Ezboard

Infobox Website

name = ezboard
favicon =



caption = The ezboard homepage as of August 31, 2005
url = http://www.ezboard.com
commercial = Yes
type = Bulletin Board System
registration = Required for creating forums and posting;
Admin optional for posting on Gold Community boards
owner = ezboard, Inc.
author = Vanchau Nguyen
launch date =
current status = Moved to Yuku
revenue =

ezboard, Inc., based in San Francisco, California, United States, is a provider of free and paid hosted Internet forums.

Description

[http://www.ezboard.com ezboard] was a provider of a free hosted message board for use by webmasters and message board administrators who have little to no experience running a web site. Along with having premade ezboard templated and a color picking tool, the ezboard community also supports volunteers who will help other users customize their ezboards.

ezboard offers free and paid accounts for both boards and users. The free accounts are supported through advertisements, and have fewer features in regards to customization and board management. Paid members are called "ezSupporters", while paid message boards are referred to as "Gold boards". Accounts can either be local (deprecated) and tied to a specific board, or global, which can be used for posting across the entire ezboard network.

ezboard and Yuku

Yuku is the new version of ezboard. [http://www.yuku.com/home/ezboardhome] It has been alpha/beta software since it was first unveiled at DEMOfall 2005 [http://www.demo.com/demonstrators/demo2005fall/55021.php] . On January 9, 2008, it was confirmed that Yuku is "coming out of beta", although a date has not been set. [ [http://support.yuku.com/topic/4831 Is this For Real? (Yuku PM)] ]

As of January 8, 2008, it has been confirmed that all ezboard communities will be moving to Yuku. However, board owners can ask for a delay in the migration process. [ [http://support.yuku.com/topic/4735 Undesired migration to Yuku] ]

As of January 15, 2008, the ezboard home page is now redirecting to a Yuku Welcome page. A link allows users to login to ezboard.

EzBoard has now switched all its boards to Yuku.

ezboard history

ezboard is a web application, created in 1998 by Vanchau Nguyen. One of the earliest user-customisable online message board providers, it quickly grew. At its peak, it was a highly ranked Alexa site, but its Alexa ranking has been in steady decline since 2003, ranking at 717 on April 24, 2007.

In 2001 ezboard launched their first CSC (Community-Supported Communities) product, i.e. a paid version of ezboard without advertisements. This later split into CSC Blue and CSC Gold. CSC Blue removed intrusive advertising popups but retained advertising banners for a fixed price, while CSC Gold was 100% ad-free with extra features, but at a variable cost. It was reported that some very large ezboards paid the fixed price for CSC Blue, which ultimately proved to be an unprofitable product. ezboard announced that as of August 31, 2001 they would no longer renew CSC Blue boards. [ [http://p094.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=407.topic As of August 31st we will no longer renew Blue CSC boards] ]

In 2002 ezboard introduced image hosting, which was provided by a third party and not in-house by ezboard. Announcements followed, which showed the image hosting deal to be an unfortunate disaster. [ [http://p094.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=911.topic Important Image Hosting Announcement] ] [ [http://p094.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=914.topic Yet another Image Hosting Announcement - Very Important!] ] [ [http://p094.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=930.topic 3-20-02 Image Hosting Update] ] Eventually, the parent company filed for bankruptcy, leaving ezboard to continue operation of the image hosting in-house, while developing a new hosting product in parallel. [ [http://p094.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=968.topic Important Announcement About Image Hosting] ] A later announcement highlighted a miscommunication between ezboard staff and moderators with an admission that the image hosting service had been a bad decision. [ [http://p094.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=1485.topic Important Image Hosting Announcement 5/17/02] ]

On October 22, 2002, ezboard version 7.0 was released. This included a number of changes to free boards, which were met with negative comments from free board administrators. [ [http://p094.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=990.topic Information about ver 7.0 HERE!!!] ] [ [http://p094.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=1133.topic ATTENTION: for everyone wanting to vent] ] 7.0 also included enhanced user profiles, a redesigned web site and a new-look control center.

On December 10, 2002, ezboard version 7.1 was released, which included the ezPost tool. This provided users with fast access to useful posting features, such as changing font sizes and inserting links. However, some admins were unhappy that users could now post in a variety of fonts and colors, thereby altering the look and feel of their boards. This divided feedback was very common on ezboard due to the large number of users. [ [http://p080.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=1264.topic How Can We Improve the 7.1 Features?] ]

On March 11, 2003, ezboard version 7.2 was released. [ [http://p080.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=1317.topic 7.2 release notes] ] This was the last version of the core ezboard product to contain new features for nearly four years. After 7.2, various patches were applied to other areas of the ezboard service, such as spellcheck [ [http://p080.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=1395.topic Spell Checker BETA out to all servers] ] , free gold [ [http://p080.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=1398.topic FREE GOLD Promotion F.A.Q.] ] , meetup [ [http://p080.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=1405.topic Meetup & ezboard] ] , and network performance and improvements [ [http://p080.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=1439.topic Network Performance and Improvements] ] .

