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It all started in the late fall of 1999 when BeastMaster (the series) first season aired. Daniel Goddard and Marc Rutherford, aka Sparky, started the official web site, known then as DanielGoddard.net or DGnet. Sparky is a dear friend of Daniel's as well as his Personal Assistant during the filming of the show. Learn more about Sparky. BeastMaster became the #1 new syndicated series and I just had to be a part of it. I wrote Daniel a letter/resume and told him I would love to create and run an online fan club for him. I provided references to the many sites I had created, one in particular: another actor's fan club... MSOOF (Michael Shanks Official Online Fans) for the actor portraying Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1. A couple of months went by and I kind of forgot about the letter since the mail to Tribune had to be collected and delivered to Australia. Then I was surfing and discovered Daniel's site on Jan. 2, 2000. I signed the guestbook leaving a link to my BeastWatcher BeastMaster fan site. To my surprise, I received an email from Daniel telling me how much he loved my site. I emailed him a 'thank you' reply and told him to ignore the letter that I sent since his site was advertising an upcoming fan club. The next day I received another email from Daniel saying that he received my letter, that he and Sparky had checked out my work and decided they really didn't have time to start the fan club and asked me if I was still interested.
The DGFC (Daniel Goddard Fan Club) opened on January 15, 2000. Membership has always been free since it's only an online service. Daniel provides the fan club 'Behind the Scenes' photos of his present film work, exclusive interviews and occasionally (time permitting) leaves messages on the DGFC Messageboard. Season 2 proved to be more time consuming for Daniel since his screen time increased tenfold. Production fell behind that year and both Sparky and Daniel worked long days. They had really wanted to change the look of DGnet and asked for my help. Daniel also kept mentioning how he really loved my BeastMaster fan site, so I offered to let them use the design; instead, he asked if I would be the webmaster for the BeastMaster portion of the site. Once again, I was thrilled and honored. Working with Sparky has been one of the highlights of my webmastering career. Together, we came up with an interactive fan site. I made buttons that moved when you moused over them while Sparky designed the look and Daniel purchased the domain name of danielgoddard.com.
Daniel, me and Sparky
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Site created by
Laurie Allen
. All rights reserved |
In the beginning....
I had the pleasure of meeting Daniel and Sparky during a trip to Australia in June of 1999-2003. Filming of Season 3 had just started and unbeknownst to
all of us at the time, it would be the last season of the series. Soon, Sparky's work demanded too much of his time and with Daniel in the States, he asked if I could take over
as sole webmaster. To Sparky... many thanks and much love. To Daniel... I'm deeply honored. To the fans... enjoy!!