This site consists of MANY different elements designed to bring to it's end users a fun, safe, informative and interesting place to visit regularly! At the core of The Pursuit of Happiness is a BBS package known as WINServer made by Santronics. You might question what is a BBS, the broader aspects of that are  addressed below but in simplest terms the BBS was the forerunner for how the public uses the Internet today! BBSs provide a way for people to be online together to chat, to play games, to download files, to process mail in a variety of forms (some very familiar to us like email and discussion forums to ones not as familiar like Networked mail, FIDO, and Newsgroups).

In the past about the only way people could connect to BBSs were by phone and telnet, since the interface was limited to 16 colors and serial forms of communication (referred to as ANSI). Today's BBS still support those but often they support the classic web browsers like IE and Netscape, and some even have a special client that blends all of this together. In the case of The Pursuit of Happiness, we have ALL of this! In addition, we have supplemented our site with other software package which provide online 3D chatting using Avatars, access to public newsgroups, public discussion forms, multiple web based chat rooms and much more! Please bear in mind, some of these require that you establish a FREE account first so that you can be identified (like in the BBS portion), while others are open to the public and give you the option to somehow identify yourself (which is usually a good thing if you want to communicate on the Internet and get a response back).

More specifics about this site and BBSs in general. BBS's are very much like other parts of the Internet with a few exceptions:

• This site can be accessed in ANSI mode, by telnet (an ANSI based utility that works over the Internet), via most common web browsers (but like all web sites some look better and perform better in IE rather than Netscape, etc.), and you can access this BBS is using our special Wildcat! Navigator CLIENT software which lets you experience ALL aspects of this site in a multi-tasking and interactive way (both the ANSI side as well as the Internet side). Since ANSI was designed for dial-up access, when accessing via telnet you can not see the web portion. And similarly when accessing via the web using your typical web browser only, you can not see all the features of the ANSI side (although more can be seen from the web and much of the ANSI side has a web based equivalent, and in the case of the ANSI games a mechanism has been put in place to allow access to the games but it has some limitations. Both sides of this site have their own set of games BUT users connected by any method can ALL chat, send instant messages, see who else is online, and interact with the same file/message areas. So this makes using the Navigator client the BEST way to experience this site because you can see and access ALL areas of the site and it is FREE!
• Since BBSs have been around long before the WWW and long before the more traditional public accessible Internet, all users register and become part of a community of people with common interests. Any registration information gathered here is held in confidence and is not sold or shared with anyone outside this BBS community known as The Pursuit of Happiness!
• BBSs tend to have themes and there are thousands of BBS running ALL across the country and around the world! The theme of this BBS is basically General Interest with a touch of the esoteric! Make sure to check out the all the unique and fun things that this BBS has to offer, spread the word, and visit other BBSs! On the ANSI side of the BBS there is a menu option which allows you to telnet out to other BBSs around the world. You can even build your own private menu of BBSs to telnet to from here!