Ancient Web: Brian May World Kept Its 1999 Fan Awards and WebRing
Oliver Tamminga's Brian May World began in March 1999 and preserves a Queen fan network built with web awards, photo galleries, music quizzes, a guestbook and personal correspondence.
Part of the Ancient Web Collection.
Before musicians had a thousand official social accounts, a fan could make a serious commitment to one artist and become a useful stop on the wider fan circuit.
Oliver Tamminga's website is dedicated to Queen guitarist Brian May. Its about-my-site page says he launched the project in March 1999, then moved to his own domain after receiving encouraging mail and web awards. The homepage records an exact revision history: version one began March 29, 1999, while version two arrived on September 17, 2000.
The menu promises interviews, photographs, concert reports, a quiz, polls, Queen conventions, collecting rarities, the Red Special guitar and tributes to drummer Cozy Powell. One section even deals with Queen references in The Simpsons. These are the unmistakable choices of an enthusiastic fan editor rather than a record label's marketing department.
A visitor counter, a guestbook and ten awards
Tamminga keeps the old recognition system in plain view. The main page advertises ten international web awards and quotes an Intermusic.com assessment from March 2001. It also displays a hand-maintained visitor tally referring to nearly 399,000 visits before September 7, 2007. Those figures are the site's own claims and records, not a verified traffic audit.
An invitation to sign the guestbook sits beside a mailing-list signup. The footer includes links to a Queen WebRing, complete with previous, next and random-site navigation. That is the older fan network in miniature: independent pages connecting readers to one another, without a single company owning the discussion.
Tamminga's site history thanks people whose contributions helped the project grow. He also notes that photographs appearing on the site reached the limited-edition booklet for Queen's Greatest Hits III, illustrating how volunteer fan publishing sometimes intersected with official releases.
Some linked bulletin boards and RealVideo features may not still function, and the page's long-abandoned advertisements should not be mistaken for current recommendations. What remains is unusually complete evidence of the site's early layout, dates and community ambitions.
Explore the original homepage and fan links.
Part of the Ancient Web Collection.
- Categories: Ancient Web
- Tags: #ancientweb, #fansites, #webrings, #queen, #brianmay