classicbattletech.com, from fan site to official home

classicbattletech.com started as a private fan site run by Warner Doles, well known and widely used by the community. In 2001 WizKids and FanPro adopted it as the official Classic BattleTech website, and for about a decade it was where the community met, on the official forum.

Doles also coordinated the Historical Archive Team, volunteers who made digital copies of the original five House books, given away free with the licence holder's blessing.

In 2011 the forum was hacked so badly that the whole site went down and thousands of posts were lost. Much was restored and kept read-only for a while, then the forum moved to battletech.com, and the old domain no longer resolves. Sarna notes that the older threads can only be reached through the Internet Archive. The 2001 snapshot shows the first official version; the 2008 snapshot the forum at its height.