Once upon a time ...

1996:
I decided, that running a bulletin board was getting old hat, all that text stuff. I enjoyed the communication and interactive side, but it was never very pretty. The Internet was looking interesting, with the web being more graphical. I thought to myself, if I'm going to have access to the Internet then I am going to have a solid reason for it.

I've always had an interest in music, this started with Helen Shapiro, now I've lost any street cred that I had! I soon discovered that I liked the more rocky pop stuff, on the first hearing of the Rolling Stones, I was hooked. By 1996 my record collection was about 500 45's (I'd had more many of them 60's classics, but gave them away in a moment of madness at about 1972 Doh!) and 1,000 LP's, I started to list them all in a database, looking into my collection I was surprised to see how many Stiff Records I had. I knew I was fond of the label, saw a number of the acts in the late '70s & early 80's . I started to think, what else was released on the label and soon found that there was not much information available. With my new found technology I started searching the web and found very little reference to the label, just a few people selling records. I had a Record Collector's Price Guide, which helped and had heard there was a Stiff book written by a guy called Bert something or other. I decided I would research Stiff Records and try to educate myself & others, making it easier for people to know what to look for in the record stores. The rest of course is history.

June 1st, 1996:
Started the Be Stiff site on a server called Moose in my loacal town of Watford in the U.K. This got me started, I managed to find out who to contact at the license holder ZTT. I was in contact with Alan Cowderoy a one time Stiff manager, he was a great help, sent me a listing of what was released as best as documented. I also found out at that time that the author of the Stiff book was Bert Muirhead, it was to be another 2 years before I laid my hands on a copy. The Moose site was quite successful I had 800+ hits in the first 6 months. The problem was the URL was horendous something like "www.tonyjudge.moose.co.uk/bestiff.html", don't try it coz it won't work ;-) I think I had 2 megs of webspace and the service was naff! I decide to move to a new server.

January 1st, 1997:
Started using Demon.co.uk as they had faster servers and offer a better service including 10 megs of web space. I carried on using Demon until 1st April, 2001. Their URL were still a nightmare, so during 1999 I started using easyspace.com for "cloaked web direction". From this point I was using www.bestiff.co.uk the address we now have.

April 1st, 2001:
Moved the entire site to a new server at easyspace.com including 100 megs of web space. This is the current service provider for the site. (2008 - current webspace in now 20 gig.)


Here is how the site looked up until about 2000.




Here is how the site looked between 2000 & March 2004.




Here is how the site looked between March 2004 & August 2008.




Site content now ... I have decided that the majority of the content in this site will be graphical rather than wordy. My reason for doing this is so collectors can see what was issued and this will help them track down the elusive Holy Grail's. The copyright of all the scans & photos of course remains with the license holders, the artists or photographers, please respect this.

If you are one of the artists or band members and want to contribute to this site the please email me bestiff@bestiff.co.uk. I am going to try where possible to have website links to official website or interesting information webpages. If you have new links which are not on the pages and you would like them to be considered for inclusion then by all means send me an email.