About Cast Central
About Cast Central Cast Central was created way back in the dark ages of the internet (1996). It went up just after Plaster of Paradise and started with just a few scanned in pictures from catalogs. I'm proud to be a founding member of our community. The site has grown over the years, and has long been one of the most technically sophisticated sites out there. The current site focuses on webfinds, stories, and of course the most popular links page. In the future I'd like to bring together more people in the community and try to build a working non-internet group that can get together and enjoy casting.
The Links Page For many years, the Links page has been the most popular part of this site. From 1996 to 1998 I checked the sites manually and updated the page to show who had done what. I decided to automate the page as the number of sites grew and attending college decreased my free time. My first attempt used a flat file and worked for about 20 minutes before corrupting the data. Within a few days I had rewritten it to use a Miva database which powered the page for the next year or so. The best part of the new design was that each site owner tells my site when they update, instead of me having to check each site one at a time. This automation allowed me to take a few years off while I finished my degree. When I moved off of castroom.com I moved everything to php/mysql, that code and it's derivitaves are what still power the site today. In the last 10 years we've grown from a handful of sites that updated once a week or so to over 175, many of which are pay sites that update every day. With so many sites updating, I've had to work to figure out the best way to display them. The pay sites update every day which keeps them at the top of the list, but most people can't even view the update. I can't ban them because they're still a part of the community, and if they get banned they'll just set up a free site which acts as an ad for the pay site. I can't segregate them off either due to the same reasons. Therefore I've come up with the current system. Each user has the ability to decide which sites to view or hide, no one decides for anyone else. Unfortunately, most people don't realize it, or keep clearing their cookies, or just can't figure out how it works...
Logo Photos The current logo uses two CC:Attribution photos: amtthews/1547005103 and kryddle/2066560502/
Privacy Your privacy is very important. I'm a caster, I know what its like to stay secret, I'll respect that. Information about you will not leave Cast Central.
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