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Blog moved

Serge Baranovsky — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:09:00 GMT

My new blog URL is http://sergeb.com/blog/

New feed is http://feedproxy.google.com/SergeB

vbCity is 10 years old

Serge Baranovsky — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:39:00 GMT

vbCity turned 10 years last week - pretty darn long time! I still pretty much refuse to admit I've been running it for THAT long :)

I posted this a week ago in the vbCity forums and also wanted to share via the blog.

Today, June 25th, 2008 vbCity turns 10 years old!
It is hard to believe that this day 10 (!) years ago I have uploaded first page to host free PrettyCode.Print tool folks in the comp.lang.basic.visual newsgroup asked me to share with them.

A week later I decided to post few more pages with tips and trick, mostly the ones I kept answering in the newsgroup, so I could save time and send to the site.

I kept adding new tips and code, maintained list of free developer tools, VB sites and VB libraries available on the Net. That was very different time, different Internet, we were not as spoiled by the ease of Internet back then, and Google was known to very limited circle of people as Stanford University project under google.stanford.edu

That was static HTML site hosted for free on Geocities, the site was called Free Visual Basic Resources from Serge Baranovsky (yes, I know, how very original of me ) and the URL used to be http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Hills/9086/default.html (had to Google for this one )

I was surprised this is still up - http://www.vbwire.com/brief.asp?591 - dated 12/28/1998

Almost a year later, April 8th, 1999, the vbcity.com domain has become available again (it was previously registered but not used) and I registered it, moved the site to new (paid) hosting, migrated the whole site to ASP and moved it to vbcity.com

Later in 1999 I registered vbcity.net domain and few months later decided to offer a free host email service and give away @vbcity.net email addresses to the visitors. What a disaster that idea turned into! I had to shut down the service 2 years later.

Early in 2001 as number of the site visitors has grown fairly big, I figured that'd be enough to get some of the visitors to participate in the site activities. So I decided to add forum to vbCity (community they call it nowadays...)

I wasn't happy with a couple of very basic ASP based forum scripts available back then. I wanted better features that were only available in vBulletin, a PHP based forum software. And I, of course, wouldn't use PHP for the web site, no way, that wouldn't be cool, would it?

So, few months later, April 3rd, 2001, I finished writing the forum software integrated into the vbCity.com web site. Very first post the night I first uploaded forum scripts to the site - http://www.vbcity.com/forums/topic.asp?tid=62 - notice the "we" in my posts? I was trying to create an impression there is more than just "I" behind this

With the addition of the forum, new, community, era of vbCity has started, the happiest time for me. vbCity finally turned from one-way into two-way communication. I was able to talk to the visitors, and the visitors quicky were becoming members and were enjoying the opportunity to socialize with other members.

Summer 2001 - we introduced monthly Helper of the Month (HOTM) award - http://vbcity.com/forums/topic.asp?tid=531 - yes, it's been around for 7 years!

Interesting that Steven Sartain won the very first award and the second month too even though his "points" were reset after winning the first month. We had to adjust the contest rules to give others a chance of winning

October 2001 - Steven Sartain "motivated" me into launching VBCity.NET web site - a sister site that was dedicated to .NET - http://vbcity.com/forums/topic.asp?tid=974 - later changed its name to DevCity.NET. The VBCity.NET web site we launched was running on very first beta of ASP.NET (or was it an alpha?). Steve was all hyped up about the new coolest MS thing called .NET which wasn't even released yet and of which I was a bit skeptic. Still I had to learn it quickly as we decided the .NET site should run ... well ... on .NET... And I got to like the new platform pretty quickly.

First couple of months I was answering most questions in the forums to keep them going. With launch of DevCity.NET and adding new forum features each week I wouldn't be able to take care of all growing posts anymore. Luckily the new members were getting more and more involved into helping other community members, answering their questions. That wasn't good enough though.

From the very beginning of the forum I was working to make sure that every vbCity post is answered. With me concentrated on the site improvement other members would only post into threads that they knew how to help. So I had to challenge the whole community - http://vbcity.com/forums/topic.asp?tid=1342 - if within a week no one finds solution to the 4 most interesting and difficult unanswered threads I picked, I would answer them all and reduce points for all community members! My intent was to show that every question can be answered and even if one has to do a research it is great too as one learns something new. A confession time ... I only knew solution to 2 out of 4 threads, and I would've had to research on the other two, but I was certain I would've kept my promise and reduced the points... I was sure that the questions will be taken care of before the deadline - exactly what happened. The challenge worked out well - most every new thread since then would attract attention and that has grown into something that later got defined as part of the "vbCity spirit".

Few threads absolutely must be mentioned:

Beware - I am VB.Net Activated (Vernon Basil Dotnet's Diary) - http://www.vbcity.com/forums/topic.asp?tid=23712 - a 120+ post thread contributed by vbCity folks migrating to .NET experience diary early in 2003 The whole thread is a very entertaining reading but these by Ged are pearls - "goose workaround" classics - http://www.vbcity.com/forums/goto.asp?show=reply&rid=86891 and http://www.vbcity.com/forums/goto.asp?show=reply&rid=87150

Edward's "VBcityO BoxOffice presents ... Radiator" post on Ged's winning HOTM - http://www.vbcity.com/forums/goto.asp?show=reply&rid=114948

I could keep going for few more hours (days actually) with my vbCity memories of the first 10 years But I will stop right here and let you fill in the blanks with your memories...

