Discussion on:

Builder.com is dead, long live Builder.com

Just curious, were any of you attendees at the Web.Builder conferences in the late 1990's? If so what did you think? What did we do right, what did we do wrong?

The conferences were very educational and some of the best fun I have had in my professional career.

Made a lot of friends and partied furiously at Tipitinas and many other bars in the French Quarter.

Fondest memory was the last year of the confernces when my friends and I walked up the missippi at midnight without getting hurt Then getting on the flight back home with some many conference attendees realizing that we collectively helped changed the way the world communicates today.

Be proud of what you started!!! Many remember the conference fondly.

I've been a Builder.com user since it's creation. The only reason I'm a TechRepublic customer is because they took over Builder.com.

The biggest benefit of Builder.com to me was the references and tools. TechRepublic has done a great job in evolving a lot of the references and expanding the scope.

Hopefully I can find replacements for the Color Code Converter and Stupid Web Tricks, two old Builder.com links I still have in my bookmarks.

Those Stupid Web Tricks were some of the most successful content on the site. In the last few months that I was running the site, it was really that backlog of content that generated the majority of the page views traffic. Not the new stuff we were posting, but the old reliable how-to stuff.

Some but not all the Stupid Web Tricks did get moved over to TR. They are here:

http://search.techrepublic.com.com/search/Stupid+Web+Tricks.html

Those tools and in fact everything that was once on Builder, is now found on TechRepublic.

The color converter is located here:
http://techrepublic.com.com/html/tr/color-converter.html
(Note: this link is correct, but we are having a JavaScript problem - will be fixed soon. Works in Safari oddly enough)

We don't have a central page built for Stupid Web Tricks, but a search will bring it to you.

http://search.techrepublic.com.com/index.php?t=11&s=0&o=0&q=stupid+web+tricks

On a personal note, I too was once a Builder.com editor. I worked with Rex that last year trying to get Builder some deeper traction. After Rex left and I moved over to TechRepublic full-time, I continued to slip content to Builder on the sly. I just couldn't bear to see it die.

Ah, thanks for posting those links Mark. Glad to see they did save off all the old content.

hi,Rex Baldazo,I'm lining , Executive editor of Builder.com.cn.so ,what should I do ....SOS....My MSN:leesbfpsj@hotmail.com : gtalk: sbfpsj@gmail.com

as web administrator and as a baldazo too...that's such a blog post.

I miss builder.com. It was a fine site for developers. I actually really loved that it was all over the map it let me know what other languages and technologies were doing. The one thing I loved the most about it was that the articles were more real world articles. Not pretty mamby pamby articles showing you everthing in a perfect world but they were real stuff you could use. I had been a member of builder.com since early 1998 so it has been with me for quite a few years. I am sad to see it go.

I kind of like builder.com very much because of the varied topics it carried. Thanks for your effort which was not in vain since many like myself used it to enhance our careers.

Thanks again.

- Nazik

Hey, Rex. It was good to read your reminiscence about Builder.com. I have fond memories of those years jammed into one corner or another of the CNET sprawl near Fisherman's Wharf in what will always be for me The City.

Unsurprisingly, I have a slightly different take on what caused Builder.com to fail in the conference space. But that's water under the bridge so I'm not going to take up that issue here. I just really wanted to say hello and to tell you that I'm still building Web sites for most of my living!

Best wishes.

Were it not for Builder.com, and the fact that several of the newsletters were reincarnated at TR, it's quite possible that I may never have learned of TR's existence.

As, like all things, that's been a mixed bag, for that I am torn between cursing you and thanking you.

May the Future Be Kind.