The E Club has gone through two transitions since its creation: the move from its original home on the ill-fated Moogo website builder to WebStarts, and the move from WebStarts to website host FastComet. While the first transition was out of necessity - Moogo would have shut The E Club down due to changes to its business model had I not moved the site - the second was due to profound advances in The E Club's technologies that a drag-and-drop website builder could no longer keep up with. A powerful responsive design, greater client-side interactivity, a robust blog backed by WordPress, a more optimal page structure paired with speed and search engine optimizations, and more made The E Club 3.0, launched in 2016, the best version of The E Club yet and provided tighter end-to-end control over the site and the technologies supporting it. Recently, it started becoming clear that The E Club…
The E Club has evolved since its creation in 2009, but its design stayed more-or-less the same: a large banner (sometimes animated) at the top of the page, the menu and content below that, and the footer. That layout worked for the older versions of The E Club - the content didn't take up the whole width of the page since the site was only optimized for bigger screens, and there was lots of space to display images in the background and at the top of the page. When The E Club 3.0 went live, The E Club was rebuilt from the ground up to be faster, simpler, more secure, and most notably, more responsive. The design of The E Club 2.0 was mostly intact, but it clashed with The E Club's new responsiveness in that the top bar banner wasn't well-optimized for larger displays (there was a bunch of whitespace around it), and there was a disconnect between the desktop and smartphone versions (the…
Since The E Club's creation back in 2009, E's Blog has always been the source for updates around The E Club. The E Club World was also created in 2010 to provide updates from across The E Club Family as well as more miscellaneous topics. But when The E Club left Moogo in September 2010, a problem began to coalesce: The E Club 2.0's host, WebStarts, couldn't match the Moogo site's blog capabilities, so the E's Blog posts from the original Moogo site had to be moved to a static page separate from the new blog. Eventually, this became More Blog. When The E Club 3.0 was created, I also had to integrate the posts from The E Club 2.0 into More Blog. Because that one page is six years' worth of posts, some accompanied by images and YouTube videos, More Blog is by far the most sluggish and inefficient page on The E Club 3.0; while other pages take around 1-3 seconds to load, More Blog tops 10…
I am E, founder and CEO of The E Club Family, and this is my personal blog on The E Club! For information pertaining to The E Club Family as a whole as well as more Mario, Star Trek, and science information, check out The E Club World. You are here at a very special time in The E Club's history; the site you are now on is the result of seven years of devotion to bringing the best Mario, Star Trek, and science information to the web in addition to incredible technological advancements. But before I get to that, here's how we got to today.
The E Club was originally founded on June 8, 2009 with a now-defunct website creator called Moogo; though it looked far different than it does today, that version of The E Club and today's version share the same purpose: being my personal site about Mario, Star Trek, and science. Over the next year or so, I continued to expand The E Club's content, even…
I am incredibly proud to introduce The E Club's brand new logo to the world! It can be seen in place of the old one on the top bar banner, at the bottom of the homepage, and as the new favicon. I designed it to be the modernization of the old logo from The E Club's inception in 2009 - circular instead of rectangular, with one thin, multicolored "E" instead of "The E Club" in blocky, shape-based lettering. Creating a beautiful contrast to the black background, the vivid colors from the original logo as well as a deep but bright blue create an abstraction that makes the new logo so simple yet so much more at the same time.
The new logo will continue to roll out over the next few weeks, but for now, make sure to look for it across The E Club Family!
Six years ago, I created The E Club to share the best Mario, Star Trek, and science information. Now, having entered more fields like social networking and online arcade gaming while still staying true to its original purpose, I couldn't be more proud of where The E Club has come. But it doesn't stop here. This year is Mario's 30th anniversary, and next year is Star Trek's 50th, so great new stuff is on the way!
