All About Allpar

Tenth Anniversary celebrations

We’ve come a long way in ten years - longer in fourteen, which is the length of time some of Allpar’s content has been posted on the Web (starting at cyberwar.com/valiant/). I still remember the excitement of getting my first e-mail with information I could post... learning new facts (or not) on the new rec.autos.makers.chrysler newsgroup and the Valiant and EEK mailing lists, and posting them with the originator’s name and e-mail address (we don’t post e-mail addresses any more!). I remember the fun and work of writing and maintaining the Chrysler FAQ... and all the corrections and details from people like Bohdan Bodnar and Dan Stern, whose last name does convey his attitude towards mistakes. I remember well reading about the Intrepid and Neon engineering processes and thinking that someone in Auburn Hills must have taken the same organizational development courses I took. And of course there was the horrible roller coaster of Daimler, by coincidence taking place in the same year that Allpar.com was registered as a domain name and z.simplenet.com/cc/ was moved over to new digs at Esosoft.

Allpar might have disappeared long ago were it not for a dedicated group of people who wrote in to encourage more writing and posting, who sent in tech tips, photos, and reviews, who corrected mistakes and added detail, and, certainly not least, those who spread the word so that I could start to get some advertising money to make up for the time I took off work to work on the site. For I am not a mechanic, or an engineer; I was trained in organizational psychology, and that was my profession until recently. Allpar now commands nearly all of my time and attention, and we’re about to bring on our first real employee to go through the site, find and fix problems, bring things up to date, add links, and eventually work on getting our backlog fixed.

This year, let’s celebrate.

Based on input from the forums, here’s what’s happened:

Special logos celebrating ten years ->
A sheet cake at Carlisle and at the NJ meet
A big feature on Chrysler Corporation in 1998
Allpar mugs
Guesses for the future of Chrysler in the next 10 months
Top ten lists for influential vehicles or figures, popular forum threads, or interesting events from the past ten years

Here’s what is likely to happen:

A yearbook in which everyone can be involved (Mathilda is leading the charge)

What is Allpar?

Allpar is a Web site owned by Allpar, LLC and set up for the benefit of Chrysler, Dodge, Plymouth, DeSoto, Eagle, and Jeep owners and enthusiasts. It is closely linked to valiant.org and ptcruizer.com. Probably most Allpar content has been contributed by a large variety of individuals, not written by the Webmaster. You can read bios of many major Allpar contributors at this link. If you would like to add your bio, send it in!

Advertising

Nearly all of our advertising currently comes via AdSense (the publisher's version of AdWords). We prefer using them because it allows advertisers to target their ads; Google appears to have a more favorable revenue share than most ad agencies; we don’t need to spend time on tracking and invoicing; and the ads are less intrusive than most. Advertising is used to fund time off from what would normally be our regular job, as well as creation of new areas (e.g. the registry), occasional purchase of spy photos, and server rental. If you don't already use AdWords, register now!

History

(Adapted from Mopars in Motion)

Allpar was started in 1994 at www.mordor.com/valiant, later moving to cyberwar.com/~valiant/, first seeing life as "Valiant's car pages" and focusing on the Valiant. The Sundance was soon added, since I loved the Valiant but owned a Sundance. Eventually, other models joined in, other people started to write, and, as I sought to evade writing on my dissertation, I started the rec.autos.makers.chrysler newsgroup and FAQ, finding more material from contributions to those.

There are still many traces of the mordor.com site across the Internet, including an article on “What’s New With NSCA Mosaic: September 1995,” a January 1995 e-mail message I sent which is now recorded for posterity for no apparent reason, and a few links I'll never be able to get updated.

From mordor.com (peak: 5,000 visitors/month), the site moved to another local ISP (cyberwar.com/~valiant/), of which no traces seem to remain, then to z.simplenet.com. After spinning off the Valiant pages (valiant.org), largely as an experiment in using our own domain name and a new service provider, I started a search for good web site names, because I never wanted to write to hundreds of people to update a link again. The primary criterion was starting with the letter "A" for good directory listings. Hence, allpar, a risky name given Chrysler's predilection for attacking its friends (we cleared it verbally with a member of their legal department first). A few conversations with their legal eagles, along with an abrupt departure from selling car parts on the side (through a joint operation with Cyberspace Auto Parts), resulted in peace.

