MacDesktops is 7 today
On 10 April 1998, the Macintosh Desktop Pictures Archive was born. I didn’t have a domain name yet, and didn’t really have much of a plan. I had recently upgraded to a gargantuan 1280×1024 display and had way too much trouble finding desktop pictures for it. So, I generated 16 desktop pictures and posted them onto the web space included with my ISP at the time. I was pleasantly surprised that a few thousand people found the site. After about two and a half months, when visits started declining, I decided to start adding more pictures. After a month or so of that, I started to receive submissions, and decided to post four new pictures each week. By the end of 1998, the Macintosh News Network recruited me to join their collection of sites. I changed the name of the site to MacDesktops when I transitioned over to their servers. I bumped up from four to eight new pictures each week, doing manual updates. Then to daily updates when I moved the site into PHP and MySQL with help from John Engler (PHP/MySQL orientation) and Misha Sakellaropoulo (new site graphical design).
My relationship with MacNN was good for a couple of years. Then it started to sour. When they had a hard drive failure, lost my data in December of 2001, and ruined the backups, I decided to leave the network and go it alone. MacDesktops essentially went down from December 2001 until March 2002, when I re-launched on the new server. Robb Kinnin at NetStep gave me a great deal on co-location and agreed to sponsor the site as well.
It’s been a bit over three years now, and I’m in the middle of transitioning to a new server running Linux (ick) because it’s much less expensive than co-location (when evaluating my own time at $0/hour). At least it will be when the transition is complete.
It’s hard to believe that I’ve been doing this for seven years already, and at the same time, it’s hard to believe that I’ve only been doing this for seven years. I’m looking forward to completing the transition to the new server. I’m looking forward to rewriting the site, adding features, optimizing code, finally using CSS and providing RSS. And, I’m looking forward to at least a few more years of producing (in the Hollywood sense) great desktop pictures from wonderful artists around the world for your continued enjoyment.
