GateWorld
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
GateWorld (also: GateWorld.net) is a popular reference, news and fan website on the various Stargate series, including Stargate (movie), Stargate SG-1, and Stargate Atlantis. GateWorld is currently the largest Stargate community site on the web and today includes an extensive show encyclopedia called Omnipedia, cast interviews, an online store, a forum, articles, reviews as well as a large episode guide, with transcripts and pictures. The site also features up-to-date news.
The GateWorld forum currently has more than 26,000 members as of March 2007 [1]. The total number of threads surpassed 36,000 on March 10, 2007. The forum has average number of 2500 posts each day.
The most members ever online was on August 21, 2006 at 12:27 AM GMT, with a recorded count of 1,803 guests and members viewing the forum. The current record occurred when the news of Stargate SG-1 cancellation broke. The record number of users usually hits a high when Stargate SG-1 and/or Stargate Atlantis airs a new season or finishes its current running season. This generally prompts a mass influx of members who join and post on the forums, sharing their views and thoughts for the franchise.
On September 6, 2006, the Gateworld forum passed the 2,000,000 post mark [2], just 9 months after announcing the passing of the 1,000,000 post mark [3].
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[edit] History
GateWorld's history site [4] lists October 22, 1999 as the inauguration date of the STARGUIDE fansite that has changed addresses and servers many times since then. The site was developed by Darren Sumner to be an online community for the show Stargate SG-1, similar to websites for other science fiction shows. Though the site focused on Stargate, other parts of the site were devoted to other sci-fi series in the form of episode guides. It was during this time that STARGUIDE was given the new name GateWorld.
Although the focus lay on the episode guides, it also started to include a large encyclopedia, news, reviews and a store. Now, even the cast and producers of Stargate have contributed to the site with extensive multimedia interviews, blogs, spoilers, and even live chats.
In 2004, Darren Sumner was even invited to tour through the sets of Stargate Atlantis and to interview the members of the series' crew. Since then he and partner David Read make an annual pilgrimage to Vancouver, where the franchise is filmed, to visit the studio and interview the casts and crews of both shows for the Website.
[edit] GateWorld 2.0
In the forum, Assistant Editor David Read announced [5] that they would be completely redesigning the main site. Darren Sumner announced that the new design would be released in the summer of 2006 and that they would try for it to be ready in time for the July 14 2006 premiere of Stargate SG-1 Season 10 and Stargate Atlantis Season 3 on the Sci-Fi Channel.
Despite missing their original target dates, the webmasters working on the project completed and uploaded GateWorld 2.0 during broadcast of Stargate SG-1s milestone 200th episode. The 2.0 design is another Gilles Nuytens original. While the forum does still uses the original GateWorld skin, the beta version of the 2.0 design was released for members of the forum in early March 2007. [6]
GateWorld 2.0 brings with it many new original interviews with cast and crew members, plus a new Stargate Games section and more. The new main site design has currently not affected the network sites for other shows such as Battlestar Galactica, Lost and Heroes - although fans expect that GateWorld will eventually make the changes to those as well to keep the entire network fresh and modern.
[edit] SaveStargateSG1 campaign
With the cancellation of Stargate SG-1, Gateworld announced its support for SaveStargateSG1 [7] [8], a fan run campaign to get international networks and executives to show support for Stargate SG-1 and to help get it back on the air. The site contains contact details for both domestic and international and non English speaking nations, as the site also offers translations for fans from France, Russia, Spain, Croatia, Portugal, Slovakia, Romania, Poland, Italy and the Netherlands. MGM would later announce that they ordered at least two direct-to-DVD Stargate SG-1 movies to be filmed in 2007.
