Newgrounds.com, a website dedicated to bringing you the latest and greatest Flash games and movies, gets over 70 million unique page views a month, and has a net worth estimated over $15 million. Ever wonder why? Because it did something, and it did it good. Newgrounds was created by Tom Fulp in 1995, and was originally started as a site for his comics, but soon turned in to one of the biggest sites on the net (Alexa rank of 422 for those who were wondering). Today it showcases millions of Flash projects, with hundreds being added daily, and all the content is submitted by the users. THAT is the key to Newgrounds. It was the first real flash portal on the net, and they did a damn good job at it. Heres why.

User interactivity. Its pretty much a portal for users to administrate. As long as you have an account, you can add content to the portal, and remove it. This is where flash ranks come in. A flash can have a Purple Rank (Under Judgement), Red Rank (Verge of Death), Green Rank (Great Score) and Blue Rank (Awesome Score). What happens if the flash is on the Verge of death? It gets blammed! How does it get there? People give it a low rating. Any registered user can vote on any flash once a day. If enough people vote an entry low enough, it gets blammed (deleted) from the portal, and gets an obituaries page. If is score is over the limit after so many votes, it passes, and can NEVER be deleted from the portal. Even flashes so corrupt that Newgrounds has been legally threatened, they still haven’t deleted them. Only on rare occasions will this change.

Forums. The forums are the reason I, personally, visit NG because I do not have a knick for flash (Though I do like to visit the portal and watch the flashes). The forums are a great place to meet new friends or find out about new or interesting topics. I stick to visiting the Programming forum because I like to chat with intelligent people and the General forum is usually filled with some oddballs (But what do you expect when one category has over 9 million replies). The forums are almost always being watched by some decent moderators who will lock pointless topics and ban people where bans are needed. If you need a question answered, ask here! There are over 1.5 million members on the site, and most of them DO visit the forums, with an average of 300-400 people on the sites forums at a time, and the contributing members usually have an average of 4000-5000 posts. Some even have 30,000 posts! No joke! The forums have been around since 99, I BELIEVE, and are all custom programmed.

Well, I am an avid browser of Newgrounds, but those are really the main reasons to go, and really the reason I do go at all. The community has made me stay on this site since 2002, almost every day, and I have been a dedicated member since 2004. I could go on all day about specific reasons you should be going to Newgrounds too, but I think you should check it out yourself to find out why you too should make an account for life! If you would like to learn even more about Newgrounds from reading, go read the history of the site here. Or even ask in the Where Is/How to forum on the site! Well, I’ll see you there!

As always, ask questions in the comments or e-mail me at  blackvector at gmail.com