USTExchange

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USTExchange.com (USTEx) is an online community established by Thomasians for Thomasians. It serves as an online gateway where UST students and alumni from all over the world can converge and communicate. It is the Thomasian’s home on the web where he can keep in touch with his school, classmates and friends.Aside from being a communication tool, USTExchange.com is slowly transforming to be the biggest community of Thomasians on line. It serves as the venue where Thomasians and non-Thomasians (yes, everybody is invited) discuss various UST, national and international issues.

The Thomasian online community was born when a doctor could not find any.

Dr. Noel Martin Bautista, an associate professor at the UST Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, wondered why there was no online message board for the whole Thomasian Community. His interest in a truly Thomasian online community was stoked when he stumbled upon several local message boards and noticed that Thomasians would always converge together and form a thread (series of messages along a topic) that discussed UST and national issues. Frequently, he observed that Thomasians were often active, fluent and even passionate in the numerous online communities and forums.

However, despite the Thomasians’ propensity in these boards, he noticed that there was no community solely dedicated to and put up by Thomasians. He looked for several days using almost all the popular search engines and came up with nothing. As the webmaster of the UST Medicine website and managing that website’s message forums, he decided to set up the Thomasians’ own online community in early January 2002. It started with one of those free message board systems on the web and was called Tomasino Exchange (TEx). However, the community’s sudden increase in activity could easily outgrow the site’s allotted number of monthly page views that he decided that the only way to go was for TEx to have its own webhost and scripts.

Thus, on February 2, 2002, TEx officially was born using a free PHP forum script and a basic webhosting account. It was a rudimentary message board with very basic functions and features. TEx’s growth was not without its bumps and problems. Since the community was not maintained and managed by IT professionals, the community was often challenged by technical difficulties and limitations. Several times, the community saw drastic changes not only in the design but also the message forum system itself. Not to mention that the community was buffeted by ridicule and skepticism from all sides. But it was only through the perseverance of the administrators, the other of which is Dr. Jeffrey Castillo, an alumnus of the UST College of Science and a motley group of moderators (UST students and alumni) that enabled this online Thomasian community to move forth.

In June 2002, after several months of trial and error, the community purchased and finally transferred to its present bulletin board system (vbulletin). It was also during this time that the official label of USTExchange.com (USTEx) was finalized. With the system fully established, various features and services were added as the community continues to grow by leaps and bounds.

In November 2002, USTEx was adjudged the People’s Choice Awardee for the best Community Site during the Fifth Webby Awards, the Philippines’ foremost award-giving body for local websites.