The history of this website
A summary of the growth and development of Michael Owen Online
2000
The original King of the Kop website first went live in June 2000 via a free Geocities account. For one of her college assignments, Katy had to create, build and put online a small website on a subject of her choice, so of course Michael was chosen.
The website was small, but quickly attracted a few loyal visitors. A few years later it was decided that the website be moved to a proper, paid domain.
2004
The site was given a complete overhaul with a brand new layout, new name, and a proper domain address. The site was now known as "kingofthekop.org" and fan-sites.org took over the hosting shortly after Michael's move to Real Madrid in August 2004.
The site was becoming a huge hit with Michael Owen fans all over the globe, so it was then decided to change the name of the site from "kingofthekop.org" to "Michael Owen Online" due to Michael leaving Liverpool FC. This also gave the site more accessibility and a more professional feel.
2005
The domain www.michaelowen-online.com was bought and a brand new layout to mark the change was created and was put live in January 2005.
The domain name change allowed the site to "shoot" up the Google search queries and within a month the site traffic doubled.
A fan forum was installed and became an instant hit with the Michael Owen fan community to share thoughts, media and news about Michael.
In June 2005 Michael got married to Louise. The site went from having 3000+ visitors daily to 200,000! This was the turning point in the future of the site.
In December 2005 we were contacted by the team in charge of creating Michael's official website, www.michaelowenofficial.com and to acknowledge the work we have been doing at Michael Owen Online over the past 2 years, we were given the very prestigious title of OFFICIAL Fan Site!
2006
January 2006 marked the official month that Michael Owen Online went from a Michael Owen fan site, to the OFFICIAL Michael Owen fan site! So, to mark this prestigious occasion a brand new layout was created. This was the most professional layout created so far and proved the most popular.
2007
Michael Owen Online continued to go from strength to strength. The site was pulling in 300,000+ visitors a week and the forum community was continuously buzzing.
Unfortunately in November 2007 , Katy the owner / main editor of Michael Owen Online was hit with serious health problems and was forced to put the site to one side. The forum continued to run itself and with the help of 4 admins continued almost problem free.
In June 2008 the site host server was targeted by hackers, which destroyed all databases that were housed in this particular location. The forum and image gallery was corrupted and all back-ups lost which crippled the site.
2009
After almost 2 years, Katy was now well enough again to take the reigns and began hatching plans on how to bring the site back from the brink and get it back online up to date and better than ever.
2010
In March 2010 Carl joined the team and concentrated on building the new Michael Owen Online. The News section and Fan Forum was put back online. This allowed the site to have some online presence to loyal site regulars whilst the main site was under-going the biggest update and build in its history!
Both a Twitter and Facebook page was created to allow fans to get up to the minute site updates and news while the main site is offline and to also allow a stable social community to grow and promote the re-opening of the site.