On September 17, 2010, when this site was created, The E Club registered its first domain name, theeclub.info. This made it easier to access The E Club and allowed us to make the majority of The E Club Family Websites subdomains of it. Now, we've made The E Club even more accessible by giving it a second domain name (with no subdomains though): theeclub.tk. The .tk top level domain (TLD) comes from the small, South Pacific island of Tokelau, and we picked it because it provides free domain names and theeclub.tk is two letters shorter than theeclub.info, allowing for increased accessibility. We partnered with site host IM Creator to host the new site (due to technical issues we couldn't redirect it here), which uses an iframe of The E Club to create an almost exact duplicate of the site.
We hope you enjoy theeclub.tk along with the rest of The E Club Family! NOTE: theeclub.tk has been…
Today's the day! The E Club is now half a decade old. Though the original site is long gone, its mission lives on through the fourteen websites now known as The E Club Family: to provide great information about Mario, Star Trek, and science. The E Club Family has also disrupted many other areas as well, such as social networking and sharing, online gaming and shopping, video sharing, various technologies, and so much more. The E Club Family has come so far in the last five years, and I'm proud to say this will always continue on. Even as it expands into even more new areas, The E Club Family will forever be a great resource for Mario, Star Trek, and science.
Even though The E Club World is The E Club Family's official and more active blog, I still use this blog as a means of sharing updates and events on The E Club itself. This page also had blog posts from the original The E Club, but they have been moved to the "More Blog" and "Even More Blog" pages here on The E Club. This change is because the old blog posts contain a lot of slow-loading content such as Flash banners, YouTube videos, etc., which in turn slowed down the loading of this page. Visitors also couldn't see the old blog posts until they scrolled down to the end of these blog posts, which could cause confusion. Now, this blog has its own page, and the old blog is still on the site but in its own pages.
Enjoy this update!
The E Club was long overdue for a new look. Now, it's got one. I have redesigned everything on The E Club (except for the main menu) so that the site looks seamless and even more awesome than before. In this redesign, The E Club Ad Creator (a page with a form to create ads, not The E Club Advertising), PrintMedia, the ENews subscription box on what is now the Quick Polls page, The E Shop (not the two sites, just the page on The E Club), and more were phased out to simplify and beautify the experience.
I hope you enjoy the new look.
Throughout almost all of The E Club's history, The E Club itself almost always had a search functionality that allowed users to search The E Club and later The E Club Family. It started out as FreeFind, and The E Club later switched to Google Custom Search, which The E Club Family still uses today. When The E Club moved to WebStarts, the Custom Search engine was still there, but there was one problem that the original The E Club didn't have: The Custom Search boxes were in different places on each page. This probably caused much confusion.
Today, I am pleased to say there's a new way to search at The E Club - on most of the pages (except the home page and this page), there are Custom Search boxes above the main menu of The E Club, just below the banner at the top of the page. We are also still tweaking the search engine so that it can reach its full potential as the official search…
I am very happy to say that The E Club's domain name, theeclub.info, is celebrating its second anniversary. The E Club's domain name led to and is still leading to many years of The E Club prosperity. This prosperity includes, obviously, the registration of the domain name, making it The E Club's, and, thanks to the domain's records (such as A and CNAME), all except two of The E Club Family Websites are now subdomains of The E Club. Plus, The E Club even got our own URL shortener, s.theeclub.info. When theeclub.info was established with WebStarts, The E Club was in a crisis. Moogo, The E Club's original host, was going to shut The E Club down along with all of its other Free websites (for no explained reason) in about a month. (Moogo is also going to close down all of its paid websites at the end of September 2012.) The E Club had tons of content, so all of it had to be transferred in a…
The E Club Family Websites are changing. A while ago, The E Club became more unified, with every page having the same background image, and all of its content on the background of The E Club Green, as I like to call it. Plus, as a remembrance of theeclub.moogo.com, I inverted the text and background color, making the text as close to the dark blue of the old The E Club as I could, and made the background image a shade of green, similar to the color the old The E Club used for its regular text, or body. Also, back in September 2011, I redid The E Club Social Beta and made it The E Club+, eventually making the URL of The E Club+ a subdomain of The E Club, plus.theeclub.info, strangely exactly 6 months after it was created. I've also done many other redesigns to The E Club Family Websites in the distant past and recently. These redesigns, as The E Club World states, are part of a big…
Lots of good things are at The E Club Family Websites! Many of The E Club Family Websites are located at subdomains of The E Club, including The E Club Lite, The E Club World, and The E Club Arcade. We've also created s.theeclub.info, a URL shortening system inside of bitly. The E Club's top bar banner and Events Calendar are improved. One of our biggest updates is the birth of The E Club Social (social.theeclub.info) and The E Club Social Beta (theeclubsocial.wall.fm). Since I think Google trying to compete with Facebook, looking almost identical to each other, is wrong, I decided to see if I could play a big role in the social web. The E Club Social was created with Forumotion.com on July 2, 2011, and The E Club Social Beta was created with Wall.fm on August 27.
