SitePoint

History

SitePoint was founded by Matt Mickiewicz and Mark Harbottle in 1999. The company had its origins in Webmaster-Resources.com, an internet forum Mickiewicz founded as a resource for beginner web developers.

Originally, the company's business model was based on selling advertising and sponsorship. Following the collapse of the Dot-com bubble in 2000, the company looked towards publishing as an alternative source of income. The company's first book, Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP and MySQL, was published that November, based on a popular online tutorial. Originally made available using print on demand, the book went on to sell 20,000 copies. By 2004, the company had published six books, and began distribution through O'Reilly.

The SitePoint Marketplace, a spinoff from the site's existing forums, was launched in 2005 as a forum in which web designers and developers could outsource projects. In 2007, part of the marketplace was spun off as 99designs, an online marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design. In 2011, 99designs received its first outside investment in the form of $35 million in venture capital funding from Accel Partners.

Another SitePoint spinoff, Flippa, launched in 2009 as a dedicated marketplace for buying and selling websites and domain names.{{cite news

Following the introduction of its own courses, the company launched Learnable in 2010 as a new online learning platform for web developers. Originally designed as a marketplace, it later became the primary outlet for SitePoint's online book and course products. Learnable was later phased out for the simpler SitePoint website. It allowed some courses to remain as paths, but mostly removed the community aspects of it. SitePoint now partners with major book production companies and has SitePoint Premium, a subscription or one-time purchase to get access to their whole library. The learnable.com website now redirects to SitePoint.

References

References

1. "SmartCompany interview with Mark Harbottle".
2. (7 September 2010). "Matt Mickiewicz on Creating Some of the Most Popular Websites in the World".
3. (17 April 2011). "How SitePoint succeeded selling online content – when News Corp couldn't".
4. (27 November 2001). "Build your own Database Driven Website using PHP & MySQL".
5. "O'Reilly to Distribute SitePoint Web Development Books".
6. (27 June 2011). "Matt Mickiewicz, Co-founder of 99designs".
7. (28 April 2011). "Accel Invests $35M. in 99designs...After Years of Trying".
8. (23 June 2010). "Flippa.com: A Year in the Life of a Start-Up".
9. (28 October 2010). "Want To Teach Your Own Course? We're Here To Help ...".
10. (15 March 2011). "Get Paid to Teach Anything With New Online Education Platform".