The History of Jokes2000™ 
A Beginning
In the beginning, there was nothing. Just virtual matter floating around aimlessly in cyberspace.
Then, in January of 1997, a computer science scholar named Allan Hansen began putting together a collection of graphics tips and jokes on a web page hosted by TeleDanmark Internet. The site was called "Allan Hansen's Internet Site" and the URL was impossible to remember.
In the following months, Allan added more jokes and tips. Before long, there evolved sections for HTML, JavaScript and software.
arrgh.pair.com
October, 1997. The site was transported to a superior server hosted by Pair Networks and could be found at the easy-to-remember http://www.arrgh.pair.com. The site was renamed to arrgh!
Despite the fact that no one could remember how to spell "arrgh", traffic quickly increased. And Allan said, "This is good."
More Speed
December, 1997. Pair Networks updated its bandwidth from T1 to DS-3. Pages began to load in a flash and Allan said, "This is good." Traffic increased almost immediately. Visitors appreciated the quick download time and told their friends. Word-of-mouse advertising at its best.
Random Joke Generator
On the final day of 1997, which on that particular year happened to be December 31st, arrgh! introduced a
random joke generator.
Many joke sites have random generators, but this one was special. Unlike the others, this generator insured that you don't see the same joke twice. Allan continues to advance the generator, so you can even see random jokes within categories.
Joke Ratings
January, 1998. arrgh! furnished the site with "voting buttons," allowing visitors to judge the jokes. Today, joke ratings are the result of everyone's opinion, as opposed the webmasters' alone. The system was pretty slow to use at first, but thanks to the feedback of Ranbir Kaur it became one of the smartest and quickest rating systems on the net. Soon the site was receiving several hundred votes a day. Today, about 5% of our visitors take the time to rate our jokes. Not bad.
Thank you Lycos!
March, 1998. arrgh! receives a very fair listing at
Lycos.
When searching for the keyword "jokes," arrgh! came in at position #3 - #12. The result was another terrific burst in traffic (more than 400 Mb per day!) We hope that Lycos continues to give our site this kind of attention.
Thank you Yahoo!
June, 1998. After months of trying, arrgh! finally got listed at
Yahoo,
an ongoing tribulation for websites everywhere. This listing increased traffic by 100%. Now if they could just spell our name right...
Joke Search Engine
August, 1998. arrgh! introduced its first joke site-wide
search engine.
We often received e-mail from people requesting specific jokes (e.g., hospital jokes). Now visitors can find the kind of jokes they want quickly and easily.
Jokes2000™
In September 1998 we changed our name from arrgh! to Jokes2000 with the new domain name Jokes2000.com. This is much easier to remember, and it should make visitors come back.
To secure our name, we also purchased the domains jokes2k.com and joke2000.com.
Danish Version of Jokes2000™
Soon after we launched the Jokes2000.com name, we also started
Jokes2000.dk -- a Danish version of this website. In some future we will develop Jokes2000 in these languages: Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, German, French, Finnish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Czech, Hugarian and more.
Thank you AltaVista!
October 1998. We got superb listings in
AltaVista.
When searching for the keyword 'jokes', we came up number four. We are on page two with the keywords 'cartoons' and 'humor'. This listing is giving us a real traffic boots. Hopefully we will keep it forever. Thank you AltaVista!
Popularity crashed the database server
In the beginning of November 1998, Jokes2000 got extremely popular. Unfortunately the database server could not handle the heavy load and crashed frequently. This caused a few days of downtime and errors. We are truly sorry for this. We rewrote our scripts and decreased database usage with about 90%.
New Mailing List at Lyris.net
November 1998 we got a new mailing list hosted at Lyris.net. Unfortunately they charge a lot for the service, so the list will probably be paid by advertising in future.
Intelligent Browsing
In December 1998 we put a lot of work into making the
Random Joke Generator even more smarter. We moved most of the javascript code to server side code. The result is smaller pages that works with more browsers.
We also put some intelligense behind the back/forward/random button when browsing certain groups like "Clean Jokes" or "Jokes in February 1998". The new system is totally invisible to the user, but brings more relevant jokes.
Dragons Rule Again
On May 13, 1999, we introduced an awesome new design and gave birth to the Jokes2000 dragon. Take a good look at him because we'll be having a contest later to name him (prizes included, of course). This dragon has received extensive training to be your guide and help you navigate the enormous collection of humor at Jokes2000. No matter where you go, our dragon will be hanging around to lend a helping hand - or claw, or tail... Of course, you'll have to sacrifice a live virgin for the service. No, it's not that bad. Any virgin will do. We owe many thanks to the creator of the Jokes2000 dragon. He is the ultra-talented artist and illustrator,
Jeff Law.
Thanks, Jeff.
Popular Hate Mail
In May 1999, we had collected a large collection of "friendly" letters from people. Letters condemning us to hell, acusing us of destroying other people's children and so on. These letters were compiled into the
hate mail
section. This was a very good idea, many people get a kick from reading other people's complaints.
We really do not care to respond to stupidity. Anyone feeling offended should leave this website and leave us alone.
Argyle the Dragon
In June 1999, our new dragon pointed out that it doesn't have a proper name, which was a pretty valid complaint. Hell, it doesn't even have a proper sex. After racking our brains for a name, we threw up our hands in despair and decided that only you could save our friend from this horrible identity crisis.
So we asked for your help in naming our fire-breathing mascot, offering prizes to inspire your genius. What we received was a truckload of terrific suggestions (about 7000) and votes (about 15,000), which have taken a great deal of time to sort out.
The contest ended July 21 and the winning name was Argyle, suggested by Claire Bergeal.
The future is not set...
We intend to make Jokes2000 the best and most popular joke site on the Internet. We have always preferred quality rather than quantity. We have no intention af becoming the largest joke site... just the best. However, we see no problem in beeing the largest site also.
We also hope to boost profit generated from the site. With all this money, we can afford to display more great cartoons and copyrighted jokes, hire more people and get mirrors all over the world.
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