Plus, Moogo, The E Club's old creator, is shutting down in September 2012. The E Club moving to WebStarts was certainly good…
Lots of blogs have feeds, like the old The E Club did. The E Club used Feedburner, and even put some AdSense for Feeds ads in the mix. Ever since then, I have always wanted another Feedburner Feed, but this time, it was harder since The E Club's Blog was not set in XML Format. So, I used the URL of the feed WebStarts provided from those orange buttons, and it worked. Now, you can subscribe to The E Club's Feedburner Feed!
Now that The E Club is on Facebook, why not do more? On December 3, 2010, The E Club joined Twitter, @TheEClubInfo (https://twitter.com/TheEClubInfo). The Twitter gadget is installed in this blog! Look under the Facebook widget.
The E Club has joined Facebook on November 24, 2010! The E Club already has THREE followers (even though I'm not a follower of the page since I don't have a personal Facebook profile, I am still The E Club's biggest fan), and some updates written by yours truly...me. So, what are you waiting for? Become a fan of The E Club using the box to the right of these new entries! Also, you can go to https://facebook.com/TheEClubOfficial (The E Club's Facebook page) and click "Like".
The E Club Advertising is a very new program, where advertisers can advertise on The E Club, or advertise other websites on their sites. Now, it's time to take another step in The E Club Advertising's development. I work to make the advertising world on The E Club more safe than some other barely-known advertising networks. (Definitely not you, Google AdSense). So, now, ads are taken to the next step, with the help of The E Club Ad Server (http://www.theeclubadserver.weebly.com, no longer exists). Now, The E Club Ads are being redirected to a page on The E Club Ad Server which tells users where they are going. Then, they get redirected to the landing page automatically in five seconds.
Before I start this post, I need to ask you two simple questions: Are you in need of a simple and effective advertising program?
If you said "Yes," answer this one:
Is Google AdWords too expensive for you?
If you said "Yes" to this one, you have come to the right place. Here's your solution:
THE E CLUB PRIORITY ADVERTISING: AWESOME ADS, LOW PRICES.
The E Club Priority Advertising is an advertising program by The E Club that is sure to increase your site's visits.* What about the cost? The budget is just right for anyone. You need to pay only a flat fee of 10 of your existing The E Club Credits. That's it, no fine print in this deal. Here's how it works:
Click on this link to go to the Ad Submitting Form. Fill out the required information, and I will review your application as soon as possible.
A ClubPub is a system in which you type in a memorable "username" for your ad account. I will e…
I haven't been writing that much about Mario, Star Trek, or science on this blog lately. Instead, I wrote about new technologies on The E Club. It doesn't mean that The E Club dropped the Mario, Star Trek, and science stuff and replaced them with technology, it means that you will have a better experience here at The E Club. This is another one of those entries, this time, being the greatest achievement in technologies on The E Club. A Universal Sign-in Box! This box was improved and tested a few minutes earlier in the Test Labs, a members-only page, basing the box on the Google sign-in box, and a code I found in Yahoo! Answers. I just "blended" a little bit of the Google box code, and all of the Yahoo! Answers code, to create... THE E CLUB'S UNIVERSAL SIGN-IN BOX BETA!
