Chatserve came into being when a representative of the local deaf community in the San Francisco bay area asked Access Internet if they could host a chat server to help deaf people communicate. We were pointed to the new chat software called Palace and the first Chatserve server was up and running in about a month. Well actually there was a rather interesting event in our first few days of palace that resulted in almost all of Access Internet being banned from Palace...
...but that's another long story.
From that beginning we started looking into palace in detail and found a need for good quality hosting of palaces for individuals and organizations. The palace hosting business grew so fast that we were rapidly overwhelmed and we had a lot of stumbles along the way but Chatserve has grown into the largest palace hosting community on the planet. That was made possible through a lot of hard work on the part of the tech support folks and the server admin guys, but also through an amazing community spirit between the owners of Chatserve palaces.
Chatserve is a (we think) great hosting service. Chatserve is (we hope) great tech support from folks that know and understand the palace software. But more than anything, Chatserve is a fantastic community of palace owners, helping each other learn the ropes of running your own palace server from where do I put my pat file to how do I make my palace someplace people would want to come. These are the people that make Chatserve a great place to own and operate a palace. They have been through bringing a palace online and dealing with troublesome users and all the other countless adventures that you never thought about when you decided to start a palace. They have been through it all and they pull together around each new user to help them through the problems. When you join the Chatserve family, you'll get great hosting, great tech support and you'll become a member of the greatest online community of palace owners anywhere.
The first (not so smooth) days of Palace at Access Internet (As related by Hank)
A few years ago, Access Internet was approached by a representative of the San Francisco Bay Area deaf community, to host a chat server using the Palace software. We didn't know anything about Palace so we asked the techs to check it out. It just so happened that it was Doom night. That means there was a bunch of guys playing Doom on the computers in our classroom. During a break in the carnage, they installed Palace on all the classroom machines and logged on to Mansion. They knew absolutely nothing about palace, but they soon discovered moving via the arrow keys. About a dozen of them donned Elvis props and started a chorus line, where they started at the top of the screen and zig-zagged down the screen in unison. No - they had no idea about server flooding or sliding.
They quickly pissed off the other users in the room and a wizard was summoned - Wolfie. He asked them to stop sliding but they had no idea what he was talking about or who he was so they ignored him. One of them (reports say it was Naz) said something really intelligent like "Bite me" and found himself pinned in a corner. The rest swarmed to his defense and started saying other intelligent things, and suddenly they were all booted.
I was sitting in the other room, oblivious to all this, and I got an email from the president of the company. He had gotten an email from Wolfie explaining that a bunch of machines at Access Internet had been banned from palace and would be released when an explanation was offered. I logged onto Mansion and was immediately confronted by Wolfie (he recognized the IP block). He told me what was going on and started naming the banned machines. I walked into the classroom and the guys in there were still staring at "Your death penalty....." on the screen and wondering what was going on. I showed them the email from Bob and they all thought they were fired :-)
After a quick explanation, and a BIG apology, Wolfie lifted the ban and we continued our voyage into Palace space.
