You said you created this site as a repository for gba roms, but tell me, weren't GBA roms common on the Internet? (Besides, i have to ask about the emulators, i mean, i don't think that in 2002 VBA Next or some thing like that existed, i bet that GBA emulators were much, much slower than nowadays emulators)
It was another time you have to remember. 2002 was not 2015. We didn't have 100+ share.whatever.com websites for uploading multi-megabytes files easily and share them, we didn't even p2p networks with huge availability of content.
Finding a rom basically meant to lurk IRC channels and/or community website to find some post/message sharing a link to a ROM uploaded illegally on some free web hosting space or FTPs.
Actually if I remember correctly, the easiest and most common way to find new ROMs was to lurk IRC channels and ask some admin/moderators of modding scene IRC channels to send you the ROM files, and there were even automated IRC bots with text command to get the list of available files, and select and download the rom/file you wanted!
But of course it was not as easy and as 'reliable' as it is today.
Me, alexander, KiVan were struggling every day to download the latest GBA roms and play them: sometimes it took up even weeks to find a working link the ROM we were looking for, especially immediatly after the ROM was released.
So we stepped in to fill a gap: provide a very simple single web page, with always working links to the 10 latest release GBA roms.
The ROM links and the webpage itself was so temporary due to hosting providers always bringing down our illegal material, that me, KiVan and alexander was basically checking every hour day and night if the links were down, and uploading the ROMs to a new webpage/hosting space every time, to ensure the links and the webpage were (almost) always available.
This is also how the "GBAtemp" name came to be
I remember KiVan having a 'stash' of 50+ free hosting account available, created with fake names and informations, to upload ROMS to and/or to 'swap' the GBAtemp dynamic DNS to, in case anything went down. I still remember me and Alex making fun of all the stupid fake names and information/addresses that KiVan came up with to register every day new free hosting spaces... those were funny (and reckless) times! :-)
Then we began also to post some news about the GBA and nintendo community, in addition to the ROMs. Then we decided to open a guestbook at the beginning (remember those in the 90s? ahahah). I still remember very well the wonderful feeling of reading the guest book comments of all the people that were using the GBAtemp webpage.
We knew from the quite high 'hit counter' always present on the page (remember those from the 90s too? ahhaah), that the website was popular, but to actually read the 'thanks' from the people was something... heartwarming, literally. We felt we created something real, we felt there were actual people using that we did and finding it useful.
The guest book then morphed into a a forum to meet online and discuss topics. This was the real birth of the GBAtemp 'community'.
Shortly after that the real community was born: with a news portal, forum and all, to avoid legal issues we outlawed the roms themselves, but kept the community. Also, when we did, the ROMs started to become so widespread on IRCs and sharing networks, that it was easy to find them anyways, so the need for 'GBAtemp' as it was born, was not there anymore.
But the community was born, and it's still alive nowadays! :-)
Wait, the GBA was released in 2001, How GBA emulators could've had existed at that point?, let alone roms and some flashcards designed for it (I know that the 3DS had roms since the beginning, but we didn't have any kind of hacking until Gateway appeared), damn, the scene was really fast during that point, It would be nice if they were that fast with the PSVita.
Basically, the world was very different from today.
I remember less than a year after the GBA came out to have flash cards with 100% compatibility already sold and all the ROMs dumped and available for play. Emulators as well!
Things got more complicated later on, with DS and so on, but with GBA, it was the modder's dream :-)
@Omero i have one question, why did you and your other friends leaved the website to other people? what happened for you to decide to abandon the staff?
We didn't leave it to 'other people'.
GBAtemp started as a silly exercise to share illegal ROM links with close friends done by a few IT italian university students in the early 20s.
Then morphed to be a "nintendo" community with a news portal, a forum, a community. All things that were wonderful but took a lot of time and commitment.
For a while (more than a while, a few years let's say) we kept up with it, but when real life, exams, work, girlfriends, wifes, families and kids started to request more and more of our time, we had to pass the ownership of the community to someone that:
1) We trusted deeply
2) Was available to invest the time, commitment and energies needed to keep the community going.
These persons were and still are Costello and Shaunj66.
Without them GBAtemp would have been a nice exercise that would have died out after a few years for lack of care in keeping the website, forum, portal, news and community alive.
And even them would have not been able to actually achieve anything without the always present contribution of the flood of moderators, editors, contributors, etc... that came and went over the years.
They did all this together and still do, and they deserve so much more gratitude than me, Kivan or alexander, which just set the wheel in motion at the beginning :-)