History
This is taken from the original site, so credit to here's luck for the wording.If you want to go all the way back to the beginning, you'd have to start with Roach's Xena vids index. Bonibaru got drafted to collect Smallville vids for the non-Xena section of that site; when she decided that they really needed their own site, she compiled what became the Smallville Music Video Archive. After helping Wildswans collect BtVS vids for Roach, Bonibaru realized that a Buffy index was even more necessary (and would be even more time-consuming to compile).
In 2002, she started mulling the idea over on lists and in her online journals, and when renenet volunteered to continue the research that Wildswans and Bonibaru had begun, things began to take off. renenet spent countless hours tracking down and cataloging vidders and videos in the days before the BMVD evolved into a searchable database. As a librarian, she brought to the project the perspective of somebody who actually gets paid to think about accessing information. She also brought here's luck on board to do the site's layout, organization, and graphics.
Shalott offered to adapt her Automated Archive scripts for vid rather than fic purposes, which ultimately led to the BMVD being a fully searchable and auto-updating database rather than a series of static exported tables. If you're interested, the software is available at the Automated Archive homepage; Shalott doesn't have time to help you customize it herself, but there's a very helpful mailing list on which to share tips and receive update announcements.
Meanwhile, Wendy had founded the Nummy Treat list and begun her own collection of links independently of this project; when she joined up, she brought a number of new sites and links to the BMVD, cross-checked renenet's research, and graciously agreed that updates could be posted to Nummy Treat.
Bonibaru wrote the FAQ and the Glossary, and attempted to keep minutes of the group's e-mail discussions before the rest of us foiled her by devolving into chaos. here's luck customized the appearance of the AutoArchive software (only broke it three times!), and in the process got addicted to CSS.
Most recently, Pipsqueak and Sue Donym helped out with the massive task of cleaning out and fixing old and inaccurate entries to the database. Many thanks to both of them!
New Owners from May 2007
In May 2007, here's luck and Bonibaru decided to turn the database over to new owners. Sarah was pretty much the only person to apply for actual ownership, while quite a few people said that they would help run and maintain the database. Sarah was given the database, and spent a good four hours swearing at Word as she tried to convert a perl database into a mySQL one. Once that was done, she exported it to an Excel spreadsheet, and started looking through the list of helpers that here's luck had given her.One of the many was Laura, and due to the fact that Laura was online a lot more than the rest, and the fact that Sarah and Laura really clicked, Laura was the one who ended up going through half the database with Sarah, checking for links. After such hard work, they decided to co-own the BMVD.
Sarah hacked the most recent version of eFiction to add extra fields, such as Artist and URL, then she and Laura tested the script for a good few days before importing the freshly-checked database. There are still some kinks, but mostly it worked. Sarah and Laura also drafted several people to help check the details once they were imported. Those people are: Kiera, mononina311 and par avion. Thanks, guys!
Code
The CSS-based design of this site is adapted from the two-column left-menu layout at the BlueRobot Layout Reservoir.Graphics
We have kept the same layout, knowing that people fear change. Credit to here's luck for creating the look of the BMVD. We also invite people to send us layouts, because this site can be skinned, meaning that we can offer a range of layouts and you can choose your preference in your profile. At the moment of writing this, there is only the default skin, however, as more skins become available, there will be a preview of each.BMVD graphics and buttons were made in PhotoShop 6.0 with brushes and some fonts from V-Brush, ABR, nocturna, and Truly Sarah, and with the technical aid of Vrya's very helpful tutorial on using layer masks.