History

The story of the history of the Barracks itself is rather short.  The Barracks as we know it today came to be in late 2000.  Prior to that, the Barracks was nothing more than another anonymous C&C GOLD fan site that had almost no hits.  However, thanks to the creator of the site, Ojomym, and his constant advertising in Westwood Chat, The Barracks has become the world's best site for information on C&C GOLD.  In addition to that, it is now the only site that is still fully functional and maintained by its original creators.      The Barracks was founded as an attempt by Ojomym to start a truly successful C&C GOLD site.  Originally called "Command and Conquer GOLD H.Q., the site had limited success but still managed to gain a moderate amount of hits and make its way onto many other webmaster's "favorite sites" lists.  Hosted by Angelfire at www.angelfire.com/ma3/cncgold, the site showed potential.  At first, while the site was under construction, there was no need seen to create a simpler address like the one that the Barracks is located at now.  Realizing the word had to be spread, Ojomym put in META tags for search engine recognition.  Then he set up an account at www.cncgold.cjb.net to shorten the web address.  He also started advertising in chat rooms at Westwood and the hits began to build.      With hits began to grow and Ojomym received some feedback from the visitors, he decided to give the Website its very first overhaul.  In early 2000, Ojomym launched The Barracks version 1.0.  With great reviews, the website finally began to gain major recognition.  When the Barracks started to work in collaboration with MacMark's site The CNC God, it really started to take off.  The website became so huge that it returned first result under the search string "Command and Conquer GOLD" under AOL and Google searches.  Under the search string "Command and Conquer" it appears on the second page for AOL, Google, and AltaVista.  This is still true today. However towards the the end of 2000, Ojomym decided it was time for the Barrack's second design change.      On January 1, 2001 the Barracks version 2.0 was launched.  It was a complete revamp from the previous version.  Though the entire site had not yet been completed, the main areas were up and functioning.  The reviews were great and the hits came pouring in.  Sporting more info than you could shake a stick at, and a hot new design, the Barracks was up and running as one of the top C&C Gold sites on the web.  The site registered an average of 50 hits a day, and seeing the need of other player's opinions and a helping hand, Ojomym took on a staff.  Sadly, this did not seem to change things for the better.  The staff idea appeared to work for a short period of time, but soon after, both the webmaster and the staff for the most part stopped updating as frequently, and most staff members left or stopped working.      As Westwood dropped title after title of the production lines, C&C gold began to, in a sense "die".  Players of the game were dropping like flies, and cheaters ruled the ladder.  Many players hardly played, or stopped playing altogether.  Due to the tremendous amount of cheating, and the time consuming events of "real life", the Barracks officially shut itself down on August 2, 2002.      However, in late November of 2002, staff member DontGivUp, after reading Ojomym's farewell and realizing the site had been shut down, decided to write his own goodbye.  After an in depth phone conversation with Ojomym, the two decided to once again, re-open The Barracks and finish what Ojomym had started so long ago. Determined to finish the site and to get players back into the game, the two began a journey bound for success.      Towards the end of February 2003 however, things began to unravel.  Westwood shut down the GOLD Ladder, and Web-Master Ojomym to an extended leave of absence.  Coupled with that, and an increasing load of "real life" on the remaining staff member DontGivUp, the updates began to become fewer and farther between.  With journey that began 4 months before unraveling and falling apart, the Barracks continues its journey toward C&C Revival.       Finally it had hit the fan, and not in a good way.  After the site had moved to CNCNZ, the amount of time that could be devoted to the site wasn't enough.  The site was taken down.  However, The Barracks had never been removed from the servers at Angelfire.  After months of thinking about it, DontGivUp finally took the time to make the few changes to the site that would allow it to operate without any significant work to ever be needed again.  This is the state that the website sits in today.  All of the information is there, and if you even have a question to ask it can still be submitted via the FAQ page, and if you include your email address, you might still get an answer from the staff.  Though the game is now gone, the mark it has left on this world will forever remain here at The Barracks...