I was dong regular surfing when I happen to land where some of Ginebra San Miguel fans are meeting up. It’s at www.panatiko.tk. A site with 600+ strong members, dedicated to the most popular team in the Philippine Basketball Association, the Barangay Ginebra Gin Kings.
It’s an unofficial Gins site but a pretty-meaty website dedicated for the fans of Ginebra San Miguel. Safe to say, as you go thru the site, it is dedicated to the players as well.
In March of 2004, it was founded by Lara Jane Avance with support coming in from her Kabarangay mates. Starting with couple of pages like the gallery, autographs section, journal, favorites, and a tag-board, it has evolve to a little more than just that. Now included are player profiles, fanatics sections, art gallery, wallpapers, essays, songs, poems and more, more, more…
I just hope Ginebra players (particularly Mark Caguioa and Jayjay Helterbrand) appreciate what kind of work and adulation these fans are giving. You can really see a lot of hard work in building the site content. Original contents, news excerpts and images are all bunched up.
One would ask though, why the site is hosted on a free server, FreeSpaces. Does it have back-up facility? I can say that, paid hosting is the way to go for panatiko website. Paid hosting fee is not that much. Where, Lara and her crew can truly maximize its offerings with easy to use message boards, galleries, chat facility, etc.
And with .com domains costing only P500.00, why still use the .tk when they can easily get free .com domain when they get paid hosting. So that, site visitors are not subjected to URL forwarding bundled with ad feeds every time out. Also, panatiko.com, surely looks and sounds cooler than panatiko.tk. Ginebra San Miguel should pay for the hosting and domain. C’mon Team Manager Allan Caidic, what’s the hold up, pay the bills. Will ya?
And look what they got! Panatiko also has a printed version, The Magazine. Which, to date, has 4 issues. This hardcopy printout is by no means easy to make nor cheap to produce. I suppose images are all-original shots and captions are straight from the fans. If you are a die hard fan, without this magazine made by the fans, your collection is not complete. Cough cough, I am a diehard fan Lara. :-)
Lara basically told me that Panatiko is a site made by a Fan – for the Fans. Having been able to browse the site, let me change that a little, Panatiko is a site – Made by a fan, for the fans – and for the Players as well.
Related site: www.markcaguioa.tk
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