About TerminatorFiles.com

Main info

TerminatorFiles.com is a concept by Vic van der Put from Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Some months after the launch (on the 9th of june 2003) he teamed up with fellow Dutch Terminator fan Maurice Huijs, who has helped him eversince to fulfill this online experience you see today!

The initial idea of the TerminatorFiles was to collect all the available info on the Terminator and link towards a lot (if not all) content available on the net. Whats the sence in inventing something new, when it has been done before? Right!

Well... Eventually most of the content DID make its way into the site itself. Due to the fact that a lot of sites went offline, whilst some concisted of out-of-date info or others having false pretences; providing info to cash-in on the saga (which by the way... we have been blamed for too). Discontent about the loss of info and lots of missfacts on other sites, the dicision was made to include all the info onto the TerminatorFiles.com portal. The best control one has is over the content is when you 'own it' yourself. Now the promotional verb "We've got detailed files!" was really a fact!

Our history

TerminatorFiles was originally designed to be a part of Vic's old design site called BrainzDezign.com (which is now offline). That site was about lots of his designing ideas, a sort of online portfolio with his graphic designs, websites he build since 1997 and lots of other interests, including his biggest hobby; collecting Terminator memorabilia.

Somewhere in the last few months of 2001, the Terminator related pages under the Vic's brainzdezign.com domain began to grow in conciderable size. The rumours of a new installment in the saga (T3) were becoming a reality and the only updates he made on that domain were for the then so called 'Files'. Specificly oriented on the Endoskeleton of the movies and lots of links to sites that were spread around the web.

After the launch of the Terminator3.com website and its forums (now offline), lots of fans got into contact with eachother and had a lot to talk about. Over time, new personal sites were cocked up and some fans even united in groups to start on several site-projects featuring info on the Terminator (or what other main topic they prefered).

Soon... sites like for instance Terminator-3.co.uk, TechcomForces.com and TerminatorFans.com were launched (now all offline except for the latter, which has been re-acquired by TerminatorFiles middle 2007). Vic for one could not be held back on these developments. A new domain was chosen, filled with a cool Flash teaser (check the archives), leading up to several months of (part-time) developments ...and the new concept was born.

On the 9th of June 2003 it was time to reveal his efforts to the fan community. A (then) 30 MB site filled to the brink with lots of interesting information. A few months later Vic then partnered with fellow Dutch Terminatorfan Maurice Huijs ...and since both have been busy turning the domain into the full-fledged site you see today.

Over a period of 10 months, the TerminatorFiles.com changed from a site that linked to lots of external info on the web into a full fledged portal containing any- and everything Terminator related, in its own expanded pages, databases and other systems. On the height of it all the site contained a whopping 80 MB of data, excluding all the databases! Could we have know it would be much and much more later on?

Just about half way through those 10 months (give or take a few), the team decided to get the TerminatorFiles.com website (and some of its newly launched services) to an even higher ground; v1.0 of the site was updated here and there, whilst the team worked hard in enabling a total new 'shell' for the entire site. Many late nights prowling through the code resulted in the launch of v2.0 of our site on April 20th, 2005. The contents was still the same, but the 'looks and feel' was upgraded to a total new, fresh and most importantly 'interactive' design. Nothing has changed ever since... or has it?!

Late December 2006, Vic got the message from his old boss that he was going to get layed-off. This was no fun (indeed!), firstly because of the job (6 years running), but second (and in his opinion 'especially') since the TerminatorFiles.com domain and contents were all dependent on lots of that companies resources and services. In an effort to disconnect ourself totally from that company (which bankrupted in May 2007) the site was redeveloped to run on any server possible. We found ourselfs a wonderful host in the US, after which all contents was rehashed into seperate optimised pages. All databases were scrapped, all content revised and after a half year we were ready to relaunch v2.5 of our site. Again... the looks and feel and its interactivity didn't change that much, but all underlaying technology was recoded into the site you are currenly viewing (and reading).

All that happened in the past, the good and the bad, has helped us to make the TerminatorFiles the best place to be when its related to any and all things Terminator related. In a sense the move to the new provider was the best thing we could ever have done, be it somewhat forced by Vic's personal motivations. Why?

Our new site is running on a serviceprovider that has 200 fold more services available then all previous providers combined; the biggest fun and enthousiasm being an (in our view) unlimited harddisk and bandwidth space. And we have used it well ever since.

In a period of 5+ years (which is considered old in Internet terms) the site has grown from a personal website of only 10 MB, into a hot 30 MB website. Then it got filled with 50 MB more data, into a 80 MB portal. Then it was time to redesign it into a totally cool new interactive site... which then kept growing and growing, moving from one server to another, till the site you are viewing today. From 10 MB back in 2001 to 2,310 MB in 2007.

But wait... there is more! We started expanding the site even further. New galleries of HD images and videos were added and lots of archives enabled that broadened the content into many more gigs. Don't get scared now, but if you downloaded our entire site, that would account for a whopping 14 GIGs of data. WTF?! Thats an abbriviation for "What the fuck"?

Whoah! Thats lots... and as it turns out, we haven't stopped accumulating yet. Lots more is upcoming!!!

What the future will bring is still unknown to us. All we can do is our best to be(come) the best Terminator related website on the net. And then some more!

