Background
 
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BZN Online is a site born from a "joke", like many large sites once started. The purpose of this background information is to give you, as a visitor, an impression of the history of this site and to give you a glance behind the scenes.


The beginning

At the end of 1994 a Computer Science student at the TU of Munich starts putting information of the Dutch popgroup BZN on his site. Driven by the hunger for information, awakened by hearing Help Me on the radio, Christoph Lorenz tries to put a discography of the band on the Internet as complete as possible. Next to that he assembles a small list with short questions and answers, that is intended to make people know BZN a little more.
In 1995 there is also a Computer Science student at the TU of Delft, Marcel Versteeg, who gets the oppurtunity to make a homepage on the server of the faculty. Thinking of what he wants to spread through the worldwide network, the BZN fan considers that this band might not yet be present on the Internet. Working on his BZN pages he accidently finds Christoph Lorenz's work and decides to pay attention to spread (usually older) news and the concert agenda.


Co-operation

The site during the co-operation
Soon Christoph and Marcel co-operate on their BZN pages. This finally results in a BZN site with a discography, news and a concert agenda physically split on two different servers, but presented as a whole.
During the co-operation also the second BZN discussion forum is opened. Visitors can discuss the band online. In the very start there was another forum in Christoph's pages, but this was never a success. All in all only one message was once posted. However, the new forum does better. More and more new fans find the BZN pages and leave their footprints in the more and more used discussion forum.


For real!

In 1997 it all seems to end. More and more fans are using the BZN pages, but both webmasters are nearing the end of their studies. This also means that the site is not allowed to reside on the servers of both universities and that would result in a loss of information supply about BZN on the Internet....
The popularity of the pages and especially the amount of historical information make that everyone agrees that this cannot be trashed. Courage is plucked up and the situation is explained to the BZN management. Great the relief when they also see the value of the information. An agreement is made and the search for a solution is started.
One thing is clear quite soon. The new solution will receive the official status and will be the extension of the fanclub towards the Internet. The regular visitors of the BZN discussion forum are questioned about the domain for the new to be made site. Posting this question in fact crowns the investigations and consultations that were already going on for a few months. Until then no regular visitor knew of the developments, but the reactions on the question are very positive. After two rounds the domain is known; because bzn.com is already in use, bzn-online.com is chosen. Moving the site can begin.


The opening

The address on the cover of Pearls
When the domain is known in the summer of 1997, everything goes fast. Even before something is fixed, the domain goes to the BZN management, because the address will be on the cover of the new album! The first signs of the official BZN site!
Everything is put together. It is agreed upon that the new site BZN Online has to open on September 1, 1997. Then the promotion for the new album will start and the address will be used in publicity. It all works and on the day of the opening both parts are moved to one spot: America! The looks of the site are changed soon, the use of the background image is stopped and some 3D titles are created.
Maintaining the BZN pages is a little too much for Christoph for some time now, because of his lack of spare time. This means that from now on the site is fully maintained by Marcel Versteeg.


A new site

This is what the new site looks like!
The moved pages look reasonable, but they have one big disadvantage. Maintaining them is a real pain. To fight this, behind the scenes a complete new site is started. Both the looks as the underlying structure are completely shuffled. The use of databases and scripts must lead to a site that is more maintainable. On the outside everything is put to work to create a neat site with looks of its own.
In July 1999 the new site finally goes online. After a lot of blood, sweat and tears a very beautiful site, that is well maintainable by the webmaster, is presented to the regular visitors. To the right is a small example of what the new site looks like for the webmaster...


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