Do you remember a decade-old site called 4 Guys From Rolla? I used to visit it a lot in the early days of ASP.NET.
Around 2002, it was still fairly common to visit favorite sites and look for information instead of just searching for it. The search algorithms were still being polished and there were not that many great development sites available at the time. But as we all know, Google’s algorithms improved with the speed of light and a few years later we simply googled for solutions to problems and subscribed to favorite sites by using RSS feeds.
The need for browser bookmarks vanished quickly and users became less inclined to visit their old favorites. Clever misuse of SEO techniques also made it possible for inferior sites to steal visitors from the established sites, leading to an ever increasing competition.
The last of the original “4 guys”, Scott Mitchell, recently left the site and wrote about his story in “I’ve Written My Last Article for 4GuysFromRolla”. It’s an interesting read about the crazy “dotcom” era and one passionate developer stuck in the middle of it.
A bunch of books we used to read a decade ago.
Update: The site still seems to be alive and kicking!
14 comments
The site is still up, and I still use it. But I get your article.
Yes, used that site so often but i left ASP behind me
Still use VBScript/ASP 3.0 with CDONTS and MS Access 2000 today. The webapp was written and is still maintained for over 18 years, love the simplicity and the locked-in language, no changes, no updates, no version/compatibility issues and the creativity you need to do things with so little.
I second @Classic ASP forever. Got dozens of ASP programs running important systems keeping business going that are still paying me 20 years later. Amazing.
I am a ASP guy. i use to visit the site from time to time. It had a lot going for it. but with the changes in the ASP.NET framework it sort of left the 4guys in the dust. its like reading an old manual. That’s just not how things are in ASP anymore and really anything they had was really not useful or would even work. sad to see all that work go to the wayside but, thats how the IT world is. fly high 4guys! fly high…
Just copying what Classic ASP forever said on 09 Dec, 2021, because I am still using hundreds of apps in Classic ASP for all the following reasons –
“Still use VBScript/ASP 3.0 with CDONTS and MS Access 2000 today. The webapp was written and is still maintained for over 18 years, love the simplicity and the locked-in language, no changes, no updates, no version/compatibility issues and the creativity you need to do things with so little.”
4guysfromrolla – it was indeed quite resourceful during that era and I was a classic ASP developer. I loved the way they help thousands of developers. Thank you.
I used that site a lot! It saved me several times. I moved to recent asp.net versions though.
I just visited http://www.4guysfromrolla.com and I’m sad to see it’s now a site full of ads. No content anymore.
Im still using classic ASP with Access 2000 to run a very successful commercial business with 1.6 million products – the site outperforms SQL and many modern sites built with better frameworks. I love classic ASP, with that and javascript there’s almost nothing you cannot do and it’s very easy to code. I’ll keep using it until I retire probably why change it now, we’ve been running this site for 20 yrs now.
Looks like the domain has been repurposed as part of a private blog network (PBN) for SEO after its expiration.
I was also one of them who used this site in 2002
Nothing came close to the site for useful information on classic ASP. It rocked!
I use to visit this website a quit often but now its gone.
When I used to code in classic ASP, I also used to benefit from the 4GuysFromRolla website. Today as a nostalgic thought, its name flashed in my brain and I googled it and found that it is no more active. Sadly the website is now showing some gambling stuff.
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