MAIN SKA RADIO FORUMS

What This Site Is About This site is all about the music of Ska. Our main focus is Ska in all it's forms but we also travel into the forms of Reggae, Rocksteady, Bluebeat & Dub. We are here to bring you everything we can on these wonderful styles of music. The newest version of this site offers more then any previous version or any other site on the net. We offer you more ska videos and audio in one place then any other site. All of our other band info, discographies and lyrics surpass that of other sites and are always growing.

What The Radio Is About SkaFreaks Radio is a station run to allow anyone and everyone the chance to experience the music of Ska, Reggae, Rocksteady, Bluebeat & Dub. This is a one of a kind station and is the largest ska station in existence. The thing that makes this station unique is we don't put up songs by artists just because they are categorized as a ska band. We listen to every track and ensure that it has the feel and sound of one of the selected genres. When it comes to Ska we don't just offer that of the traditional ska, but also include 2-tone, third wave, ska-core, ska-punk and any other kind of ska you can think of. But don't worry, if you are only a fan of one style of ska, take over the radio with our request system and push as much of the music you like onto the radio as you want.

What We Are About Well "We" at the moment is really just me, and I am all about bringing this wonderful music to the masses. My name is Chris Ryan, Toph, or 2Pher (on the site). I am 29 and have been listening to Ska for 15 years now. I am from St. Louis MO but currently reside in Boulder CO. My favorite music is of course ska and my favorite bands are Streetlight Manifesto & Bedouin Soundclash.

What We Have Artists - 1730
Discs - 2157
Tracks - 20836
Audio - 1455
Video - 480
Lyrics - 2194
Radio Tracks - 9016


History V 1.0 - SkaFreaks.com was started in late 2001 and was originally called The Chronicles Of Ska. The site started off small, with basic html pages made for each band. The site grew and soon included mp3s to listen to and download. It was still a small site and was very difficult to update and maintain. The site at the time was on a horrible server that constantly went down and got hacked more then once. With the site going down constantly, a long annoying name, and the thought of making an online ska radio station, I decided the site needed a new name and home.

V 2.0 - On October 6th 2003 the new name, SkaFreaksOnline.com, was thought of and registered. The site grew and with new knowledge of how easy it was to make a PHPNuke site, a new updated site was created along with the new SkaFreaks Radio. It was a small online only station run with shoutcast and with only 10 listener spots available. I had setup the radio and then it moved to another server, then another. Then after time the site went down as did the radio, the server crashed and the company that hosted it all disappeared. I started checking out new servers for the site. I found one, got PHPNuke installed and the site returned. The radio however was another story. The site grew, new content and pages were added, things got better, the radio was still nonexistent. With time I studied up more and more on newer coding and taught myself php and mysql (with help from http://www.htmlforums.com). With that, the pages became more dynamic and lots of new pages were created. After time I decided I needed the radio back.

V 3.0 - In early 2005 I bought back into a shoutcast server and had a few spots available for listening. The limitations of PHPNuke brought on the urge to redesign the whole site and create it all myself. So I studied some more and started on the new SkaFreaks.com, completely hand coded by myself. On April 20th 2005 I decided to shorten the name and SkaFreaks.com came about. There were additions of new artists, discographies, mp3s, videos and more. Sometime in 2006 or 2007 I received an email from someone wanting to host the radio station. After talking I moved the station onto the new server and SkaFreaks Radio had new life. The radio ran until mid 2009 when due to me moving had to be shut down.

V 4.0 - After the move, the urge to work on the site and get the radio back up grew within me. I started working with every free minute available to update the site and add new information and features. In mid October DJ Steve (the previous SkaFreaks Radio host) contacted me with some great news. A new server was setup and running that could not only run the station but host it completely as well as the website. With that news it was decided that SkaFreaks.com was due for a full overhaul. I spent hours and hours redesigning, updating and adding things to the site. The radio was setup and made a soft launch on November 4th. The new site and radio station were launched in full on November 15th 2009.

V 5.0 - In mid 2010 our old host decided he could no longer host the radio and site. So I set out to find a new home for everything. After a little time I found a server and transfered everything over, got things setup and we were running on the new server. Things weren't as great as I had hoped on this new server and after a few months of constent problems and lots of lost data, the site and radio were moved onto a new server. The new server ran great from the beginning with only minor problems getting things started. In September, I once again sat down at my computer and started to read up on some database knowledge. After learning I quite a lot I set out to redesign the back end of the site, the database. Using any free time I had I worked to reorganize the database to work better, faster and make it easier for updates in the future. With the database update I set out and did slight redesigns on many of the pages including adding HTML5 video to the video section. I got a new logo setup and on October 1st 2010 SkaFreaks 5.0 was launched. With this launch I will be working on adding more data and easier pages to submit information to the site.

V 6.0 - In 2011 I began to learn more javascript. With the knowledge I redesigned many of the pages. I also began work on edit and submission pages. More and more changes and additions to the site and we now have SkaFreaks.com V 6.0.

V 6.5 - Towards the end of 2011 I looked into new forums for the site. While the original forums were doing ok, as the backend of the site I wanted more. Then I began to switch things to the new MyBB forum and recode the site to run smoother and faster. It wasn't a full new site so the .5 was added.