About Cast Central
Cast Central was created way back in the early years 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 an early member of our online community. The site has grown over the years, and started out as one of the most technically sophisticated sites available. The current site focuses on the popular links page but in the past it hosted many webfinds, stories, chat rooms, message boards, and more. Many of these have been discontinued as my interest has waned and better alternatives have been created.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 and onto castcentral.org I moved everything to php/mysql. That code and it's derivitaves are what still power the site today.In the last 25 years we've grown from a handful of sites that updated once a week or so to hundreds, many who update every day. In order to support the ongoing server and time costs all links must pay a small amount to move their entry up to the top of the list, a maximum of once per day.