Alternate History Sports Turns One!

That's right, this big baby is a whole year old. Whew. Does time fly or what? In some ways it feels like yesterday our fearless leader Balu the Bare created this little space of the internet to host our frail and homeless fictional creations. In other ways it feels like we've been doing this forever.

I've personally been so excited to see the growth of this board, especially in the past few months. We have so many active users and incredible original series with tons of fictional teams to root for. Our signature lines have definitely been growing with fictional our team pride. Our site engagement is at an all-time high lately.

With all that growth, Balu and I decided to add Section30 to our moderator staff to help add another pair of eyes around here. S30 has one of our longest-running and most popular series on the boards and has been an integral part our core group since the beginning. Please give him a warm welcome to our little staff.

I love our little community here. We've had very few issues and all of you fine folks are very good about keeping things encouraging, civil, constructive and welcoming. Thank you for doing your part. Please keep that up. We always want to maintain a safe, inviting place for creators and those who enjoy fictional sports.

In another wonderful addition to this community, we've also added fictional fantasy sports which has been widely popular as the community has come together in collaboration and competitive spirit. Gritty first started the project in January with our blessing and what began as just hockey has now expanded into a football league as well. Thank you, Gritty, for all your fine work in organizing these two massive projects. The creative contributions we've seen emerge from those projects have been awesome.

As always, we want to support you, the creator, in your fictional sports endeavors. If you're unsure of anything or need advice or feedback on your series or potential idea, please don't hesitate to ask our team. We're here to help and facilitate your growth as a designer, writer, creator, etc. We will uphold the guidelines to make sure our community is able to stay fair and upright but we also want to help you grow. These are all passion projects of ours and we will help foster that to the best our abilities.

Along with community growth also comes the future.

Our forum host/software is fairly limited, and of course, we've run into some technical issues such as the thread titles and such. Balu and I definitely want to upgrade it at some point but it won't be easy and typically isn't free. We want to keep this community free and easy to use. Here are some goals we have in mind for the future of our site:

• We'd like to upgrade the forum software (there are many options, depending on budget)
• We''d like to purchase a unique domain (current available) and our own host for the website
• We'd like to run a fundraiser later in the year to help fund the growth of our site
• We'd like to add a web developer to the team to assist in the technical aspects of the site

Times are tough right now so I don't imagine a fundraiser would be anytime soon but I'm confident we can figure out some ways to help grow our community even more in the mean time. There are a few things we'd like to continue working on and establish but we also want to hear from you!

Here are some general questions to foster answers, but please feel free to share any thoughts or ideas you may have.

• What are your thoughts on our community?
• What are some ideas for our community to help us grow?
• What's the most random, out of the box idea you can think of for this site?
• What are your ideas on the organization or guidelines of this site? Any changes, updates?
• If you could change anything about this site or community, what would it be?
• If we ran a fundraiser later in the year, would you consider contributing?
• Do you have any hidden skills you can offer the community if needed?

On behalf of Balu and the mod team of MyTeamIsDr.Pepper, Noe38, and Section30, I am grateful for this team and community and I'm excited to see what another year holds for us. Major thanks to the whole community for all of your contributions. Let's keep creating!

- Steelman