This box was designed to be based on a Google sign-in box, with a green background, dots in place of password letters…
On The E Club, things can be hard to find due to its many pages. The E Club's Custom Search can help you navagate this complex, but how does a regular visitor become an expert with searching The E Club? Click on the link below, which leads to part 2 of this entry, and you shall find out. First of all, you need to type in a search query into the search bar, which is located in the homepage, below the introduction. Search with it, and you will be lead to the search results page. This is the layout of the search results:
On the top and bottom of the search results, there are "Ads by Google." These ads, as stated in the content block with the search bar, are connected with The E Club's Google AdSense account. Also, if you have an AdSense and a Custom Search account, just click on the "Make Money" link in the custom search editing page, and follow the instructions there. It's another chance…
The Wii Shop Channel on the Nintendo Wii provides a variety of old games (including SM64!), free channels, and fun, new games. The channels are free, and they include the Nintendo Channel, the Photo Channel 1.1, a Mii channel, Everybody Votes Channel, and the Internet Channel. I have just downloaded the Internet Channel, the Opera (browser)-powered browser that you can use through the Wii. I looked at that version of The E Club, even though it didn't look very good on the Wii, everything still worked! Learn more here.
Welcome back to my blog! As you may have seen, there was a little defect in the last entry, where some of the text was hidden because of the content blocks. Thanks to shrinking a YouTube video from the Bowser's Inside Story review, everything's back to normal here. The real meaning of this entry, though, is that there won't be that many new additions to The E Club for a while, because I am inspecting every single page of this site (Whoa! Lots of pages!), to ensure quality and perfection. It will take a long time, to re-validate some YouTube videos, update texts from last year, linking to now non-existent pages, and lots more. For now, enjoy all of this other stuff!
As we all know, Google is the most popular search engine, and the search engine with lots of queries, but now, as you may have seen in the toolbar, there's a customized web search. A few days after installation of the toolbar, "The E Club Customized Web Search" is added to your browser's little search box on the top right corner of the screen. This was tested only in Mozilla Firefox, but it may work in other browsers. Also, the search engine has a home page, where you can search the web, images, Conduit Apps (for other Conduit toolbars), video, weather, news, Google Groups, news, and shopping. The coolest thing about the search engine is that, when you type in a search query in the box, click on "More," and then "The E Club Search!," you are taken to The E Club's Custom Search page, where your search results on The E Club come up! This is the same for The E Club Lite. Do you want to use…
As you know, The E Club's 1-year anniversary is coming up this month on the 8th. Not only will there be celebrations, but yesterday, as a belated birthday treat, The E Club's explorative branches went on to Blogger, a Google website where you can create your own blogs. On June 1, 2010, The E Club World Blog came out. It makes a real-world connection to the amazing worlds of Mario, Star Trek, and Science. Below is a model of "The E Club's Family Tree:" The E Club Lite! | "Wii" Like Games* | The E Club World Blog
Don't understand the visual? Here's what it really means:
The E Club is at the top of the tree, meaning it started it all.The E Club Lite came next in line, being a "Division of The E Club.""Wii" Like Games is after The E Club Lite, but there's an asterisk after it due to the fact that I half own it with a fellow member, J.Finally, and most recently, The E Club…
Now that we have both Ask.com search technology and Google search technology on The E Club, Yahoo! Search has arrived! All of these search bars from different companies are on The E Club so you don't have to go to a million different websites to search one thing. You can get the codes for the search bars at the E-Store! The E Club is, after all, the Mario, Star Trek, and SCIENCE (INCLUDING TECHNOLOGIES) Website. Here are the Yahoo! Search bars: Yahoo! Web Search Bar:
Just like both of the Google Search bars in "Custom Search 2?," the above Yahoo! Search bar enables you to search the web, but this one allows you to search both the web and The E Club!
