About eMeerkats
eMeerkats, the site:eMeerkats, as an official Web site, was first created in the beginning of September of 1999. Prior to that, it was merely an area of my homepage called, "Mike's Meerkat Page."
It left a lot to be desired.
So, on September 4, 1999, I dropped my "homepage" in favor of a full-fledged Web site devoted to my interest in meerkats. Then called, "The Meerkat Arcadia," it boasted the same points of interest as nearly every other meerkat site at that time: information, links and photos.
The Meerkat Arcadia was overhauled on July 24, 2000, trading in its drab gray color scheme for a spiffier earthtone one (v.2). And, on September 8, 2001, the site was renamed to eMeerkats, its present day calling.
eMeerkats now boasts content that sets it apart from most other suricate sites on the Web. It continues to honor its roots as an informational site, and has also expanded to accomodate the authors and artists of the world's meerkat fandom. At one point, and perhaps again in the future, there was a message board where users could post their questions, comments, suggestions, and even critique the art and written works found on the site. And, for a time, eMeerkats was also a hosting presence, hosting other people's meerkat sites free of charge.
eMeerkats is, above all, an adaptable site, one which continues to grow and change to provide a hub for the world's growing meerkat fandom. Suggestions, ideas and [constructive] criticisms are always welcome, and may be sent directly to me via e-mail.
eMeerkats, the server:
The black monolith behind the eMeerkats site, simply dubbed the "eMeerkats server," is a custom-built, rack mountable, agile and capable Linux box, albiet a bit dated by today's standards. Though its most important role is serving as the host of this Web site, its other functions include being a full-fledged DNS server, mail server, FTP server, SQL server and fulltime Windows SMB file server.
And it's still running comfortably!
At its core is Slackware 9.1, an advanced, heavily customizable, reliability-oriented Linux distribution that eagerly does any obscure task I throw at it. The server's core hardware consists of an 800MHz AMD Duron CPU, half a gigabyte of memory, dual NICs and a zippy 20GB hard drive.