CoasterBuzz 25

Hard to believe, but CoasterBuzz turns 25 tomorrow (1/30/25). I haven't done anything special, but I still want to thank everyone who continues to hang out. Some of you have been here since the start, some have passed away, and yet here we are. Coaster enthusiasm sure has changed over the years, and it's kinda weird now. Or I'm just double the age of the site. Either way, thanks for clicking.

Congrats to your anniversary, and thanks for having the site!

Congratulations on a quarter century! I stumbled across this forum through another back in the day when it seemed like I browsed probably a dozen or more message boards on a few subjects through my day. I still regularly read and post on 2 of those (different subjects) from that time period. Both have had the same transformation: quality over quantity. Fewer regulars, but better discussion with a lot less noise.

Congrats to CoasterBuzz and thank you, Jeff, for creating something that is a huge part of my life. Here's to 25 more years!!!???

Congrats!

You must be a glutton for punishment, because for 25 years you have put up with all of us. You keep coming back for more too. Well thank you for having us, and listening to our gripes and whatnot. Site is awesome as it has always been!!!

To be honest, these days my favorite thing is optimization. I doubt most people appreciate it, but I've gotten it down to generating pages in under 20ms (probably ~100ms to you, but that's the network latency, not the software). Most of the web is so bloated and slow (and full of multiple ads covering stuff), and I pride myself on this not being that. It doesn't really even get stressed out when it bots start slamming it with thousands of requests per minute.

I don't know why but your discussion of optimization, led to me jumping to doing more with less, which then jumped to Jamie on mythbusters using poop to power rockets.

I totally get it. There are all these little things I do in the (very few instances of ) software I write that I know nobody else will ever see or care about, but that make me super proud. Shaving a couple of operations here, eliminating redundancy there...

Thanks for the site, Jeff. I've been here from very close to the start and it's still probably one of my most visited web pages. I hope the encroachment of social media mega-platforms doesn't crowd out all the small corners of the web like this one.

With the way people are leaving them, my hope is that niche communities make a come back.

And by the way, traffic has been on a steady rise mostly for years. You just can't monetize it with discreet ads from two or three ad providers like you could when I started. Participation is less, but not traffic. This is likely the long tail effect, because there are tens of thousands of indexed pages. People search for the weirdest stuff.

Huh, CoasterBuzz is a gay porn website. Never woulda known.

Jeff, thanks for founding and continuing to lead the community. When you look at all the things that have come and gone in both the Park and Technology worlds, reaching 25 years is an achievement to be proud of.

But I would also like to thank each of you who are reading this. We all have been part of keeping things going here. As we go forward, I'd ask you to keep building the value of this community.

I think it's fairly obvious the first example is triggered by the "CP" part. (EDIT - Cedar Point in coasternerd) But I don't know what that means and I'm not sure I want to Google it.

On second thought.... opens incognito window and turns on VPN...

[edit] DO NOT DO THAT!!! SERIOUSLY!!! Yes, I'm dumb and naive and mostly willing to do silly things along those lines, but I really should have thought about that before I decided to do something I really thought was going to be mostly harmless fun. If it means anything more than the first thing that popped up with warnings, I didn't see it because I closed that window so freaking fast.

I always think twice at the audience before I abbreviate Cedar Point because CP means something totally different in real life. And most people know what it means. But for those who don't, the C stands for child.

It's a sick world out there. It's an unfortunate abbreviation for the park to have.

Thanks Jeff. Appreciate the site and all these years of entertainment. Strange how fast 25 years has gone. Hope to continue to enjoy for many more years.

I thought it was cerebral palsy. Or coaster porn. Yikes.

LostKause:

because CP means something totally different in real life.

My real life must be very different than yours.

LostKause:

the C stands for child.

Oooohh...