In the Beginning...
The beginnings of the whole SBLNet "thing" is neither as cool or as glory filled as I'd like it to be; although it's pretty cute I guess... I remember it fairly clearly surprisingly, waaay back in 1996. I was being looked after by my nan, and I was sitting under her kitchen table messing around as I often did when I was there - and suddenly *poof* I got the brilliant idea of "selling" (pretend money obviously) random possessions back to my close family members having hidden them in my room... Not a bad idea for a scheming little 7 year old I thought! I wanted to pick a "company" name that made me sound big, so I went for "The CJ Group", a relatively simple name when you think about it, "C&J" are some of my initials and the "Group" bit played the part of making me sound big... Like the Woolworth's or Threshers Groups for example... (Although I wasn't thinking about Woolworth's or Threshers at that time obviously!)

Later the same year, having spent countless hours winding up family members by "selling" their stuff back to them - I decided to lend a hand with the usual Christmas preparations in the only way I knew how... by selling them back cards and wrapping paper that I'd found lying around the house! This time I actually was selling them, understandably the demand was pretty low with other totally free alternatives still lying around the house... but hey, I made a few 20Ps out of it! haha...

A few years passed, and I'd still been trying to sell Christmas stuff to my family when each Christmas came around... I decided to call it a day in the tough old world of "Christmas Stuff Reselling" in 1999 after I decided it was pretty daft! (yeah, I did take my time coming to that conclusion!) - This decision was supported nicely by my discovery of the wonder that is the internet is early April of 2000... I really was amazed and pretty darn confused; because, even though I've been using PCs since I was about 5, and like to think I'm fairly "good with them", I'd never actually had access to the internet before, I'd seen it briefly once or twice, but that was it!

Eventually after getting to grips with the basics of the net, I decided I wanted my own bit of it and set up a VERY basic site (if you could even call it that) on the free hosting service that Lycos (not Tripod) used to provide, but I just had one problem - a problem that I often think about today too, and that is "What do I want on a website?" - I'd got a "site" up and running, but didn't really know what I wanted on it, and even if I'd decided on something specific, I'd probably not have known how to go about achieving it...

I'd then started to get the site of the ground a little more; although it was still a mere shadow of my friend MK's site, which boasted a forum (PHPBB) and around 20 members and above all, a specific subject! My site had none of these... and it was still clinging onto it's old "CJ Group" name... Something needed changing, it took some research and a lot of self-teaching (as it still often does) but I managed to get a (PHPBB) forum site, going with a few members... I still feel that the reason this site (slowly) succeeded and evolved, and in effect still exists today was that it was "The All Off-Topic Forums" - a tagline which it held onto for a few years... To coinside with this new site a new name was chosen... And this is where the "SBL" was born. Now one of the questions I get asked the most is... "What the hell does SBL stand for?!" and here's the answer... Again, it comes down to a personal level... SBL stands for Siege Buster Leisure... "Siege" and "Buster" being nicknames of mine often used by my dad and "Leisure" to suggest that going on the site is something you do in your leisure time etc...

A few months later I thought that Siege Buster Leisure was a bit long for a website title, so shortened it to SBL but wanted something to go after it, as I thought this name sounded to short... For a while the names switched between "SBL|UK" and "SBL Group" and things similar to these... Again, purely because I believe that change is good.. I decided to modify the site's website address too, trying to make it shorter and easier for visitors to remember... I tried a range of free services such as DynDns/Webhop, 5er, DotTK and ShortURL... Slowly, one by one each of these service providers started making their free services crappier and crappier filling them with various adverts and other stuff... and so... Began the next SBL site evolution...

Since none of the free "re-direct" providers I tried (mentioned above) offered a level of service I wasn't really happy with (I'm a bit of a perfectionist at heart) I started nagging my dad to register me a "proper" .co.uk/ or .com domain name... I had to ask my dad to at the time, as I didn't have my own my own credit/debit card, or a source of income to pay for it with! After a long two or so weeks worth of nagging he finally gave in and said he would... Before we did register anything though, I wanted to make sure I was totally happy with the site's name as I knew I wouldn't be able to change it for at least two years after I registered it... Eventually I settled on "SBL Network"... I went for "Network" part because it basically meant the same thing as "Group" did in the old name, but when shortened to "Net" I thought it also stood the chance of being mistaken for a ISP by those browsing the interweb... So SBLNet it was!

For a little while in 2003, the SBL Network; which had become a part of then newly formed "SWH|UK" as two of, what were to become the most popular sites on the network were a team effort between myself (Syco) and Spanner (who used to be a FME regular) - These two sites being the SBL Forums and a newly created fruit machine emulation site called Reel Crazy Emu, later to be known as Emulation Station... This site was a very well timed creation, shortly after the closure of both DXCellent and Fruit Forums (the two biggest FME sites on the internet at the time) Reel Crazy Emu... Ultimately the site's demise was caused by a lack of time for updates and finally by the eventual loss of the home-run server which Spanner had been hosting the sites on... By this point the sites (forums included) had gone part time (IE: Were available during the day but not at night) - So a new host needed to be found... I then realised that my (then) ISP Freeserve/Wanadoo (now Orange) offered a fairly good free hosting deal to members, so I got working on that.

