North Stand Chat

North Stand Chat is an Internet Forum for fans of Brighton & Hove Albion who are a English football team based in Brighton. They currently play at Withdean Stadium and are currently playing in Football League One. The forum takes its name from a stand at the club's previous home, the Goldstone Ground in Hove, which was the club's home from 1902 until 1997 when it was demolished to make way for a retail park.
North Stand Chat started off as a mailing list. It became a fully fledged internet forum in 1996 as part of the Seagulls Server (which can still be viewed via the Internet Archive )
The poor management of the club by the board (Greg Stanley, Bill Archer and David Bellotti) at this time caused great concern amongst the fans and North Stand Chat became a popular place to meet online for fans to discuss different tactics and actions. Events such as the Mansfield Town boycott, the march on Bill Archer's house and Fans United were all organised through North Stand Chat. Contacts were made meaning that things could be organised away from match days, at pretty short notice.
The board was a great help to the club in organising events to ensure that permission was given to build their new home at Falmer Stadium.
Following the World Trade Center attacks on 11 September 2001 forum members came together to form the Robert Eaton Memorial Fund in memory of forum member Robert Eaton who died in the attacks. The fund raises money to provide kit and funding to children's football teams in America , Africa and Sussex.
The board currently has over 8,000 members and over 3,000,000 posted messages. The most users ever online currently stands at 672 on 3 August, 2009. A collaboration with the club's management means that fans' queries, on pretty much any issue, are posted through the Ask the Club forum on the board.
Fans of other teams, such as Cardiff City, Leeds United, Tottenham Hostpur, West Ham and Swindon Town as well as rivals Crystal Palace, regularly post messages on the forum.
The site, and its predecessors, have appeared in a number of newspapers, including The Times, generally being quoted as a source for a rumour, and the initial Seagulls Server site appeared in the book Build a Bonfire: How Football Fans United to Save Brighton & Hove Albion. References to activity on the board and liberal use of internet handles from it occurs on the "fans phone in" on BBC Sussex. It is also frequently used by the local newspaper The Argus for the news in their sports section.
In June 2007, the site was updated to use the latest version of vBulletin, v3.6.7 and in January 2009, the site was once again upgraded to the current version of vBulletin Version 3.8.0

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