SitePoint

History

To help you gain an appreciation of SitePoint’s roots, start by casting your mind back to a time when only a few early-adopters knew what the term ‘dot com’ meant.

1994

In Melbourne, Australia, a young upstart named Mark Harbottle completes his Computer Systems Engineering degree and joins Sausage Software, makers of the world’s first Web Authoring tool, as a programmer and founding member.

1997

An even younger upstart from Canada, Matt Mickiewicz, claims himself a stake in Internet real estate, launching a neat little resource site for budding webmasters. His web page goes live on Xoom.com, a free web page hosting service.

1998

Matt registers a more credible-sounding domain name for his site, and Webmaster-Resources.com is born. Within months of its launch, Webmaster-Resources.com features in the LA Times, USA Today, The Washington Times and is given a full-page write-up in WINDOWS Magazine.

Back in Melbourne, Mark and his team grow sausage.com into Australia’s most popular web site (source: The Telstra and Financial Review Australian Internet Awards). The Sausage Software user base boasts over 1.0 million unique registered users worldwide.

1999

The Webmaster-Resources.com Community Forums are launched, becoming popular from the get-go.

After working on several successful advertising deals together, Matt and Mark decide to meet in person and plan a future as business partners. A deal is struck and they begin work on the re-branding of Webmaster-Resouces.com and the launch of their new company, SitePoint Pty. Ltd.

2000

Mark quits his day job to run SitePoint full time. The site is soon re-launched with an improved look and feel, revised layout, and of course a new, improved domain name - sitepoint.com. The new layout makes an extraordinary range of new features possible, as well as creating new advertising and revenue-generating opportunities for the business.

2001

Noticing a need for high-quality, easy-to-understand content for web developers, Mark and Matt take their most popular PHP/MySQL tutorial and launch it as a print-on-demand book. The book is an instant hit with the SitePoint audience.

2002

With increasing demand for their first book, SitePoint moves to a more traditional publishing model, ordering larger print runs and utilizing a warehouse distribution facility in the USA.

SitePoint launches its second product, a Java plug-in designed to make content management systems more usable and extendable (editize.com). The team also begins work on several new print publications.

2003

SitePoint registers its 10,000th sale of its PHP/MySQL book through sitepoint.com, with customers in over 145 countries worldwide. sitepoint.com is ranked among the top 1,000 web sites in the world (source: Alexa.com). Traffic to sitepoint.com is at least doubling each year.

SitePoint launches its 2nd book, one of the first to cover CSS layouts, and a business kit which generates over $1 million in sales through sitepoint.com in its first 12 months.

2004

SitePoint is officially named one of Australia’s fastest growing companies and is listed in the 2004 BRW Fast 100, Deloitte Technology Fast 50, and the Deloitte Asia Pacific Fast 500 for the first time.

A deal is struck with Computer Bookshops Limited in the UK for retail distribution of SitePoint books throughout the UK.

Retail distribution in the UK is a great success. Realizing the potential to increase SitePoint’s reach even further, Matt and Mark head to Chicago to land a retail distribution deal with publishing heavyweight O’Reilly. Within months SitePoint books are being distributed to Borders, Barnes & Noble, and thousands of other independent technical bookstores throughout the USA and Canada.

2005

SitePoint is recognized as one of Australia’s fast growing companies for the 2nd year running, with compound annual growth of 80% since 2000. Again SitePoint is listed in the BRW Fast 100, Deloitte Technology Fast 50, and the Deloitte Asia Pacific Fast 500.

SitePoint reaches a major milestone, registering its 100,000th forum member, and begins accepting paid classified listings in its forums. This adds an exciting new revenue stream to the company as the SitePoint Marketplace explodes.

2006

SitePoint signs major advertising deals with Ektron and Adobe. Other SitePoint advertisers include Thawte, Azoogle, Interland, Amazon, and Google.

SitePoint publishes its 15th print publication.

The SitePoint Marketplace records growth of over 1,600% in its first 12 months, and subsequently earns its own tab on sitepoint.com.

SitePoint is ranked by alexa.com as a top 250 most visited web site in the world across all categories.

After launching its first video tutorial with great success the team begins developing a series of short, snappy educational videos for Web professionals.

SitePoint is featured in the July edition of Business 2.0 in the USA.

SitePoint is recognized as one of Australia’s fast growing companies by BRW Magazine for the 3rd year running.

2007

The SitePoint Marketplace continues to go from strength to strength, with over half a million dollars in transactions being closed between buyers and sellers every month.

SitePoint’s new crowdsourcing play (Design Contests) already boasts over 2,000 designers who submit on average 420 designs a day. Over $80,000 is offered as prize money each month to designers.

SitePoint named top 3 Most Popular eBusiness Website in the world, behind News.com and ZD Net

2008

SitePoint.com spins off new crowdsource offering to 99designs.com.

SitePoint.com ranked the #1 Australian website in the computers and internet category by hitwise.com.

In a market set to top $100 million in 2008, the SitePoint Marketplace is independently ranked the #1 source for buying and selling websites. Over USD $4 million worth of sites are being posted for sale every month.

SitePoint.com launches industry leading CSS and HTML reference sites, instantly attracting attention from industry heavy weights and web developers alike.

The The New York Times, The Seattle Times, The Dallas Morning News chronicle SitePoint's role in the spectacular growth in web site trading.

SitePoint.com is nominated a top 3 finalist -- from over 500 entrants -- for the Hewlett Packard Award For Best E-Business at the 2008 MyBusiness Awards.