Wideasleep.net
The 'Wide Asleep Network' is the series of member sites that make up the wideasleep.net domain, together with all the hosting associated with it. The network's main page, is primarily a news and portal page directing users to the primary member sites. The network was originally created by Iain Rawson who remains Admin along with Justin King, creator of TON.
Projects featured on WAN
Many mini-sites have been created after evolving from member site subsections into standalone efforts. These include Community Football, LAN Central and most recently David Randall's Dogs of Poker.
Trivia
- The name "Wide Asleep" was thought up by Justin King after a week long brainstorming session with creator Iain Rawson. It is rumoured to refer to the state in which most of the work on the network is produced.
- The network's formal name is 'Project Ourworld'
- The network's informal nickname is 'Operation Slap Dash'
- The site was originally registered as 'wideasleep.co.uk', a site which still remains to this day.
- A future project of the network, as proposed by Iain Rawson, is the parody 'wifeasleep.net' site.
- The network was originally hosted by LowestCostHost until they were bought out by DataCorridor. They were then purchased by 'ROI HOSTING' who made a complete shambles of the basic act of purchasing the company, leading to the whole site being moved onto new hosting on a server owned by Site5.com. Thus, wideasleep has moved from Houston, TX (the 'Project Imperial' datacenter, one of the largest in the world) to the site5 base, which we assume is in california. Nobody is certain why wideasleep is hosted in America when 99% of its users live in the United Kingdom.
- The first podcast released on any site on the network was by Ukmusicreview.net in June 2006.
External Links to Member Sites
- TON
- The Rocket Launcher (Removed)
- ihatemyself.org
- Kent's
- Direct Assault
- Close Your Ears (Offline)
- Dogs of Poker
History
Quoted from creator Iain Rawson: "When someone hears about this site, they often ask "what exactly is wideasleep.net?". Well the easiest way to answer that question is to give a little history of the site - where we come from and where we are going.
theonlinenet.co.uk was originally registered in october 2001 by Jay. It began following on from his successful lyrics site, and was registered as a site run by both him and Hendy. As time passed - the site grew to have a variety of writers. A variety of other sites were created around this time - partly due to the availabilty of ultra-low cost domain names and hosting through 'freenetnames' and partly because of the internet fad which would still have been quite strong around that time. At that time though we were all around 15/16 years old and had little experiance in the world of webdesign. I, as with many others including Randy and Jameson, had been taught HTML in a extra-curricular workshop that ran once a week. The concept of a project to work on tempted me, and over time I joined theonlinenet and began to work quite hard on trying to create new sections and help to get more people interested. As time passed, the number of sites grew - with various successful sites such as theofflinenet.co.uk and importantly therocketlauncher.co.uk. For a while therocketlauncher and theonlinenet were very competative, with one example of what can only be described as corporate data-theft occuring which must be documented somewhere. I've been told that this resulted in a particular meeting between certain individuals (hendy and burt was it?).
Anyway, wideasleep - the concept at least - was first coined one day in a class room when I asked Jay whether he would back an idea in which all of the existing sites were brought together somehow. At this time, each was hosted sepperately - generally on free hosts, or frequently a mix-match of ISP hosts. As such, wideasleep.co.uk was created - and was hosted on a free (at that time anyway) mac.com account. Eventually we grew beyond the capabilities of free hosting, and together with the fact that I registered wideasleep.net in early 2003, we decided to purchase hosting between us. This was all one of my 5am ideas, and lead to me frantically searching for a low cost host who would accept either Visa Electron, or Paypal (since my spending arrangements at that time were limited, yet I didnt want to rely on someone elses cards). LowestCostHost.com were the best contender, and despite various periods of time when the site was up and down (more often than a whores knickers) the site's vastly increased capabilities lead to its present state.
As such, wideasleep.net was born, and has been ever since. Lowestcosthost.com were bought by data-corridor in early 2005, who were then bought out by ROI Hosting in late 2005. With the fact that ROI Hosting were completely unable to host anything, we quickly moved hosts to site5.com where we presently remain. LCH had become an in-joke among us, and its demise can hopefully bring more success to the network.
Directions: So where are we heading at the moment? I see the sites enlargement has been reduced - many of the original sites have been lost over time, and various members have all but given up devoting their time to the processes. However we are all still in touch, and use the systems in our own various ways. Some just for email, some simply for some web storage, others with learning about php or maybe just trying to keep their sites updated. No we don't want anymore members, no we don't offer email addresses or free hosting.
So for now, I advise you to keep an eye out for more content on movievault, ukmusicreview, and of course TON as always - after all, thats where it all came from."
