• The History of DSLReports
• Broadbandreports.com vs dslreports.com
• How do I get STARS? (Historical)

DSLReports was started by Justin in June of 1999. According to an interview he gave around that time, he found himself with some extra time on his hands. At the same time, he discovered that broadband was hard to find in New York, availability fluctuated widely in other areas and there was a general lack of information available to consumers everywhere who were interested in broadband.

Here's a nostalgic look back at one of the original site pages:

dslreports early page
(Give it a few seconds to fully load. Not all graphics will show up.)


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(Thanks to smokeater980 for suggesting this section.)

by KeysCapt
last modified: 2012-01-11 07:38:48

As of 25th November 2005, we are restricting logins to our domain dslreports.com only. We are also going to automatically and transparently redirect all anonymous visitors to the dslreports.com domain as well. The broadbandreports.com domain will remain active, and our site logo will remain broadbandreports.com. Existing logins on broadbandreports.com will remain active, just for convenience. However, sooner or later, they will expire.

Why the shift?

Unfortunately, we have to live within the ecosystem largely defined by the Google search engine. The Google "page-rank" for dslreports.com is higher than for broadbandreports.com. Google also indexes far more pages for dslreports.com than broadbandreports.com. Google offers no function for "renaming" a site while preserving the hard-won rank within its search results. Since a large part of our income is anonymous visitors from Google (and other search engines), it is simply too costly to enforce usage of broadbandreports.com.

Why not allow both?

A login cookie created on one domain is not available on the other. Having two domains active means search engines are indexing the same content twice.

Is dslreports.com still known as BBR then?

Since the logo will still show broadbandreports.com, and the URL broadbandreports.com will still be active (albeit, redirect), then BBR is still a valid tag for the site.

edited by KeysCapt
last modified: 2007-12-13 09:18:51

Note: This section no longer applies because the stars system was removed. It is preserved for historical reasons only. Points still accrue, but are not visible except that they determine levels in the capabilities function.
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Points:
You accumulate points for frequently using BroadBandReports.com. You cannot see your current points, but the system stores them.

As points are accumulated, you will gain stars, which you can see.

Points are awarded for:

• Frequent visits (More about how visits get counted)
• Writing and posting an ISP Review
• Helping out with the FAQ
• Writing a description of broadband in your area
• Posting a LPB game screenshot
• Describing your home network
• Contributing news articles
• Having your IP address monitored

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Stars and Team Icons: Posted by Sheesh

Stars are rewarded for points earned. Getting stars depends on how long you have been a member, the number of posts you have made and where you post. There are other things to determine your star status.

1 2 and 3 silver stars are earned as you reach 2k, 5k and 20k points
1 gold star is shown if you pass 60k points.
1 green star is shown if you pass 120k points.

A single green star is the end of the star system, except that 1 blue star means the user is a site subscriber (tool points).

(Yes, stars have stopped spinning. It's not a bug.)

For Tool points, and Avatars, please see those FAQ sections.

Additional trinkets:
indicates membership of /forum/disco (United Devices)
indicates membership of /forum/seti (SETI)
indicates membership of /forum/folding (Folding/Genome)

To qualify for one of the spinners shown above, you must first join that team and then go to Members/Extra and fill out Why Did I Join. You should have your team spinner by the next day.

by KeysCapt
last modified: 2007-08-25 08:46:24