MoparStyle

Summary

MoparStyle is an Internet club on the topic of Mopar vehicles. I was started by Dave Schultz on January 1, 2002, after Carl Bin Laden a few months earlier had banned him (going by the handle of Big Kahuna) from a bulletin board going by the name of Moparts, which had capitalized an upsurge of traffic after the closure of a board simply known as the Dallas Board. Dave's vision was to go beyond being a common bulletin board -- and to have MoparStyle become a Full-Featured Internet community.

History

2002

On January 1, 2002, Dave Schultz registered the domain names of MoparStyle.com and MoparStyle.net. The .com site was a HTML web site with sections on Mopar History, Mopar Technical Papers, and Mopar Drag Racing. The .net site was a bulletin board use the brand new vBulletin version 1.01, which instead of having all threads in one big forum as Moparts had, it categorized the site into forums for each body style, drag racing, and repairs. On the forums, Dave originally went by the handle of BK, which was short for Big Kahuna. Additionally, BK created forums for off-topic posts, which were forbidden at Moparts. The Tavern was for just getting together to talk about whatever, the Chapel for Christian discussions, and a Political forum.

MoparStyle was an immediate success -- with over 1,000 new members in the first 3 months, many being banned from Moparts.

The first logo was BK's 71 6-pack 4-speed Super Bee, but that was quickly replaced with the 63 Chrysler Turbine.

Many of the history and technical articles on the .com site were written by the membership.

2003

Initially, MoparStyle rented server space with three different web hosts in the first year -- but server speed was slow for a full-featured site sharing a server with so many others. In 2003, MoparStyle bought it's own server, which was located in a server hotel in New Jersey.

It was then that the .com and .net domains were combined, and the various sections of the communities were accessed as sub-domains, or through a sub directory. IE: the forums were moparstyle.com/forums, the history was moparstyle.com/history, the technical was moparstyle.com/technical...

In 2003, BK bought a Superbird Pro-Mod called the Texas Big Bird to help promote the community after members felt that they and outside sponsors would help finance it. However, sponsorship really never materialized, and the car was sold the next year.

2004

In 2004, MoparStyle added a photo album site and a classified ad site to the community, and that was the first year of the Photo car Show. 2004 is also the year MoparStyle offered an annual premium membership called XtraStyle in levels of Platinum ($100), Gold ($50), Silver ($25), and a Lifetime ($200). This was to offset the expense (Server, bandwidth, 24/7 server monitoring and upgrades, software licenses ...) approximately $10,000 a year for running a Full-Featured site. For this the XtraStylers would receive extra benefits and forums exclusive to them. The Political forum got too hot to stay in the public forums -- and so it became one of the Xtra Style Forums.

2005

In 2005, MoparStyle needed a server with more horsepower, and so we bought a new one and migrated to it. We also converted from the GeoSpace classified ad software to PhotoPost -- as it was able to integrate with the forum's membership database.

2006

By 2006, MoparStyle was on its first of four Portal applications, and the History, Technical, and racing papers were converted to a consistent "look & Feel" between the different areas of the domain. MoparStyle had a wide selection of skins, or viewing styles for these areas of the site.

2007

2007 was a busy year for a couple of reasons, first MoparStyle converted to a more advanced Portal. This Portal allowed for a whole lot more features and a more consistent look over the white papers (technical, history, racing, tools, etc.). It is also the year that MoparStyle was contacted by the lawyers at Daimler-Chrysler and told we'd be sued if we didn't take Mopar out of our name, or get licensed to use it. The entire site and domain needed to be converted. MoparStyle was renamed MoPower Style. Finally, we had again outgrown our server, and bought a new one -- which is located in Toronto, Canada.

2008

In mid 2008, the database for the domain was 6 1/2 years old, bloated, and frankly a rat's nest from dozens of upgrades and bridges to other applications to use the member database. Since Daimler had sold Chrysler, BK made the decision to start over with a clean sheet of paper, with a new installation of all of the applications in a fresh domain -- with the original name of MoparStyle.com.

Since vBulletin now came with its own photo Album, PhotoPost's photo album was not installed.

A new Portal application was used because of the older version becoming a Hacker's Highway -- and it wouldn't accommodate all of the white papers -- so they were lost.

BK changed his handle to Old Hippie

Members had to re-register -- and we lost quite a bit of the membership in the confusion of name changes twice in two years.

XtraStyle became simply known as Premium Membership, and the cost reduced to a one time charge of $25 for life of their membership. This was done in the hope of a higher percentage (less than 1% had become XtraStyle members) would become Premium Members, so that more people would contribute less toward the expenses of running the site -- but that turned out to be a misjudgment.

2009

In May of 2009, all of the applications were upgraded to the latest versions. The biggest project ever for MoparStyle was this MoparWiki. It is hoped that many MoparStlye members will pitch in and help create the largest repository of Mopar knowledge. It is an ambitious project to share information on all things Mopar. Mopar cars and trucks, Mopar people, Mopars in racing, Mopar Vendors, Mopar Technical How Toos, Mopar reference charts, ...

Future

• To get a roll going on the MoparWiki, so that other members will start to participate. I believe it to be like dominoes falling with membership contributions once we get a rolling start. History on Mopar People like Walter P. Chrysler, Virgil Exner, Richard Petty, Ronnie Sox, Don Garlits, Mr. Norm Kause; Mopar Makes like Chrysler, Imperial, Desoto, Dodge, Plymouth, Nash, Hudson, American Motors, Maxwell, and Chamlers; Mopar vendors like Indy Cylinder Head, Mancini Racing, Laytons; Models like the Magnum, Daytona, Viper; Mopar Clubs & Mopar Magazines; Mopar body type like A-Body, B-Body, C=Body, D-Body, E-Body, F-Body, J-Body, M-Body, LXBody, R-Body, K=Car; and tech papers on what to do the first time you go to the drag strip to Rebuilding a Carter AFB Carburetor.
• To get more and more people to use the Free Classified Ad Site, including Mopar Vendors
• More participation on the forums
• Reinstalling the PhotoPost Photo Albums
• Convince members to help promote the Community with wearing a MoparStyle T-shirt or Sweatshirt to Mopar events
• Convince more members how simple it is to maintain a web site for their club, car, race team -- and to have a RSS of MoparStyle thread on their web site