Has It Only Been A Year? (A Personal History of thisisUll.com) By Rich Mills

Well in actual fact it's been just over a year, but the title of this piece was long enough without starting to split hairs on the timing of this piece not coinciding with the actual anniversary of thisisUll.com. Now I'm proud to say I was there at the beginning, before the launch in August last year.

A friend at the time lived near to Mo and Cilla, and mentioned what they were starting to put together, and would I be interested in contributing? I immediately jumped at the chance, and after meeting the two of them, I started to throw as many articles and stories at them as I could.

One of the other things I helped with during the infancy of the site, was the production of marketing materials, posters, flyers, etc .. And the now-famous hand-of-god-touches-ull image on the Home Page, was my work. There was a moment of infamy for a while, when I redesigned the logo for the Drugs section of the site. A big fucking syringe needle in the hand-of-god, skewering 'ull right through the middle, seemed to piss a few people off for some reason. Oh well, at least it caused some controversy and got people talking about the site. As they say any publicity is good publicity, and all that.

In those early days, the contributors probably amounted to 3 or 4 people, if that. So I started to write under two different names, so it didn't look as if the site was really called thisisrich, which there was a danger of at first.

Fortunately however, around this time I also became involved with the Renegade Writers. That bunch of misfits and aging delinquents. Feeling quite at home amongst such company, I mentioned the existence of thisisUll.com, and suddenly the writers for the site more than doubled almost over-night. Now my exact recollection of all this is a little hazy. I was a little worse for wear at the time, having just come out of a horrendous relationship. But what I do remember is pointing everyone I met in the direction of thisisUll.com.

Since then things have gone from strength to strength. And lots of people have become involved in thisisUll.com. The site is now well established as the major source of information and general ranting, if you want to know what is going down in this city of ours.

I was going to continue singing the praises of the site and its creators and contributors but the best way to understand the site and the people involved in its creation is to have a dig around, read some of the truly brilliant articles that are here. There are some true little gems which are well worth spending the time reading.

So carry on surfing on the site, make it your bloody HOME PAGE! Or even try contributing yourself. The buzz you get the first time you see your article up on the site is spot-on. I'm a bit of an old hand at it now, but I still get that buzz when I know I've done a good job and the finished article is up there for all to see. Catch you all soon, and please keep supporting probably the one and only true community website there is out there.

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