On March 4, 2004, Robert Labatt was appointed as ezboard's new CEO. [ [http://p080.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=1437.topic ezboard Names New CEO - Robert Labatt] ] Vanchau Nguyen later chose to leave ezboard but remained on the Board of Directors. [ [http://www.ezboard.com/corporate/corp_team.html Corporate Team] ] It is not known exactly when Vanchau left, but it is thought to be sometime in 2004 due to replies to help forum posts on the subject. Due to the active nature of the ezboard help forums and the limit of 20 pages of posts per forum, these posts have long since been deleted.

On March 14, 2005, ezboard 7.32 was released. [ [http://p080.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=1634.topic ezboard version 7.32] ] This is the most recent numbered version to be released to all servers, although patches have been released since then.

On February 28, 2007, ezboard staff posted about a new version of ezboard - 7.33. [ [http://p066.ezboard.com/fckerrtestfrm1.showMessage?topicID=7.topic Testing version 7.33 on p066] ] Although this was primarily to compile the patches made since version 7.32, several small enhancements were also mentioned - the first to the message boards since version 7.2, released in March 11, 2003. Users did not expect this move as moderators had often stated that ezboard would no longer be updated. On May 1, 2007, these changes were officially announced, although there was no mention of 7.33. [ [http://p079.ezboard.com/fezboardimportantannouncements.showMessage?topicID=562.topic Free Gold Promotion, Quick Reply feature and more...] ] Therefore, the latest version of ezboard is still 7.32.

Technology

ezboard was written in Smalltalk VisualWorks 3.1 by Vanchau Nguyen with Jay O'Conner [ [http://www.mojowire.com/EzBoard-EnterpriseLinuxMag.html Enterprise Linux Online] ] . Originally, there was no database used on the back-end, but instead a build-in flat-file object-oriented datastore (BOSS) which together with the overall power of the Smalltalk language made the code fast and compact for the time. Later a need to move forward to a more stable RDBMS-based solution became apparent [ [http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.smalltalk/browse_thread/thread/1a4e1989c5cd6f0/0ddd572dac234449? BOSS Checksum?] ] . In 2003, a mySQL based database backend and Smalltalk interface code was created by Jordan Bortz. It was completed in 2003 and went online in 2004, solving the message corruption problem and boosting performance.

Ezboard's creator, Vanchau Nguyen, said he had "bet his company, and his future, on Cincom Smalltalk". He also mentions ezboard's userbase, listed as having nearly 2 million registered users. [ [http://www.cincom.com/common/success-stories/profiles/ezboarddetail.html Cincom Smalltalk - ezboard.com] ]

One of the reasons cited by ezboard for writing the new Yuku software was due to the ezboard codebase becoming virtually unmaintainable. However, the underlying technology, Smalltalk, was also given as a limitation of the ezboard service. This is something that Cincom, the vendor of Smalltalk, denies. [ [http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3319369309 Cincom Smalltalk - Correcting a Misconception] ] [ [http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3331633450 Cincom Smalltalk - Ezboard gets it wrong again] ]

ezboard cracked

On May 31, 2005, the Smalltalk software on ezboard was cracked, causing many boards to lose information, become inaccessible, or be completely wiped. ezboard stated [ [http://web.archive.org/web/20060818144748/http://p080.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=1633.topic Recent ezboard problems (6/2/05 update)] ] that all historical post data and a significant amount of backup data was erased. Over the next month, some data that had been lost on ezboard was recovered; ezboard stating that there was some data from about 4000 non-Gold communities that had been restored. [ [http://web.archive.org/web/20060818184319/http://p080.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm29.showMessage?topicID=1612.topic ezboard Attack Update - 06/15/05] ] ezboard has never stated precisely what proportion of data was lost and what was restored.

On June 3, 2005, CEO Robert Labatt stated that "I can tell you that we have suspects, we have evidence and we are working with the FBI. I can also tell you that we will be working to have the attacker punished to the full extent of the law." This story was picked up by the technical press. [ [http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/060805-ezboard-hack.html?nl Bulletin board hoster loses postings in hacker attack] ]

On August 30, 2007, ezboard, Inc. confirmed that two years after getting the FBI involved, offering a $5000 reward and despite having evidence, "the hacker remained uncaught". [http://sandysprofileforum.yuku.com/reply/22566/t/The-hacker.html#reply-22566]

At the time of the attack, ezboard stated that since 1999, "2.2 million boards have been created". It is unknown how many were active at this time, as ezboard declined to provide specific numbers. [ [http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39203036,00.htm Cyberattack strikes online forum] ]

A similar incident occurred in mid 2001, while ezboard was run by Vanchau Nguyen. An error occurred during a scheduled update, which resulted in a widespread loss of data and forums across the ezboard network. This problem was quickly addressed by Vanchau and his staff, who admitted that the fault was their own and they were doing all they could to undo the damage. Within a week, almost all boards had been completely restored, with little to no further errors, lag or downtime, save for minor inconveniences such as posts appearing out of order in various forums. Fact|date=March 2008

References

External links

* [http://www.ezboard.com/ ezboard home page]
* [http://www.yuku.com/ Yuku home page]