As some of you may or may not be aware, 57 Fords International was able to purchase 1957Ford.com from its creator, John Gambill Sr. last December. Since then I have been working on modernizing it and launching it back onto the internet. In the beginning, my original plan was to simply install it on my server and run it as it was, with small changes in logo and colors. When I did my trial launch, I found that the website would not display. Further investigation found that the original site was written in asp.net, a Microsoft specific language, and was incompatible with my Linux based servers. So, I was faced with either paying someone to re-write it for me in .php, migrating to a Microsoft based server, or redoing the site myself in WordPress. It has taken a great deal of time to get this far, but the results are worth it, in my humble opinion. Hopefully, members and fans alike will be proud of the site, and use this great resource as John envisioned it years ago when he started it.
John and I go back a long way, back to the beginning of this club, as we worked together to form it, and started it on Excite communities, later to Yahoo! groups, then to our own website. Hopefully, we will be around for a long time, and keep this great resource out there. Hopefully, in the beginning at least, you won’t be too disappointed by the lack of photos. As there was just an immense number of them, probably near 10,000 or better, it will take some time to get them all up. The models and racing sections are being done with galleries, instead of the numerous pages as before. Hopefully, the bulk of the images will be up by Autumn. Stay tuned into this site. And please, use the entire site, not just the images, or just the forums. There is so much here, andfrankly, I am proud of it, and proud to be the caretaker of it for now.
