The NeoVVL Owners Club was initially established in 2005 when the boss of the forum heard about the NeoVVL engine. At the time the NeoVVL engine was pretty new to the UK and very few had heard about it. After searching for research there was not the best amount of information and certainly not a dedicated owners club for it. So the idea spun and a search revealed that NeoVVL.com available. These were purchased and the forum software was installed. As it was the intention to keep the costs low as the NeoVVL Owners Club was aimed to be a free non-advertisement community the hosting was purchased from the US as UK hosting companies charged through the roof and always limited to what you could do with it. As of October 2018 it was decided to allow Google Adsense to generate some revenue to allow to keep it economical to run the site.
Around July-ish 2007, the forum was installed and we went live. We had initially used PHPBB 2 software. This package included hundreds of modifications for ease of use and enhancements. Unfortunately we had a turbulent ride with this and the forum was constantly plagued with problems. The biggest issue was with Spam and the NeoVVL Owners Club was constantly being bombarded with all the spam crap of the day. Many attempts to repair the forum failed. In December 2007, the owner decided to re-design and install new forum software. A few test runs were done behind the scenes but unfortunately the old forum Database was just not working correctly with the new forum software so the decision was made to start from scratch.
So the beginning of January 2008 the test forum was deleted and the software installed again on a brand new Database. We had decided to use the phpBB 3 software which was a step up from the old forum. The old select usernames were manually in putted into the new new database. Unfortunately we had lost all the old posts so we appeared brand new. We had installed a selected few enhancements for the forum and done some intensive testing. All the tests were successful and we were ready to roll.
On January 19th 2008, the forum went live to the public with a new look and logo. The main thing we resolved was no Spamming on the forum. As the old forum was spammed this really hit bad on the clubs reputation. We had noticed there was competition of a new NeoVVL forum so this was the final opportunity to make this forum the most successful one out there. A lot of advertisement was done through out the web and a few of our old users were still on the club made posts and provided info on there conversions. Slowly the user count started to climb and around February time us and the forum content started to show on the search engines. It took 3 months for the forum to reach around 200 posts and 100 users. By the end of 2008 we really started to blossom and our reputation started to increased and we have grown to a successful worldwide community for NeoVVL enthusiasts and we aim to keep it like that for the future.
October 21st seen us move from our long term hosting provider and run our own dedicated server which gives us the freedom and unlimited bandwidth to allow for the forum to continue to grow without the loss of performance. On 11th January 2015, the forum underwent a brand new software update and sanitization to optimise the database, as did the main content site. This also allowed for more mobile friendly features.
A decision was made to bring the website down around 2022 due to server failures, due to some new change in circumstances the website was put back online in May 2024 with limited functionality with old content added to new software.
On the last note we wish to thank all the registered users who have contributed to the forum. The NeoVVL Owners Club would not be a successful community without you and we hope to continue with our success in the future.
Thank you
The NeoVVL Owners Club