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And today we are at 220,000+ members and 650,000+ posts...

Many great people came through vbCity, most stayed, some went and created they own sites or communities. I still remember names of most every active vbCity member and Leader.

Thank you all members, vbCity Leaders, those present and past, for the dedication and love!

These were the best 10 years of my life!

I love you all!

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Scott Hanselman and Fight Diabetes walk

Serge Baranovsky — Mon, 21 May 2007 18:25:00 GMT

Scott Hanselman is one of the most humble .NET community leaders I have met. And althought I'm not as expressive as Mark Miller I have huge deal of respect for Scott as a person and professional.

Please join me in helping Team Hanselman to reach their goal on a great cause - Fight Diabetes !

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TeamHanselmanAndDiabetesWalk2007.aspx

ApexSQL and vbCity giveaway - 50 copies of ApexSQL Code tool!

Serge Baranovsky — Mon, 21 May 2007 18:09:00 GMT

This month we are having biggest giveaway ever at vbCity - 50(!) licenses of ApexSQL Code to the top forum posters in May.

For details see » forum post «

Been busy with dev.net.ua

Serge Baranovsky — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 03:08:00 GMT

I have been working for over two months setting up new community site http://dev.net.ua - Ukrainian Developer Community. It went live on November 1st. You may not believe it but dev.net.ua is first Ukrainian developer community site, for Microsoft technologies anyway.

My apologies if I was not very responsive - you know I do these things in between my other jobs..

vbfeeds.com was down on Sunday but it is back up and running fine

Serge Baranovsky — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 01:52:00 GMT

vbfeeds.com subscribers may have noticed the site was down for about 24 hours. Hopefully it wasn't much of inconvenience.

VB Feeds was running on SQL 2005 Beta 2 which expired in this month. I knew that's coming but as usual many things that required immediate attention pushed moving VB Feeds to another box with SQL 2005 RTM down the list.

It is done now - I moved the site on Monday night and it is running fine.

I apologize for the downtime.

Win up to $5000 - Visual Studio Extensibility Contest

Serge Baranovsky — Mon, 22 May 2006 03:47:00 GMT

vbCity is part of a contest with lots of valuable prizes! » read more «

New VB related feeds added to VBFeeds.com

Serge Baranovsky — Sat, 06 May 2006 02:35:00 GMT

Haven't updated you on VBFeeds.com status in a while - my apologies.

The feeds were added recently into the aggregation list - Microsoft XML Team's Blog (they have regular posts about VB and LINQ) and Brian Beckman - great posts on VB9 and LINQ.

And just last night I added Geoff Appleby's Blog - Geoff is VB.NET MVP and a nice fella all around :) - there is plenty of VB and .NET stuff on his blog.

Hopefully this helps to keep you connected ;-)

vbfeeds.com RSS was broken ... and it's fixed now

Serge Baranovsky — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 01:48:00 GMT

vbfeeds.com RSS was broken for the last few days... Thanks to Richard Laniel for pointing that out. I was too busy in the last week and didn't have time to read my Bloglines.

What happened is there was one post that is over 90K and it turned the RSS feed over 200K - I fixed the feed by removing the offending post.

So, vbfeeds.com RSS is back and working fine ... for now :) And I added on my list to implement the feed/size validation.

Announcing new web site - vbfeeds.com

Serge Baranovsky — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 05:21:00 GMT

The idea of the new web site - vb:feeds - http://vbfeeds.com - was inspired by DelphiFeeds.com I stumbled upon last month.

So, I decided to build a web site that would syndicate select web feeds with Visual Basic/.NET related content. But I went further - all posts are screened for content and only the technical ones make it to http://vbfeeds.com. The approved content then is published on the site as well as exposed via a single web feed. Be sure you will not see on vb:feeds posts like my recent one.

The basic aggregation idea is not new at all, take .NET Weblog Archive for example. I subscribed to their feed over a year ago but unsubscribed a couple of weeks later as they collect hundreds of posts daily (impossible to read through) and the biggest problem is that many of those hundreds have very little to do with .NET.

In the past couple of weeks I shared the vb:feeds web site with vbCity Leaders and most owners of the blogs being syndicated at the site. And so far the feedback was very encouraging. Here are some comments:

Mike McIntyre: The best compliment I can give you is that I am starting to depend on this site.

Ged Mead: I like the idea .... even though it meant that I just spent another 30 minutes reading blogs that I didn't mean to ! :-}

Mark Dryden: In short, a terrific idea... Wading through a blogger's progress through a specific game, restaurant reviews and bigging up new gadget purchases generally leads to an unsubcribe from me - therefore, pure technical content is a BIG plus.

Jay Roxe: I think this is a fantastic resource and I'm glad to see that you're putting it together.

vb:feeds is the first of the projects that went live which I developed using ASP.NET 2.0, VB2005 and SQL2005 – I love how Whidbey is shaping up in the August CTP and RC1 – real pleasure to use it! I haven't had so much fun with Visual Studio since VB6 :)

Things to do - site search, grouping, tagging, rating posts and such.

What do you think about the idea in general? What do you like about it and what don't? What features you would like to see added? What are VB related feeds you know of that I may've missed?

Please post your feedback in this blog comments or on the vb:feeds support forum.

vb:feeds - http://vbfeeds.com