SpongeBuddy Mania
 The forum index in December 2023 | |
| Site Information | |
|---|---|
| Founders |
Spongey34 Spongedude ssj4gogita4 |
| Founded | January 17, 2005 |
| Consists of | Site, forums, chat |
| Administration | |
| Administrators |
ssj4gogita4 (2005-present) Abney317 (2010-present) Spongey34 (2005-present) spongedude (2005-present) PinkPugPrincess (2023-present) |
| Moderators |
Spongie33 (????-present) MattTheSpongeFanatic (????-present) Whisper (2018-present) |
SpongeBuddy Mania is a merged fansite and forum formed on January 17, 2005, created by the union of SpongeBob Mania (founded by ssj4gogita4 on June 6, 2003) and SpongeBuddy (founded by Spongey34 and Spongedude on April 3, 2004). An active player in the SpongeBob fandom for two decades, it maintains a distant relationship with The SpongeBob Community, as the two sites previously had extensive overlap in their member bases.
History
SpongeBob Mania and SpongeBuddy were created independently of each other on June 6, 2003 and April 3, 2004 respectively. ssj4gogita4 and Spongey34 were both co-administrators on SpongeBuddy, alongside spongedude. Over the course of a year, both sites grew and flourished, offering forums and a site full of content. 10,000 posts on SpongeBuddy were reached by August 5, 2004, with a fan fiction archive being added shortly added. Moderator elections were held in December as the site continued to expand. A week after the mod elections, a power surge knocked the site offline, all of the data lost, with the most recent backup from October.
SpongeBob Mania and SpongeBuddy merged on January 17, 2005 to form SpongeBuddy Mania. The merged site continued to grow. By December 23, 2005, 80,000 posts had amassed on the forums and 800 members had been reached. The forums and site exploded in 2006, reaching a total of over 200,000 posts by the end of the year, and over 300,000 by the end of 2007. A special advent event, called the 25 Days of Christmas, was held for the first time in December 2008, in which pieces of content were released every day leading up to Christmas. 400,000 posts were reached by 2009. An overhaul of both of the site and the forums was launched in Christmas 2010. However, the forums became much less active in 2011, in an era that would later be referred to as "The Void".
On January 1, 2012, the main site was updated. The 500,000 post milestone was reached in August 2012. Thanks in large part to key endorsements by a number of major figures in the animation community, such as YouTuber Pieguyrulz, activity began to increase again on the forums heading into 2013. The forums hit 4,000 members in April 2013. 600,000 posts were exceeded on August 28, 2013, marking the first time 100k posts were made in a single year since 2007. Many of the newer members in this wave of activity also registered as members of The SpongeBob Community, and later became regulars of the latter site.
Several years after the release of SBM V6 in August 2013, the forum was moved from IPS to Xenforo in early 2019, a software with which it has remained since. While less popular now than in its peaks of activity in the late 2000s and mid-2010s, SBM remains active to this day, with its newest admin PinkPugPrincess acting as the site's unofficial figurehead.