Wugnet Publications

WUGNET (The Windows User Group Network) is now celebrating it's 29th anniversary as the first user group and association completely focused on supporting the Microsoft Windows User and Developer community. We started the company in our homes with almost no capital and eventually became one of the world's premier online communities managing Microsoft Support on CompuServe and the peer to peer support of over 500 technology and software companies by 1997, We employed digital marketing almost from the very start by selling subscriptions to the printed Windows Journal. WUGNET members received a disk full of apps and code snippets written by our members who also were provided access to special member sites. At its height, we had approximately 300 volunteer staff helping us manage hundreds of vendor and special interest communities. In 1996, Microsoft formally asked WUGNET to take over their official 20+ online peer to peer support forums, covering every product and technology of the company. The online y forums served an active community of over 2 million users a month. Our online activities with CompuServe/AOL also included the management of the services shareware and freeware libraries, providing all the editorial for the email newsletter edition of CompuServe's magazine Online Today, and eventually managing all online support for CompuServe's service and software. We launched the very first monthly publication "The Windows Journal" on May 1990, as the very first periodical serving developers, power users, and IT professionals. Our publication was subscribed by many of the Fortune 500 Corporate libraries with several company's subscribing site licenses, including Microsoft. Publishing the Windows Journal introduced the world to several "firsts" in publishing. First, it was the first subscription that included online access to an online forum for it's subscribers and members. Second, every issue had a companion disk filled with licensed software, technical documents, source code, etc. CompuServe and AOL later used the same concept in bundling their online software with third party magazines based on these ideas. WUGNET was also actively involved in developing and publishing software. It's first commercial release, System Engineer, is considered the first "tweaking, optimizing, configuration" tool for Windows. The online help for System Engineer was later released on its own as "The Windows Resource Kit". Later licensed to Microsoft, System Engineer was licensed Symantec and released as Norton Utilities for Windows. We expanded into digital and book publishing shortly after the launch of it's journal. We published companion disks for IDG's best selling Windows Secret Series, eventually authoring several special topic titles under the Secrets series, including Windows Configuration Secrets, Windows Connectivity Secrets and Internet Gizmos for Windows.