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Major Milestones in the history of CLUAS.com

A quick run down on key dates in the evolution of the CLUAS website...

1999

May 1999 The CLUAS website is launched as a hobby site by Eoghan O'Neill. Originally CLUAS offered not just music articles but film and theatre reviews as well as some travel writing. Over the years however CLUAS has evolved into a webzine focused on indie music.
July 1999 The CLUAS.com Discussion Board is launched.
Aug 1999 The CLUAS MP3 section is launched, offering the first digital music programme to unsigned Irish acts. The first act featured was Aengus Devine. In the coming years over 40 unsigned Irish acts went on to be featured in the CLUAS MP3 section.
November 1999 The first CLUAS newsletter is sent out to an initial subscriber base of 77. To date over 4000 people have subscribed to the CLUAS email newsletter.
December 1999 The first CLUAS gig takes place in the Isaac Butt venue in Dublin. On the bill were Charis, Aengus Devine and Stoat.
December 1999 The results of the first ever CLUAS.com end of year readers poll are published. The results also contained categories for the best songs and films of the nineties.

2000

January 2000 CLUAS broadcasts its second concert in Isaac Butt's live over the internet. CLUAS was the first site in Ireland to broadcast unsigned Irish acts live over the internet.
March 2000 The first CLUAS writer meet-up takes place in the Long Hall pub, Dublin.
Sept 2000 CLUAS.com wins a Golden Spider for the ?Best Personal Site'

2001

October 2001 CLUAS is shortlisted for the 2001 Golden Spider in the ?Readers Award? category. CLUAS however does not win the award, coming second only to the Eircom.net portal.
November 2001 The CLUAS.com Discussion Board is relaunched using the open source code developed by the Snitz community (check out a selection of the most memorable discussions that took place between 2001 and 2004 on the discussion board).
November 2001 CLUAS hosts The Walls live in Whelan's. The Walls dedicate their performance to Mic Christopher who died earlier in the day. CLUAS broadcasts the concert live on the internet, audio and video.
December 2001 The CLUAS end of year Readers' party takes place in Whelan's with The Frames, Damien Rice, The Walls, Rodrigo y Gabriela all on the bill. Over IR?6500 was raised at the concert for Concern's Afghanistan campaign. The concert was also broadcast live over the internet, both audio and video.

2002

June 2002 CLUAS passes the 200,000 threshold for monthly page impressions for the first time.
July 2002 The CLUAS discussion board got hacked by a Turkish hacker! However no serious damage was done (as the discussion board database is backed up regularly) although any messages posted in the four days up to 29 July 2002 were lost.

2003

July 2003 The CLUAS website is not accessible for three days starting on 31 July 2003 as its web hosting company was victim of a 'Distributed Denial of Service' (DDoS) attack rendering CLUAS and other websites inaccessible. In many quarters a DDoS is considered as an act of 'cyber-terrorism' and the FBI were accordingly investigated this attack!

2004

January 2004 The CLUAS writers mailing list is launched allowing the CLUAS writer community to keep in touch with each other more easily.
April 2004 CLUAS opens the polls for readers to vote for their top 50 Irish albums of all time. The results are published on the day of CLUAS.com's 5th birthday.
May 2004 CLUAS marks the occasion of its firth birthday with a concert in Whelan's featuring Bell X1, Republic of Loose, Dave Couse, Anne Scott. Over ?5000 Euros are raised at the event for Warchild.
October 2004 Two new sections are added  to CLUAS.com:
-> The CLUAS 'Gigs of the fortnight'
-> The CLUAS Opinion section is launched with a provocative piece from Aidan Curran on the state of the Irish music scene.

2005

June 2005 Breaking with its tradition, CLUAS - in order to cover costs associated with hosting of the website - starts generating some modest revenues by including text advertisements on the website (from the Google "Adsense" program) and securing commissions from referred sales (through Amazon.co.uk's referral program).
October 2005 A new section with profiles of individual CLUAS writers is launched
November 2005 CLUAS reaches out to China! A new CLUAS column 'The Beijing Beat' is launched, written by Mark Godfrey's, CLUAS.coms's Beijing-based writer.
December 2005 A powerful new search page is launched on the CLUAS site that allows readers to search through the entire CLUAS archive.

2006

January 2006 The 'French Letter' column, written by Paris-based CLUAS writer Aidan Curran is launched.
April 2006 A redesigned of the CLUAS home page is launched making easier to navigate the site and for visitors to quickly see the latest additions to the site.
May 2006 The CLUAS MySpace page is launched where - each month - CLUAS writers highlight 4 bands on the Irish scene who have been found guilty of creating exciting music. For each act presented on the CLUAS MySpace page an MP3 of theirs is made available via the MySpace media player. The first four acts picked to feature on the MySpace page were  Channel One,  The Chapters, Delorentos and Roller/Sparkers.
July 2006 The CLUAS guidelines for good writing are published. Put together by CLUAS writer Aidan Curran, the advice provided in these clear guidelines aims to facilitate first-time as well as veteran CLUAS writers in producing engaging and credible articles.
November 2006 CLUAS begins an ambitious migration to a brand new content platform (DotNetNuke). As expected there were a number of hiccups and some teething problems for users. But it was worth it - the new technology opened up new possibilities for the CLUAS website that prepares it for the future.

2007

March 2007 The first CLUAS blogs are launched! Leveraging the new DotNetNuke technology CLUAS launches a total of 5 music blogs. First blog entries discuss everything from Nina Hynes in Paris to listening to Van Morrison after surfing to the launch of Muse.ie.

 

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