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Voluntarily maintained by fans of The Simpsons, the No Homers Club is one of the longest-running Simpsons fan sites and houses the most popular Simpsons forum on the web. The website has had various incarnations over the years, including that of a Simpsons multimedia repository, a news archive, and the current community-focused version you see today. This is our story.
Evergreen Terrace at SimpleNet.com in 1999
Evergreen Terrace at NoHomers.net in July 2002 (click to enlarge) | |
In February 1998, Eric Wirtanen launched a Simpsons fan site he named Evergreen Terrace (aka ET). Originally hosted at Geocities.com, it would be moved to SimpleNet.com and Milpool.com before its web address was changed to NoHomers.net in January 2001. During the late 1990s, ET hosted over a thousand Simpsons audio clips, thousands of screen captures, movie files, and other multimedia. One of IGN.com's affiliate sites at the peak of the dot-com bubble era, Evergreen Terrace grew to become one of the most popular Simpsons fan sites at a time when Simpsons fandom itself was peaking. 20th Century Fox, which goes to great lengths to defend its Simpsons copyrights, issued the site several cease & desist letters during this time. Stripped of the majority of its downloadable content, ET shifted its focus to daily news about The Simpsons and the page remained on the web. Its message board, the No Homers Club (aka NHC), was launched on August 27, 2001. Unfortunately, a 2002 cease & desist letter from Fox demanded that Wirtanen remove the vast majority of the fan site's pages, and Evergreen Terrace shut down for good on August 2, 2002. Many Simpsons geeks were saddened. |
The lack of a popular web-based forum to intelligently discuss The Simpsons and its related merchandise prompted Wirtanen (eric), Tino Persico (Datoupee), and Jonah Flynn (Tomacco) to create the No Homers Club forum in 2001. The forum and our domain takes its name from 1995's "Homer the Great" episode, written by John Swartzwelder and directed by Jim Reardon. In the episode, Homer laments that years ago his peers started a "No Homers Club" and excluded him from the group, even though they let in a boy by the name of Homer Glumplich. (This is explained by the fact that it's the No Homers (plural) Club, and they're "allowed to have one.") | 
Screen capture from 1995's "Homer the Great" |
Following the demise of Evergreen Terrace, the forums became largely independent and developed a large community. The NHC's address was originally http://club.nohomers.net but the board moved to SimpsonsForum.com soon after its creation. In October 2002, the NHC was moved to the NoHomers.net domain itself. Our site can also be reached by pointing your browser to http://www.nohomers.com and http://www.nhcmobile.com. Since 2002, Jacob Burch (Roarke) has also had a large part in the maintenance of this site and as of June 2006 he is the co-owner of the No Homers Club along with Wirtanen. In August 2011, after a brief flirtation as a general discussion message board, the NHC re-dedicated itself to The Simpsons and became affiliated with The Simpsons Archive. The NHC's general discussion community subsequently moved to the then-new Boards and Recreation forum. As of 2014, the administrators of the NHC message board include Burch, Wirtanen, Amber Dowland (kupomog), Adam Jameson (Dark Homer), James Tyner (Jims), Ryan O'Reilly (Ryan), and Stephen Schrider (Steve). In early 2005, the No Homers Club portal site was created. Prior to this time, the domain directed visitors straight to the message board. Downloadable Simpsons content and other features have been gradually added to this page ever since. This site has also featured advertisements since 2005. The advertisement revenue and NHC fundraisers are solely used to pay for our hosting and forum software bills. No income whatsoever is generated through the operation of this non-profit website. From 2001 to 2010, the NHC was hosted by ServerPoint.com in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2011, the site moved to its own dedicated server maintained by Roarke. The NHC forum was originally built on the YaBB (Yet Another Bulletin Board) engine. In October 2001, the board switched over to the vBulletin 2 platform; unfortunately the switch didn't save the YaBB-era posts. As of 2014, the message board runs on the vBulletin 4.20 platform. |
| The No Homers Club gladly accepts fan-created Simpsons content from all over the world. This includes - but is not limited to - fan art, fan scripts, photographs of merchandise collections, and impressions of Simpsons characters. Please visit those respective pages to learn more, or simply e-mail your Simpsons content to us. Also, for nearly instant feedback, you can post your fanworks in the "Itchy and Scratchy Studios" section of the NHC. |
This website has had the fortunate distinction of being honored and mentioned in various publications and other media (including the show itself) several times over its history. Below is an incomplete list. | 
A shout out to the NHC on 2004's "Sleeping With the Enemy" episode of The Simpsons |
Mentioned in PlayStation Magazine (March 2001) About.com's "The Best of the Net" website (March 2001) Referenced to in the "Sleeping With the Enemy" episode of The Simpsons (November 21, 2004) Interview with Eric Wirtanen in Blender Magazine (August 2005) Discussed by Matt Groening and David Mirkin in The Simpsons Season 6 DVD commentary for the episode "Homer the Great", in which Groening states he loves NoHomers since "the people who write for it obviously care." Listen to the clip. (2005) Mentioned in The Simpsons Season 8 DVD commentaries for the episodes "Treehouse of Horror VII" and "Homer's Enemy". Listen to the "Homer's Enemy" clip. (2006) Mentioned by Groening in Playboy Magazine (June 2007) Mentioned by Wirtanen in Playboy Magazine in a response to Groening (September 2007) Cited in The Playboy Blog's "NoHomers Rises for Battle" letter (2007) Mentioned by Mike Scully in The Simpsons Season 10 DVD commentary for the episode "When You Dish Upon A Star", in which Scully sarcastically refers to himself as an "idol of NoHomers.net" (2007) Mentioned by Al Jean in The Simpsons Movie DVD & Blu-ray commentary (2007) Listed as one of Big-Boards.com's 1,000 largest message boards Quotes by co-owners Wirtanen and Jacob Burch can be found in John Ortved's "The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History" book. View an excerpt from the book. (2009) Mentioned by CNN.com along with quotes from Burch about the show (December 2009)Referenced to on The Simpsons Season 14 DVD & Blu-ray box art (2011)
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Literally thousands of people are responsible for the continued growth of this website. We would like to thank: | 
Matt Groening with NHC members SubSane, Kiyosuki, morbot, and blueduck37 in 2007 |
Our contributors from the Evergreen Terrace era (prior to 2003): Jonah Flynn, Brian Hardy, Rowdy Harmon, Bob Honkisz, Thano Lambrinos, Antonio Lopez, Nina Matsumoto, Jeff O'Neil, Tino Persico, Lucas Reddinger, Justin Reese, Josh Schaier, Ed Slavin, and Dave Wardle The moderators and entire administrative staff of the No Homers Club forum, and past administrators including Andy Bugay, Skittlebrau, Phil Arnold, Adam Linville, and David Cole Each and every member of the NHC for visiting and posting on a frequent basisEveryone at vBulletin responsible for their forum software Simpsons fan site webmasters Jukka Keskiaho, Jouni Paakkinen, Scott Vivian, and Adam Wolf for their continued support over the past decade Our well-known members: Former Simpsons show runners Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein; Simpsons animators Jen Kamerman and Sarge Morton; Bongo Comics writers/artists Bill Morrison, Ian Boothby, Chris Ungar, Gail Simone and Jesse McCann Our well-known visitors: Matt Groening, Al Jean, Lauren MacMullan, and David Mirkin And, of course, the entire cast and crew of The Simpsons for providing years of quality entertainment and for making this website possible. That means you too, South Korean animators! |
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