Allpar eventually grew out of the $8 per month hosting environment and caught the last bits of the Internet bubble, bringing in enough advertising for me to take two days a week off from work. Then the advertising market fell to pieces, the $7.50 per thousand impressions delivered for a few months by the Luna Network dropped down to around ten cents per thousand - and they had to be popups, not banner ads! - and it appeared that I’d be doing Allpar only in my spare time again. Suddenly, Google rode in to the rescue, offering an attractive revenue split.

To show how wondrous Google was, let’s look at the company that really started their current business model - goto.com (now called Overture). They auctioned off placement on various web sites, including their own search engine, and pricing for keywords had a floor of five cents per click, with many keywords demanding over a dollar per click. Yet, webmasters were paid just one penny per click. Then Overture decided that any revenue share was too much, and paid nothing per click.

Google started up with a revenue share that some have estimated at 50/50 - and others have estimated at 60/40 with webmasters getting the 60%! If you get a nice, high-paying ad and someone pays Google $1 for the click, you get 50¢ to 60¢, depending on the split (it’s still a secret). That took the ad rates up from cents to dollars per thousand impressions, and allowed us to drop those horrible popup and slideunder ads that everyone hated. That meant we did not have to go near DoubleClick and their sleazy “let’s install spyware from the ads” tricks! (We dropped DoubleClick as soon as we discovered they were doing that.) It also meant I could take off four days a week from work, and, now, nearly five; fly out to Detroit to cover the auto show (except this year when I'll be in Chicago instead); and, soon, hire a 25-hours-a-week assistant (my wife, in case you were wondering), which will allow me to have real health coverage instead of the play “we cover you as long as you don’t get sick” plans offered at high expense to individuals. (Group plans, where the group has a single covered employee, are for some reason much cheaper and better than individual plans, so hiring someone will, as a net expense, be fairly minimal, and there really is too much work for one person now.)

I've been pleased to see that Mopar people seem far nicer than many other fans, particularly those of Honda/Acuras. Even the powerful Dodge and Plymouth people - the Spirit R/T fans, the Hemi owners - are generous and kind, giving their time and help to others. The most popular forum is the tech support board, but those centering around certain cars - EEKs, minivans, etc. - are also popular and friendly. (A forum list is at http://www.allpar.com/i/forums.html).

Allpar has information on a huge variety of vehicles, and is not prejudiced towards any particular type of car. There's lots of EEK info - I coined the term "EEK" when creating a mailing list a few years ago, it stands for "Every Extended K-Car" - but also extensive sections on new cars like the Neon, and classics from North America to Asia. There's a section for offshore-only Mopars - pretty interesting stuff - another for the history of Chrysler, another for squad cars, another for racing, etc. It's not at all specialized, and we go back to the 1930s and forward to 2012. There are thriving news and rumors pages and forums. We get between 500,000 and 600,000 visitors per month, and have for around two or three years.

I actively invite people to participate and add material, and in fact there's no way I could have written the 900 or so pages currently up on the site. I just don't have that range of knowledge. So I'm happy to edit and learn, and support those more and less knowledgeable than myself. (Most of your readers are probably much more knowledgeable!)

Disclaimers

Allpar is not owned or affiliated with Chrysler or its Mopar Parts division. Allpar stands for "A Layman's List of Practical Auto Resources."

Allpar does not endorse any product or service. Most information has been sent in by our viewers; other information is from books, magazines, newspapers, and Chrysler press releases. Most material has not been completely verified. Any technical tips, performance hints, etc. are undertaken at the user's risk. Most have not been attempted by the Webmaster, who, after all, has only one car and not much time. Allpar is neither formally nor informally supported by or affiliated with Chrysler Corporation. Allpar is owned by Allpar, LLC, a limited liability company in the State of New Jersey.

Information

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Oh, and here are the quotes some people get angry about.

Here are some of the awards we’ve won (these are the better ones - the “awards” phase of the Internet lasted from 1995 to about 1999.) Some of these used to be big deals - like Point, LookSmart, and Argus. Only one remains in existence and is still a big deal - the Open Directory. As far as we know, the others are all dead, though I could be wrong.

We take advertising and have affiliate programs because we need to pay for software, a server, and days off our "real" jobs.

Oh, and we use a Mac to do just about all work on the site, and always have - starting with a Mac Plus (4 MB of RAM and 40 MB of hard drive space with an 8 MHz processor, and it booted up in around five seconds!)