Originally posted by Higsby

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Acmlm's Board and Jul were really my first big steps into the online world, and as cheesy as it sounds I feel like I owe the communities credit for helping me become who I am today. I learned a lot about a lot of things while reading through the all-encompassing forums that the boards possessed, and most importantly I think they contributed greatly to my ability to communicate intelligibly. I wanted to be a part of the community, and as such I quickly got over my desire to talk in leet speak and broken sentences. For the person who has read less novels than you can count with fingers on your hands, I'd say my English language ability is pretty darn good.

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It certainly doesn't hint at you being ESL, so yes, I'd say it's quite good

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It's a shame that message boards have been left in such a strange state of limbo though, with social networking taking away many of the oldbies, and newbies not having much of a desire to join old-school message boards because of such modern platforms. When I got my first computer in 2003 message boards were where it was at, and I'll always be happy that I was able to grow up during that time and experience them in their prime.

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I first arrived here in 2001 and it was a much difference scene on the internet in general; the era of social media has done a lot to connect us more than before, but at the same time everything feels even more divided. I also think I've had to revise my thoughts about it killing off forums, in that it isn't so much that as it was everyone having to get jobs, lives, etc., and having a much larger level of responsibility. Social media lends itself to rapid use, as opposed to the much larger time commitment involved in reading a thread, replying...

Originally posted by Xenesis

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The drama years seem so far away now.

Happy decade!

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The drama was always temporary; it feels like there was some new controversy or debate raging on from every year between 2002 and 2010, before it all just sort of ended as activity wound down and we collectively grew up and matured.

But you know what they say; time heals all (most) wounds...

Originally posted by Sanqui

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To this day I still think of Jul as my home on the internet. Happy birthday.

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Same, really, but that comes with being part of a place for over half your life, in my case. I'm always glad that, if nothing else, this place is a port in the storm, and I'd like to keep it that way.

Originally posted by Nyanners

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Wow, 10 years is pretty solid.

Glad to have been about as inactive as I might be, there's a lot of good people here.

I don't know many places on the internet with the vibe this place has.

Happy longevity!

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You can always be more active

As for vibes, well... Every community is different in that way, just from having different people in it. As the people make the community, and every person is different...

Originally posted by RanAS

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Happy birthday to Jul! In July also! Jul's anniversary is in July...heh, was this intentional or was it just a coincidence?

This has been sort of where my internet presence really started as well (though I guess that title goes more to TCRF), and I'm happy that of all places it was this one.

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Well, Jul wasn't always Jul. Here's an impromptu history lesson for you:

2001-2004: Acmlm's Board, "incarnation 1". (There were a lot of spinoff boards based on Acmlmboard that didn't go anywhere, too; it'd be interesting to see how many of those are still around, if any.)
2004-2005: Acmlm's Board, "incarnation 2". (The Acmlmboard craze is dying off, especially with the rise of other free board softwares (i.e. phpbb))
2005-2006: Acmlm's Board, "incarnation 3". This is the one that I ran (after destroying the earlier one "accidentally", oops).
2006-2007: Acmlm's Board II, "incarnation 4", running on "Acmlmboard 2" (unfinished, of course). This is now board2, after Acmlm left and we split.
2007-now: Jul.

Now for the other side of that history:

Justus League, the original, was started in 2006; it was a private forum running on the same host as Acmlm's Board v3. This was actually fully private and invite-only, and was seen as both a private space but also an escape from the low quality/spam that was mostly on the public boards. This one went down when the split to board2 happened, but it never got big (and wasn't intended to).

Justus League 2, this one, was made in ... 2007! It's actually the birthday we're celebrating here. It was another closed, private forum; I believe it was even hosted on a different site at the time, because blackhole89 (ABII server owner) and I were... not on good terms. Eventually, the split happened, and the people using board2 needed a new home. So, Justus League became Jul, and registrations were made public and open. You can actually see that if you go to the member list; registrations are really quiet/rare until about the 23rd of July, when they went public (and news spread).

"Justus League" was meant as a pun on the Justice League; the boards were private, so they were for "just us". When that changed, it didn't make much sense to keep calling them that, so it eventually turned into "Jul", taking the Ju from Justus and the L from League. The July (and Christmas) references are purely coincidental.



There's a lot more that could be written about the history of these forums, and probably my part in it; but for now, this should explain it, if in more detail than you might have wanted.

Originally posted by Nin★Collin

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Happy birthday Jul! Hard to believe this place is 10 years old.

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Neat.


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(Lv 234 with 198611713 EXP)

I should probably add that the name change to Jul didn't happen immediately; it was still JL2 for a while after it opened.

Anyway, here are some old header images, before the "triangle tree" became the de facto one we use:








This one is the original-resolution "triangle tree"; the one used in the banner proper was rendered much larger, and then resized for the anti-aliasing effect. Fun fact: The original version was also rather pastel, not grayscale.


This one just looks neat and was used for a little while.


The banner used to be a lot more dynamic, and we'd change it for Christmas and other random junk:








The "Night" theme that Jul uses is also modified somewhat from the original. The background used to be this, for example:


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(Lv 234 with 198625449 EXP)

Originally posted by Stigandr

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Yep, this is a thing.

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I don't have any plans to let this place vanish, so no worries there. As for the first part... everyone was that way. It was part of growing up. Some of us were just lucky enough to do it before we found ourselves here, heh.

Originally posted by Ninji

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I was 12 years old when I joined, and mostly just interested in programming (though I was awful at it back then) and Nintendo games.

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I'd like to believe that we were, if nothing else, instrumental in helping you get past your fear of Banzai Bills.

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(Lv 234 with 198653036 EXP)

On a side note, the official music for the occasion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2zAw1jdAow

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(Lv 234 with 198666523 EXP)