HomePicturesTechnicalTournamentRecreationalFieldsStores

Beginner InfoNews And ArticlesLinksResourcesVideoContact UsSearch

How WARPIG came to be

In the dark and distant past, when the internet was relatively unknown to people outside of academic or government computing circles, there were no web pages dedicated to the sport of paintball.

In 1992 Steve Mitchell began archiving paintball information on an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server at his place of employment, caticsuf.cati.csufresno.edu.  The FTP site grew, and soon hosted archives of the rec.sport.paintball usenet newsgroup.  Bill and Dawn Mills contributed some of the first on-line paintball photographs and articles to that site.  As it grew, players from around the world contributed articles and information.

While this was quite an accomplishment, players who longed for a point and click interface to paintball related information files, photographs, and article archives from rec.sport.paintball, were left cold and alone. There was much sadness in the land with wailing and gnashing of teeth.

One sunny California day in 1994, Steve Mitchell fired up web serving software on his desktop workstation (which had "warpig" as it's network address, named for his friends' dog) and the first paintball web page - the WARPIG paintball page was born at warpig.cati.csufresno.edu.

Since WARPIG's inception other paintball pages have sprung up around the world. As more information has come on line, in various places, WARPIG has kept pace, adding new files and new links, by connecting to other sites, and publishing information by and for players WARPIG has grown both as a meeting point for the on-line paintball community, and as one central address where people can go to get the information they need.

In the Summer of 1995, Steve left Fresno for the greener pastures of Jet Propulsion Laboratories. He then passed the torch of maintaining the WARPIG page to Bill and Dawn Mills of Corinthian Media Services, long time contributors to the WARPIG project. I served as webmaster, while Dawn served as event coverage photographer.

In the fall of 1995, we began accepting banner advertising to defray some of the expenses involved in maintaining WARPIG, and we moved it to it's own domain at www.warpig.com, to provide an address that was easier to remember. Our sincere thanks go to Paintball Industry Magazine and Paintball News for stepping forward to be the first 2 sponsors in support of the WARPIG project.

In the early spring of 1999, Dawn took over the position of WARPIG webmaster, as its ever growing demands of time were infringing on my work schedule as a multimedia producer for Corinthian Media Services.  Dawn now handles the majority of site maintenance, e-mail response and field reporting (we generally attend 1-3 paintball events per month to report for WARPIG), while I handle technical support (cgi scripting, keeping the data moving, etc.) and production work for PigTV.

Currently the WARPIG site is connected to the Internet via two dedicated servers in order to keep up with the millions of hits this site receives each month.  When Dawn took over as webmaster, the site was getting an average of 5 million hits a month.  Two years later (Mar 01) the site is pushing an average of 22 million hits a month.  By 2005, the rate had more than doubled again and was up to 50 million hits a month.  A nice growth rate.  As the project has grown, so has the support from sponsors in the paintball industry.  This has enabled WARPIG to continue to educate, and provide a form through which players can spread and share ideas.

Do we charge for the banners that run at the tops of all of the pages?  Yes, but the rate is low because we feel strongly about not raping and pillaging the industry.  Does that money cover the costs of the site?  No, about half comes out of our personal income, and we continue to work for Warpig as volunteers.

So there it is, and here we are. WARPIG is here as a resource for you, the player. We always have new features, and new information in the works, so keep your eyes peeled, and your browser pointed at the Pig. As always if there is not something here that you think should be, you have information or pictures to contribute, or a resource you would like WARPIG to link to, please let us know.

 --Bill Mills