Qango History

I started Qango in October 1998 with six hand written web pages. Site suggestions came in by email and I hand-coded them into category pages in my spare time.

It wasn't long before I was overrun with suggestions so I looked for some software to automate the whole process and decided on a package from Gossamer-Threads called Links.

The software helped to automate the management of the directory, and because it was built in a flexible way it meant I could do a lot of customisation to make it unique to Qango. I spent a great many late nights and early mornings through 1999 modifying the code to make the directory as easy-to-use as possible.

In March 1999 I started working with GetSpecific.com. They helped me develop Qango's website promotion and in the space of a few months I saw a dramatic increase in traffic.

This increase brought greater demands for site listings and in late 1999 I realised that the software I was using wouldn't cope any more. In April 2000 I had to suspend the addition of new sites because the database was full, and that's when I set about planning an upgrade to LinksSQL, the "Big Brother" of Links.

The upgrade meant that I also needed a new web host who could support SQL. I finally settled on Positive Internet, and haven't looked back since. They quickly set up my new account and gave me excellent service and support as I moved the entire Qango site to their web server.

The new software was installed in June 2000 and it took several months to rewrite all the code to retain the original modifications I'd done. In September 2000 I finally completed the upgrade and began adding a brand new category structure, taking advantage of a new feature that allowed me to add virtual categories, the ones with @ symbol at the end, that act as pointers to other branches of the category tree.

By mid-2001 I had managed to use up all of the available web space on my shared web hosting account, and most of the server resources too, so it was time to upgrade again.

On May 6th, 2001 I moved Qango to a dedicated server. This allowed for one hundred percent use of the bandwidth of the machine, and an almost unlimited expansion of the directory listings. This was a big financial commitment to make, but I felt sure of Qango's success.

In February 2002 I put in place yet another series of upgrades, including the addition of chat forums and moving and updated Qango Central so that I could give you more information about Qango as a company. I also set up help.qango.com to offer better help for using Qango's sites and services.

Unfortunately on July 27, 2002 the server hosting Qango had a terminal hard drive failure, taking with it all the sites and data that I had built up over the previous years.

Efforts to recover the data on the drive failed. The data had been backed-up to a local machine but that backup was corrupt, and I was left in the unfortunate position of having to start Qango again from scratch. Years of work, gone!

I put a plan together, got a second backup drive installed on the Qango server, and made sure my off-line backups were in good order, and .... started again. I finally got Qango back up and running again on 23 August 2002.

Things have been running smoothly since then, and in October 2006 I began the latest round of updates. The most radical step has been to remove all advertising from the directory. The site layout has been redesigned to be much cleaner and simpler to use (no more pop-ups or irritating flashing banners), and I have expanded on the paid site review service to offer new levels of service for different budgets.

I hope you've enjoyed reading about the history of Qango and if you have any comments or questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

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