CheatCodes.com

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section is written like an advertisement.
Please help rewrite this article from a neutral point of view.
Mark blatant advertising which would require a fundamental rewrite in order to become encyclopedic for speedy deletion, using {{db-spam}}. (March 2008)

This article or section needs sources or references that appear in reliable, third-party publications.
Primary sources and sources affiliated with the subject of the article are generally not sufficient for a Wikipedia article. Please include more appropriate citations from reliable sources, or discuss the issue on the talk page.
This article has been tagged since March 2008.

CheatCodes.com
Image:Cc lomgjyhjgh 310.jpg

URL	http://www.cheatcodes.com/
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Gaming
Registration	Optional
Owner	CheatCodes.com LLC.
Created by	CheatCodes.com LLC.
Launched	August 5, 2001

CheatCodes.com is a gaming website that has published video game cheat codes, FAQs, and walkthroughs since 2001. It currently publishes content for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PlayStation, Xbox 360, Xbox, Wii, GameCube, Nintendo 64, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy, N-Gage, Dreamcast, and PC games.

1 Site History
2 A Filtered View
3 Growing Pains
4 Version 2
5 Notes and references
6 External links

[edit] Site History

The original idea for CheatCodes.com was hatched on Halloween Day of 1996, when the domain name was initially registered. Site co-founder Steve Jenkins envisioned a video game cheat site that would allow visitors to customize their view of the content based on the specific games they owned. Jenkins was busy with other projects at the time, including managing WinFiles, a software download site he had started in 1995. After selling WinFiles to CNET in 1999, Steve saw that the need for a "filtered" view of this type of content was still unmet, and decided to move forward with CheatCodes.com.

In October 2000, Steve Jenkins joined forces with programmer Steve Cook and brother Harlyn Jenkins (who had worked with his brother managing content on WinFiles.com), and began to build the database infrastructure required to provide the functionality for the site.

The site officially launched on August 5, 2001, and the launch was covered in InfoWorld by contributing editor Brian Livingston, who wrote "A new e-business site will launch today with more than 198,000 subscribers already registered via e-mail. The story of how this was accomplished tells a lot about viral marketing on the Web."^[1]

[edit] A Filtered View

While other video game cheat sites pre-existed when CheatCodes.com launched, they all shared one thing in common: a static interface to their content.^{[citation needed]} CheatCodes.com was the first cheat site to be entirely database driven, and to allow registered users to customize their view of the data based on specific games they own or care about.^{[citation needed]} The first version of this functionality was termed the "Watch List" (the current version of the site calls it the user's "Game List") and allowed users to view a page showing how many content items (such as cheats, hints, and FAQs) were published for each game on their list, and a direct link to that content on the site. The Watch List also allowed registered users to receive email updates whenever new content for their games was added to the site. At the time of launch, this was a unique feature to CheatCodes.com.^{[citation needed]} It is now replicated by most of the other major game sites, such as IGN and GameSpot.

[edit] Growing Pains

By 2002, CheatCodes.com had emerged as one of the most heavily visited gaming sites on the web.^{[citation needed]} Such growth never comes without difficulties, however, and it was clear that their bandwidth provider in Albuquerque, New Mexico was no longer able to keep up with their demand. A new hosting provider, Digital Forest, was chosen - but their colocation facility was located just outside Seattle, Washington. Moving the servers would prove to be a challenge. Steve Jenkins flew from Seattle to Steve Cook's home town of Albuquerque, and at midnight they drove a rented U-Haul truck to the colocation facility, packed up all the servers and equipment, and headed north. The site was offline for less than 24 hours, and the servers were comfortable in their new home... for a short while.

In early 2005, Digital Forest informed their customers that they were expanding to a new and improved hosting facility, about 30 miles from their old facility. This required another server move, but this time, it was done in style. In the words of Digital Forest's VP of Operations: "The final colocation client to move was our good friends "The Steves" from Cheatcodes.com... they were the last, (They are *always* late...) But as always they were entertaining.^{[citation needed]} Steve Cook and Steve Jenkins showed up in [Jenkins'] Ferrari F40... not exactly the right tool for moving a cabinet full of servers, but thankfully the digital.forest cargo van was there driven by d.f's operations VP, Chuck Goolsbee."^[2]

[edit] Version 2

On November 8, 2006, CheatCodes.com launched a major update of the site and termed it "Version 2." In addition to functionality updates, the site was completely re-designed to be XHTML compliant, and made full use of Cascading Style Sheets (also known as CSS). tj