So a few weeks later, the site, now re-hosted on my (then) ISP Wanadoo AND with a shiney new domain name (SBLNet.co.uk - purchased a month or so before, see above) working as a re-direct domain to the actual site itself - The site jumped into a totally new era, with the main homepage becoming what was essentially a links listing of a load of "networked" sites and the forums being re-branded "Freak Underground" (previously SBL Forums) with a much darker colour scheme then their previous spacey theme... The Reel Crazy Emulation / Emulation Station site was re-born briefly but again due to lack of time for updates and generally better quality FME sites appearing (like PoundRun and of course Fruit-Emu.com) the RCEmu site was closed... Better to go out in a blinding flash than to slowly fizzle away, right?

2003 -

Following the hacking of the site's forums in the summer of 2003, not much went on the way of forum activity (since 99% of it had been deleted and no backups were available) - so we focused our efforts on the other aspects of SBLNet... But things felt empty without a forum being part of the site... The Wastelands forum was introduced on the 1st December 2003 @ 6pm powered by InvisionFree and that's where things for our flagship website got started!

2004 -

Things started to go a little pair shaped with regards to hosting... By this time the number of visitors came as quite a surprise to me and we using a total of 7 free hosting accounts on 2 different providers to keep us up and online. 4 at Lycos and 3 on Freeserve/Wanadoo.... Lycos were adding more and more adverts to their free hosted websites and a number of times we went over bandwidth... Also I began having problems with Freeserve/Wanadoo's hosting as well - FTP uploads never working, connections always timing out and generally being bloody useless! ALSO, just to make things even harder, Wanadoo (formerly Freeserve) sent an email out saying they would be changing all the URLs of hosted sites from "mysite.freeserve.com/something" to "mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/something" so that was literally hundreds of URLs I needed to update across the site - with no real shortcut way of doing it...

Sometime passed, and later in the year, I believe it was September, we were rescued from this pretty sorry state by Duplu at Fruit-Emu.com who said he'd host our sites. We're still hosted by Fruit-Emu.com today.. What can I say?? Thank you so much!!

2005 -

2005 was another fairly eventful year for the site. It saw the rise and fall of a good few things on the network - the most obvious one being the networks homepage which was axed in the summer due to poor visitor numbers - The networks homepage is now the newly re-branded WastelandsUK forums which allows users (both registered and not) to access all of the sites and services we have to offer from the one place! The whole load of websites hosted by Fruit-Emu.com had to be split up due to escalating hosting costs for Duplu combined with a decrease in the time available to administer a dedicated server. SBLNet was among 3 or 4 sites that "made it through" the server move, while others were required to find other homes...

Shortly after the initial server move all MySQL powered sites on the new server (at Network Reddux) started failing due to the high usage of the databases they run on. Network Reddux refused to increase the maximum number of database connections that the hosted sites could have, and so.. another host had to be found for all the the Fruit-Emu hosted sites... Then came PowerVPS. After a few months faultless hosting by PowerVPS all hosted sites were moved servers once again to allow for greater freedom with regards to what can and can't be hosted, as the limitations imposed by PowerVPS were very strict. We're now happily hosted by Xeepo and on a server provided by Layered Technologies.

I'd like to take a moment here to thank Duplu once again for all the time, effort and money he's put into keeping us hosted over the last few years; sorting all the hosting problems, helping me with mine and pretty much teaching me as I go along! I promise I'll try and chip in some dosh more often mate!

2006 -

Continuing the established pattern, 2006 was another fairly eventful year for us. The three biggest developments throughout the course of the year were most certainly the implementation of a complete new site for the SBLNetwork and the complete revamp of our flagship site, WastelandsUK; along with the relaunch of our radio station Wastelands LIVE 24/7 which was also featured in the press.

This year we've teamed up with a number of new companies and organisations to improve the implementation of our services and their promotion - including Live365, Google, vBulletin, JustOne and ZTMC among others. Genesis Mobile, our mobile phone venture in partnership with the Carphone Warehouse also received a new site in the summer. We have continued drive our focus into the entertainment market, which as stated previously, resulted in the disposal of a number of free hosting services including Genesis Boards and Picbay. We also began actively supporting a number of new unsigned bands via our main site and radio services.

Top 5 of 2006 -
1) WastelandsUK
2) Your Space
3) Photosblucket
4) CheatsDen
5) Genesis Proxy

2007 -

A pretty quiet year in terms of minor developments however a number of large, fundamental changes were made to the site as we continued to home-down our strongest talents and remove or build upon our weaker areas. New areas such as live radio broadcasting 24/7 by Wastelands UK were also trailed this year. The network continued to trial a number of supporters to provide us with effective, cost effective advertising, for the 2007 season we transferred the majority of our promotions to "BuyAt".

In July we sadly had to announce that our popular photo hosting website "Photosblucket" had to close due to a major, unforeseen compatibility issue

In 2007, hits for the network as a whole totalled a gigantic 13,752,096! We're proud to say that this ever increasing figure is still an ongoing trend that that we're excitedly attracting more and more new visitors to our sites each day!

2008 -

In the fourth quarter of 2008 following a long spate of few-and-far-between developments across the network due to unfortunate circumstances beyond our control, the Xeepo revolution begins. SBLNet is overhauled and rebranded along with a number of our sites in the process. SBLNet becomes Xeepo (said "Zee-Po") on December 1st. A number of sites close, a number of sites open - some replacements for their predecessors and others breaching new ground. We're off on a roll again and we're extatic to be back!!

2009 -

Early 2009 we're very much looking forward to an eventful year. A number of ongoing issues corrected, new sites launched. Xeepo mobiles (in partnership with CPW) closes, a replacement will follow later this year. We've partnered up with some new guys to bring you some great new stuff in the coming months...

We're looking forward to another exciting year,
we hope you'll be a part of it?