My name is Bradley Wyatt. I have been involved in the administration of this site for a while now.

My history on the site has been fairly complex. I first joined the site, if I remember correctly, in late 2004 or early 2005. I was a regular member and I wasn't subject to any special treatment. I was however, arguably the most dedicated member on the forum at that time. After contributing time, effort and posts to the forum for a while. The then-owner and founder, Dean, promoted me to Global Moderator as a reward for my efforts. I brought activity and skill in managing members to the role and succeeded in keeping the forums largely free of problem members and spam. I continued to excel in this role for a long while. Then, while talking to Dean about the forum, he expressed interest in upgrading it into the latest software. This cost money and he could not purchase it himself. I offered to buy the upgrade for the forum and asked for nothing in return. However, Dean promoted me to Co-Admin and I joined his side in managing the site in all aspects. After my promotion, Dean's activity began to steadily decline due to real life issues and other commitments. A problem with the current host also arose in this time, so I moved it to a new host.

Then, however, disaster struck. I came to the website one day to find it wasn’t responding or loading. My efforts to get in contact with the host were to non avail. After weeks of trying, I finally got hold of someone. He claimed he didn’t know what happened to the site. We looked into it, and it turned out the whole lot had been deleted. Thousands of downloads, thousands of members and thousands of posts and topics were gone in an instant. There was nothing I could do and, understandably, I was furious. The members were also completely confused. So, the host offered me free hosting as compensation for the loss. We took up the offer and I chose to re-start RCTPyro from the beginning. In March 2006, RCTPyro was reborn under the new domain of http://rctpyro.co.uk. It was a fresh installation of the board, everything was lost. I announced the revival at Atari Community and, sure enough, the members started returning. I got the forum setup and had all the back-end and front-end settings changed accordingly. It was skinned and within a week, all the veterans of the previous RCTPyro began to re-register and take part again. From there on, it began to grow constantly and steadily. Since I revived the forums, and Dean was still sparsely active, I took it on myself to take control and run the forum myself. Dean agreed, and from there on out I became the sole administrator of RCTPyro.

Now that I ran the website myself, I began to introduce some new rules and restrictions to better regulate the forum. Spam was obliterated, and members were required to spell and use grammar properly. In terms of problem members, there have only been a few which were swiftly dealt with. All in all, it’s a pleasant community with some of the most mature, sensible and friendly people on the internet. There were more additions, too. A blog, gallery and a more reliable download system. A shoutbox was installed which has become a forum favourite, then later a casino and arcade and, more recently, an inline rating system for rating posts based on their content. An efficient warning system is used to keep people in line and there are rarely any incidents that go so far as to get the administration involved personally. This continued until 2008 when, as you see now, the site was moved from RCTPyro to vPyro. It's name and domain was changed and a new era of pyrotechnic excellence begun. The forum was upgraded to the very latest software, new staff were hired, the forum was re-organised and the result is what you see before you.

Truly a product of divine ascension. The rest, as they say, is history.

Take a step back through time: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.rctpyro.co.uk & http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.rctpyro.com

The domain rctpyro.co.uk expired in May, and rctpyro.com will expire in July. Thus ending the RCTPyro namesake and ushering in a new era of pyrotechnic perfection but in no way affecting the lasting legacy of RCTPyro, its members and its community.

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