It was seriously impressive. I wish I had a backup of just the website and library itself, even if the torrents and tracker were gone forever. The meticulous organization of the library was a thing to behold and a great way to discover music.
Absolutely agree, I miss the staff picks and forums more than I miss the tracker.
You can probably find the site code (gazelle) in a working version. The DB (sans user data) is available as well, it's called the 10th anniversary mixtape.
OiNK, the predecessor to what.cd, was even better IMO.
I'd say oink was more ground breaking, buy what.cd absolutely dwarfed oink in terms of torrents. Oink will always hold a special place in my heart.
I think my memory may be skewed by the fact that I mostly used what.cd right after the demise of OiNK. So I remember thinking it was inferior and that I missed OiNK, which is probably not representative of what what.cd eventually became.