users they'd garnered back in October. Not too long later, tvguy staged a rally that ridded the site of the M.A. position, which had been his goal the entire time. Many users supported him solely to end the flame war, which had been dragging on from November 23, 2011 to December 6, 2011, when 70s was re-admined and the Main Admin position was gone.

The conflicts at the end of the year killed the site going into 2012.

Events and Incidents

Notable Arrivals

OMJ (January 15th, 2011)
HawkbitAlpha (May 17th, 2011)
WWESpongefan (June 2nd, 2011)
WithOrWithoutNuts (June 24th, 2011)
JCM (August 9th, 2011)
Cha (September 24th, 2011)
BigSponge (November 12th, 2011)
Sauce Mama (August 16th, 2011)
ClassicNickelodeon Fan 1 (September 7th, 2011)
crushingmayhem (October 11th, 2011)

Notable Departures

Loan133 (January 17th, 2011)
WithOrWithoutNuts (September 12th, 2011)
Tvfan (August 27th, 2011)

Site Success, Features, and Versions

V6 Shark
v7 Clownfish (v7.0.1 included)