In 1998, I set up the first real ‘Pontypridd‘ website. This was in the early days of the Internet. There were a few other websites already doing stuff on ‘Ponty’ e.g. Ponty.net, the rugby site for one, but these were the real early days, before social media existed, and most people were still on dial-up, after unplugging their phone!
As well as adding regular content, the site aimed to give the people of Pontypridd a chance to voice their opinions on the town and the surrounding area. As well as the website, which has had various re-designs over the years, I also started a message board. This became hugely popular, and politicians everywhere hated it as I allowed true free speech. Certain locals (you know who you are) wholeheartedly supported this idea and enthusiastically got involved. On several occasions, the rumour mill, political vitriol, dark humour and sarcasm resulted in the threat of legal action, but luckily I had attended Internet Law courses with the BBC in London, which helped enormously. Especially when people posted the truth! The website made the front page of the SW Echo, and had various Lords, Ladies and MPs after me, but it was all good fun exposing their corruption and disdain for the people they are supposed to represent.
As well as the politics and dirty tricks, the website also gave a platform to the Ponty Curry Club, filmed by BBC Wales, where we met Iolo Williams in the old Everest Tandoori. I also started a cycling group on Sundays and invited pub and band reviews for the site. With the best rugby team in the world (during the 90s), our sister site, the equally infamous (www.pontyrugby.com) got investment from millionaire Chris Wright (Wasps RFC) and the Rivals brand.
As a result of this collaboration, I managed to land the BBC Scrum V web producer’s role, after the late, great Sean Davies moved on. As well as being an ‘online thing’, the members of the forum also met up in real time, in various pubs. This was true for the Ponty Town Online site, the Rivals rugby one and even Scrum V. The Ponty site was now in its heyday, but like all good things, I knew it wouldn’t last.
As time went by, the old message board culture was replaced with something I had thought about in 2000. I didn’t know a database guy to help me build it, so it never took off. Oh yeah, it did about five years later. You might have heard of it… Facebook. Anyway, who cares? It’s only worth $1.5 trillion nowadays. It would be nice to have that sort of cash of course, I could give a few quid to Cilfynydd RFC, save the elephants and maybe buy an old Defender. Never mind, maybe in another lifetime.
When Facebook took over from all of us amateur web designers/bloggers, I felt it was time to step down. I moved our town board to Facebook in 2018, but it took me until 2024 to finally let go. With help from ‘too many to mention’ local Ponty people, I’d built the community up from nothing to 35,000 members over 26-27 years. I announced I was giving up and got about 5 likes – now do you see why I thought social media was the end of civilisation as we know it?!!!
I still have the domain name (for a while anyway) – www.pontytown.co.uk – so if anyone wants to buy it, let me know.
In the meantime, you can still moan about ‘all things Ponty’ here. And yes, it was real