HOGWired history Part 1

This is a brief history on the Official Arkansas Razorbacks website (Formerly HOGWired).

The first official Arkansas Razorback website was released in spring 1997 with the title HOGWired.  The name was partially inspired by Florida’s NaviGator, which later became GatorZone.

HOGWired also came complete with the ultra catchy slogan “Get connected—Get hogwild—GET HOGWired”—Nice.

My cousin actually started one of the first Razorback fan sites and was contacted in ‘97 by the Athletic department, which eventually purchased the site from him.  His site was originally hosted on his student account UofA Engineering servers. The other big dog back then was a site ran by Bryan called sooiee.com (still going as Hogcall.com).

Below are some screenshots of the first two sites from 1997.  On the left is the site as it was first purchased then on the left is the design when it was moved to hogwired.com.

UPDATE:  I failed to mention one very important part of Razorback History.  The Razorbacks were actually beaten to the net by a full year when the Ladybacks opened their site in 1996.  Of course the two departments are now combined and now share ArkansasRazorbacks.com.  Thanks to Dr. Bill Smith for bringing this to my attention.