The Future....PLEASE READ :: Twin Peaks Gazette Message Board

1995 was when I started to dabble around with HTML. One of the first sites I did was Twin Peaks related and it was called Laura's Diary, and it was hosted at Geocities (Hollywood/Lot/7675 if memory serves me right - if you don't understand that, then you are too young - LOL). I had a couple of other sites including an X-Files and a Millennium site, and Kelly and I did a movie review site.

Not long after making Laura's Diary, I found a message board and the website started getting a lot more attention and traffic.

In 1999, we upgraded the site out of Geocities and into our own hosting environment and another message board - combining our sites into one domain - 2000revue.com. It was soon after that I wanted to do something different with Laura's Diary and attempted to create a more interactive site with a mixture of real and fictitious stories regarding Twin Peaks. The project never took off but out of that we renamed the site to Twin Peaks Gazette. Meanwhile, the message board grew and grew.

Over the years, we grew quite large - I would say even the largest TP/DL board out there (granted not large in the scheme of things), but along with that growth came a lot of garmonbozia that still stings today. The site was busy, the site was exciting, and we experienced tremendous growing pains. About that same time period Kelly and I had the opportunity to take on the TP Festival, along with Amanda and Jared, which was a really cool thing (thank you, Susan, for thinking of us)!

About 4 years ago, we started noticing a noticeable dropoff in conversation around the board. Often times the posts were similar to what we saw 10 years ago and many of the long-timers were running on fumes discussing the same thing. The drama of some members was getting old and people started falling off. At the same time, Facebook started really taking off and as Facebook started to take off, I personally noticed a drop off here. Along with that, David Lynch hasn't really done much which hasn't helped. The release of TP on DVD, I thought, would've helped increase new members but did not in the end.

Personally, my own time started dwindling from the site as I became more involved with work, family and other new avenues of my life. For Kelly it was very much the same. Over the last couple of years, we've sorta just let the board run itself as Kelly and I have spent more time getting involved in Kelly's organization, Birthday Blessings, and in church.

At some point you have to read the writing on the wall and learn that all good things have a season and must come to an end. Kelly and I have been talking and have agreed that we will be closing up the board and TPG for good on January 1, 2012. Neither of us have the personal time to give the board anymore and it's unfair to current and new members.

We'd like to thank everyone for your support through the years. Many of you went through those growing pains I mentioned previously and dealt with a lot of crap. Many of those that were here at the time are no longer here or only show up once in awhile. For those of you who have been with us for many years, I would like to offer huge thank you! You were instrumental in helping to create a solid community of fans.

We'd like to also thank a couple of other folks who have been with us for many years and have been absolutely essential in helping to run the board as moderators:

Geofr111 (Geofrey) - haven't seen Geoff in a LONG time but it was always nice having him around. To Geoff - wherever you are - good luck!

Kahlanmnel (Amanda) - not sure how long Amanda has been with us but we know it's been awhile. She helped maneuver through the growing pains with us and was absolutely essential in helping us with the board and also helping to take on the Festival.

Rebel (Jeri) - wow, I think Jeri has been with us since day 1 if memory serves me right - way back in Geocities days. A huge THANK YOU for all your hard work and your commitment over the years.

So what's the next steps?

We really haven't decided yet. We wanted to give everyone notice so that you were aware of our decision. We wanted to give people plenty of time to grab stuff off the board (if you can find it) and to find new and different avenues for TP Discussion and community. There are a couple of other good boards out there, including Brian Kursar's over at www.dugpa.com.

If someone would like to pick up the torch for the board, we'd be more than happy to assist you in your new endeavor. Just let me know and we can talk.

With regards to the TPG website itself, I really hate to allow the content to just disappear - some of us (particularly Smokechezpig) put a lot of time in for that content. My current idea is simply to archive the best content and make it still accessible via www.twinpeaksgazette.com (similar to twinpeaks.org). Amanda has graciously offered to assist in this conversion.

I think that covers pretty much everything. Please understand this is not an overnight decision - but one that I've been playing around with for several months privately, and then Kelly and I in the past few weeks. We mentioned this to Amanda and Jeri a couple of weeks ago and it's taken me that time to get to the point of actually publicly posting this.

If you have any questions, feel free to reply to the topic.

It's been fun getting to know everyone over the last few years, and rest assure, we'll be around somewhere in the cloud....