The AVCA makes a comebackPOSTED JAN 7, 2011

It was the longest running and most popular feature of egrabow.com. The Audio/Video Component Archive (AVCA) was a database I started in 2000 to chronicle, well, the evolution of home theater. Back in the 90's, I watched DVD replace LaserDisc and VHS. 1996's top-of-the-line features became 1998's mid-line features and 2000's entry-level. Prices went down as features and versatility went up. By 2000, 1995's Crutchfield catalog felt older than it's date suggested, the vast majority of listed products long gone from shelves, model numbers stricken from manufacturer's websites, information on them nowhere to be found. This was before Wikipedia , mind you.

The AVCA was originally a listing of VCR models, A/V Receivers, etc. from 1996/1997. My interest in it dived during college, only to be revived in 2006, when the AVCA was reborn as a MySQL database. This made for great practice leading up EG2007, when this entire website began to run on PHP and MySQL, and in my surge of enthusiasm I expanded the listings rapidly for about a year. Though the expansion was followed by an increase of traffic, my database was no longer the only information source on the internet and my focus was moving toward fiction writing. The AVCA was finally culled with the launch of "EGrabow HD" in 2009, along with the VHF TV Logo Gallery, another classic feature of egrabow.com.

Though I anticipated a drop in traffic, the drop ended up being much bigger than thought. Wake Up! Pro was the only traffic magnet left until Caffeine was published, hampered by my decision to focus on writing fiction rather than software. Now, Wake Up! Pro hasn't seen an update in three years and its traffic is declining. Caffeine , though doing well, hasn't yet made up for it.

Since egrabow.com is the main avenue of promoting my book, and I should try to keep my site ranking up, I've decided to bring the popular AVCA back. Much of my old source material is gone, but thankfully I still have the Crutchfield catalogs and Consumer Reports guides that most of the data came from. I also still have the SQL and PHP files, so the database as it existed in 2008 can be easily restored.

I'm not willing to throw much time into the AVCA, naturally; this is all about raising the site's traffic; but I admit that I'll enjoy having it back. In spite of my lower level of commitment, I've decided that the AVCA will be a full-fledged, permanent part of egrabow.com, adapted to work with version 28. For the sake of my sanity, there will be no listings later than the 2009 model year. I also won't add any new brands or categories, or go through much trouble looking for new data sources.

I hope to have it up and running again in a couple of weeks.

 Previous Post: Ten
 Next Post: Oh, MiniDisc