The E Club is going through this "search bar revolution" right now. It is going towards new company search engines like Yahoo! and Ask.com, and maybe more of Google, so there is now an Ask.com Search bar on The E Club (below)! (Note: The results are on Ask.com, not on The E Club.)
There's a SECOND Custom Search on The E Club? Well, not exactly. I just found a code for a Google-powered search engine where you can surf the web and The E Club. Here it is: (no longer exists) As you can see, it is powered by Google. I've seen this engine and Custom Search on websites all over, now. Next, I need to try this new thing out! P.S. You can hardly read the words next to the bullets, right? Well, the first word is "Web," so you can search all of the internet, and the second says "http://theeclub.info," so you can search The E Club.
The only difference with this search engine, CSII, as I call it, and Custom Search is that the results aren't on The E Club. Here is the link to the website I got this from: www.digitalpoint.com.
NEW FINDS FOR THIS SEARCH ENGINE: Search engines similar to this are given to Google AdSense users (including The E Club) where Google can display…
As you can see by the NEW Top Bar image, The E Club has switched to a convenient new service called SnackTools. With this, The E Club now has a cool Top Bar image and a photo slideshow on the front page. SnackTools has three beta divisions - BannerSnack, the free Flash banner maker; PhotoSnack, the free photo slideshow maker; and PodSnack, the free Flash playlist maker. The E Club only uses BannerSnack and PhotoSnack. PhotoSnack was used by The E Club just today.
Go on snacktools.com for details of all beta products.
New: If you want to help The E Club and The E Club Lite and purchase some cool stuff at the same time, now's your chance with The E Club's new E-Store! You can purchase FREE stuff in a few steps! Go to the second content block on the right of the regular text, and click on the link that says "Read More" next to a product and a segment of the description of the product.Read the description of the product, and if you like it, press "Add to Shopping Cart" below the picture and the description of the product, or, if there's a drop-down list of options next to that button and you want a product in a different color, style, etc., click on the arrow and find the option you are looking for. Then press Add to Shopping Cart.After that, the description of the item is still there, but this time, it says "Price: $0.00," and it confirms your order. Then press "Proceed to Checkout." It is a link to…
Thanks to Google and some searches, The E Club and its partner website, The E Club Lite, have some useful technology on them. The E Club Lite has Google Maps on it, Google Translate, and a Google Search bar, all thanks to Google. On here, there are Google Translate bars on it, and Google Search bars. With Google Maps, you can look for some place where you know where it is, but you don't know where to go. With Google Translate, you can translate The E Club and The E Club Lite into different languages. With the Google Search bars, you can search anything you want, right on The E Club and The E Club Lite!
If you've been looking around The E Club, you probably noticed that there are lots of YouTube videos. They contain information about Mario or Star Trek. There is also one on the front page for the Featured Music Video. They are all from Mario games, except for the Unification Special here on the Blog, and most of the screens have link versions somewhere on The E Club. At the end of each video, there is a list of related videos. Click on one to watch it on the screen. Go back to the original or look for more videos. Below is a video of the Mario game Super Mario 64. Enjoy! Also, most videos except for this one will be changed every month. After you watched a video, there are pictures of related videos below the regular screen. Click on one of them and the screen will change its video into the one you picked. To go back to the main video, just press the back button, (usually on the top…
Hey, visitors! Are you on some long vacation and you are bored? Well, you can have about *HALF THE FUN* from The E Club if you type in: www.theeclub.moogo.com on a Blackberry Phone or an iPod Touch! All of the tabs will be available, but things like the photo album block and the Mario Flash Games won't be available. Enjoy The E Club's Mobile Service! --News for this mobile service on May 1, 2010:-- E's source of technology backups for The E Club, The E Club Technology Developmental Service, (TECTDS) courtesy of Moogo, the creator of The E Club, has given both The E Club and The E Club Lite a special technology implanted in them that will make The E Club and The E Club Lite's quality on mobile phones, excluding the iPod, which already makes the quality show, so go on now! See the difference!
*This service is provided by The E Club Mobile Co., a division of The E Club.*