Birth of a Planet- Planet RTW !!!

Hello Everybody,
Thanks a lot for your continual encouragement at the blog and loads of appreciation for my articles.Will continue to keep up the quality work and share it with you all.
My this blog post is about the birth of our Mega Website- Rajat Tokas World. Today this website is a 2nd Home to 7000+ Rajat Tokas Fans worldwide. It’s a proud website to hold a position in Top 1 Lakh websites of the World(Source:Alexa.com). It’s a proud website visited by Superstar Rajat Tokas himself, who considers it an apt medium to interact with his fans. It has grown by leaps and bounds since its 2 years of creation. It’s because of the continual hard work that we all DEV TEAM members have put it. But my this blog post will tell you the tale of RTW’s birth. Here I start:

Once upon a time(dramatic hain na, koi baat nahi, aage padho yaar), there was a Yahoo group called Rajatrocks. Rajatrocks was a group created by me, when I was in 9th standard. I had newly met Rajat and therefore I thought of starting a group on him. The idea was immediately implemented. I started the group aiming a 100 members and not more. Funny na… The thing was Anish was a new born baby in the Web World at that time…

Gradually the group started growing, and like in a span of 2 years it managed to get about 900 Rajat Fans. Rajatrocks was the only medium through which Rajat could then indirectly know about his fans. I remember, getting Rajat’s audio messages recorded for occassions like RTW’s anniversary, Valentine’s day and stuff. In a small span of 2 years Rajatrocks had become quite popular in the Web World and most of Rajat Fans knew about it. But the only backdrop of the place was it was just a small group and not a website. Meaning of Group- You could just post messages over the group, and people would receive those posts via their yahoo mail. Nothing more than this could happen. But still people bonded amazingly over there. That group though didnt make a big name, but made big relations. It bonded people like never before. People made so many close friends and are still in touch, all thanks to Rajatrocks. I remember meeting Monica( known as Mia there) over Rajatrocks. And not only Monica, Priyanshi,(as vital as oxygen in my life) is too a blessing of Rajatrocks.

But as I mentioned before, it was just a group and no website. Rajatrocks had no individual identity. It was dependent on Yahoo for its identity. This fact was hampering me and Rajat both. Whenever I would ask Rajat to visit Rajatrocks he would ask me the url. And I embaressing uttered that long big subdomanic URL: http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/rajatrocks/ .
My 10th standard vacation was going on then. The vacation was about to end, and I was dogged determined to make an independent website for Rajat Fans. At that time, I knew I was dreaming big, I had absolutely no idea as to how to make a website. I didn’t even know the pre-requirements. Absolutely blank… I just knew I wanted to make a website.

Coincidently, I met Wagma, who was then a member on Rajatrocks with her thoughts resonating with mine. She too was of the opinion ki Rajat Fans needed a website. We happened to chat on yahoo once when I boldly and thoughtlessly told her I could make it. And to my surprise, at that instant of time only, she agreed to sponsor it. It was just because of Wagma’s generosity at that time, due to which 1000s of people can see RTW today. My only limitation at that time was I was just a sixteen year old kid then, I had no credit card/debit cards to pay for hosting/domain etc.. Neither I had the courage to ask my parents for it nor there was anybody whom I could ask for help. But then, Wagie came as an angel and relieved me of this. The project was final then, a Rajat Tokas site was bound to be created.The project was finalized.

As I mentioned in the post above, I hardly knew anything about websites then, and now I had to make a big website, which would be an almost official website of Rajat Tokas. My 11th standard had begun then. I spent my days and nights researching about making a website. Gabriel Sir, a second name of God to me, came to my rescue. He explained me the very basics of website making like domains, hosting, cPanel and stuff. Also, he managed to suggest a host to me. After all this homework, I got wagma to register for a hosting account and a domain too. And the domain was RAJATTOKASWORLD.com . To your surprise, I never thought much about the domain. It instantly struck me at one night and the next day we got it and the auspicious day was 2nd September 2008.

The domain was registered, hosting account activated. I was the alone person to work for the website. Wagma kept away from the Technical stuff. At that time, we didn’t have anything like a DEVELOPMENT TEAM. It was just two people- ME AND WAGMA. I started learning about forums, forum softwares, installing configuring them, databases, CHMOD and this and that. I was just a beginner to all these things. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just did the things for the sake of making a website. I was working on a Linux server then. Linux at that time, was just a name of an operating system, which I had read in my books. I didn’t know anything about it. But I compromised with my 11th standard studies, learnt all this in just a span of 2 months, got a forum up on the website and YES IT WAS DONE…..

Then, we started forming a development team, Wagma knew Swordy who was just great at designing business, she got a banner designed for the website. Then we found the most important of all, Priti, my loveliest Angel over WWW and a great friend. While she was working miracles at my other Rajat Tokas site- Rocking Rajat(a Wetpaint venture), I thought it was time for Priti to get out of shallow waters. In this way, we managed to form a small TEAM. TEAM worked day in and day out before the launch. The launch date was decided as 19th October 2008. We had fully prepared for the whole launch. In the first week of October only that year, I had visited Rajat on DV Sets @ Vadodara. I also showed him RTW’s layout at that time. I remember, he was just over with his shoots that time and like at around 11.45pm at night, we were seeing RTW’s pages on his laptop. The next day i.e. 2nd October 2008, I had got audio messages recorded from Rajat inviting his fans to interact on his own website- Rajat Tokas World. We made sure to make this audio message reaches on all big forums and websites. And as expected people started pouring in, in a few moments after RTW’s launch on 19th October 2008 12.48pm IST.

It was a big day for all of us. Especially for me. RTW is my first website and I had d put in my 100% in making it the best of my ability. Not only I had worked hard on the website, but I had sacrified my acedemic performance. I knew while working for RTW, that 1st Rank would never appear in my result sheets again. But somehow I made up my mind for the sake of the website.

The people started registering that day. And like all was great… I still get nostalgic about that day… A Planet was born over WWW- Planet RTW….

This is how RTW took off… But, wait its not over yet. There was lot of action and adventure after this. The story I just mentioned above, is undoubtedly about RTW , but not that RTW you see today. The RTW you see today has a different story. Read my next blog post to read the exciting story about it. Also dont forget to comment over this one.