Old versions from way back when

Just for nostalgic reasons, we've included some screencaptures of the old sites below. This is more for us then for you, but its cool to share it either way. We had a lot of fun building every version of the site and we know most of our regular visitors did too, viewing them. So check back a little into the past, from 1999 till today.

v1.0 - Brainzdezign.com 'Files'

The first version of the TerminatorFiles. Developed as several seperate pages under STAFFmaster Vic's old designer site www.brainzdezign.com (now offline), the then so called 'Files' ran from late 2001 till the launch of the TerminatorFiles.com website (June 9th 2003).

The site featured a lot of info on the Terminator Endoskeleton, his favorite character of the movies (and it still is); indepth info on all Endoskeleton busts, models, kits, toys and more (the basis of the current collectibles databases), hundreds of weblinks to Terminator related sites (which are all -and lots more- available here), personal weblog of aquisitions made, a comprehensive database of all his collectibles (back then approx. 190, now counting 500+ items ;) and lots more. All info (including new sections on all possible Terminator subjects) were expanded into the TerminatorFiles.com (sub)domains.

v2.0 - TerminatorFiles.com (2003-2004)

During 2002 and 2003 rumors got ahold of STAFFmaster Vic. A new Terminator movie was in the making. Whoa.. WAY COOL! Fan-crazed as he already was, this was the opportunity for him to get his collection-spree to the next phase; becoming involved in all sorts of forums and starting to collect all possible information on the new movie.

Lots of fans in the community got together and some even launched their own Terminator related sites. We for one... could not be held back. The 'Files' on the old domain were revamped into a new site, with lots of new sections and subjects added. TerminatorFiles.com was born!

Over a period of almost two years the little site grew into one of the biggest fan portals around (or at least... that's what we think it is ;). What we got out of the community, was pumped right back into the portal.

v2.5 - TerminatorFiles.com (2005-2009)

Late december 2004 through to april 2005, we thought of redesigning the entire site. Over a period of more then 3 months we planned, redesigned and rebuild the entire portal from scratch... into version 2.0 of our site. This was also the first time we initiated two of our (now-a-days) beloved features; 1) a site which can be viewed in any resolution you want (from as low as 1024-768px up to 1600x1200px or even higher) and 2) a site which can be viewed in your own prefered GUI setting... which over time expand(ed) into more interfaces.

Since its launch, our knowledge and site grew 'in a triometric rate', to quote Arnold ;). The already detailed files resulted in an ever growing number of frequent visitors, of whom lots became very active in our own initiated forums.

Through the first few months of 2006 we had to move servers and change services. This however entailed an entire rebuild which took us more then 6 month in total. Version 2.5 of our site launched on the 4th of july 2006; a new site with a new updated interface which looks almost the same as version 2.0 (hence the increment of only 0.5 ;). Some sections were deleted or set to be temporary offline, whilst other new sections came online for the first time. And still more is in the making.

v3.0 - TerminatorFiles.com (2010+)

Observative few must have seen our previous site going through a transition, first with an XHTML redo, that was somewhat defunct, because some of the menus and content did not work. Lets call that one a v2.7 or something alike. Being an avid fan of 'table-design' for over a decade, STAFFmaster Vic was now working for several years over at a company that swears by using DIVs (though sometimes they too get back to tables when something in DIVs can not be done).

In an effort to get our site renewed and up to date with todays webstandards, we embarked on another update, that took... a whopping 6 months (well... not full time, this is still fanmade stuff thats done in the evenings and in weekends).

The site has been recoded into XHTML Strict (if anybody knows, this is the current most strict code one can do, to make it work in all browsers), with lots of additional added interactions, snippets and lots and lots more.

All endeavors initiated over the past years are still today in need of some serious follow-ups. We're as always trying to deliver the broadest most detailed info one can find on the Terminator Saga. As you must know by now... we'll never be ready!

Whatever is next?

We'll have to see where this project takes us. We've had our share of thoughts about the future of the TerminatorFiles.com domain. We even took some of those ideas and tryed to make them happen. For instance...

A 3D version of the website with lots of interactive animations has been in its primal (infancy) stages of development. Lukely for us we tested the animations for speed and downloadability, before going on with the total design. Every test brought us bad results; it was just not possible to make a fluent animation with such a slow download rate as a target. Sure, Flash and other technologies are able to reproduce the contents in staggering results, but not our over-expanded 3D version idea. That would be un-do-able, even today. Also... a site needs to be viewable by all possible visitors.

A non-animated version could have been possible, but this was just too borring compared to the animations we had in mind (and its our site too, you know ;). Filesize is also a big contender when it comes to making decissions. Maybe this 3D version of the interface will be used on future TerminatorFiles sites, products, or maybe even a offline version of the website content on CDrom or DVD (where loadability is no problem). Maybe not. We will surely use any of this 3D stuff in future productions, like we previously did for some of our old promotions (check Archives).

The future is not set, to quote T2 ;). The internet evolves... and connection speeds from users to their service-providers become faster every month. Depending on our own hostingprovider and its provissions of bandwidth and MEGs hosting (which we offcourse have to pay for) the site will eventually evolve into a much bigger site, full with online animations (as told above) and GIGs of media for your to download. Or maybe even a new version with a new technology which is still to be invented. Can some of you remember sites before there was Flash? We can! So if something new as grand as that becomes a reality... we'll be sure to keep ahead with technology.

In short: We strive to be(come) the best!