by
Happy Birthday to us! And now for an indulgent dose of nostalgia...
In October 2000, following a summer of emails, festivals and frustration with the state of music media, DiS was born. A rag-tag mob of music fans eagerly embraced the interweb and took it upon themselves to share their love and enthusiasm for music.
Back then, blogs barely existed and there were few websites, music or otherwise, to draw structural or ethical inspiration from but we knew we had to do it and anything online was much better than trying to cram things into an over-long digital fanzine or Popbitch-like email mag (which is what DiS' founder Sean Adams had done for a few years previous).
There was no grand 'start-up' plan - and probably isn't much of one to this day - but there was a definite air that we could offer something that we'd want to read and hoped that there would be more people like us out there looking for music recommendations.
Eight years on we're still here, with nearly half a million visitors a month and an influence we would never have dreamed of. But we really wouldn't be here today without the hard and passionate work of several wonderful people: Web whiz Matt Wilson and his cohorts Dave Nattriss and (Matt) Rudy, plus their new replacement Tom Waddington. Previous editors Mike Diver, Colin Roberts and Gareth Dobson, ably assisted by the likes of Peter White, Kate Price, Raz, James Moore, Samuel Strang, Alex Denney, Kev Kharas, Rob Webb, Adie Nunn, Rachelle Ansell, Simon Menhinick, Natalie Judge, Debbie Gwyther and too many more that it would take me days to list... you all know who you are, thank you one and all.
And now, without further ado, before we unleash our new site, here's a quick look back to our roots .
DiS 1.0
This first version of the site had an animated gif, with bubbles which moved. It was logical and presented a lot of content at once, praps too much. Strangely it seems to have aged quite well and made for a strong foundation.
DiS 1.5
We got a bit sick of not being able to feature content so this slight revamp allowed us to draw your attention to things. We also made room for advertisements to try to bring some money in to cover server costs but ended up giving away most of the space to charities and promoting content internally as no-one wanted to take out adverts on the internet. The design for this was done in half an evening with pizza and beer as payment to Matty Hall, better known now as the guy from White Heat.
DiS 2.0
The first evolutionary step away from the initial design. The main focus was on pushing things we collectively liked to the fore as so much of the music we loved was lost._
DiS 3.0
Pretty much the first 'designed' version of DiS which wasn't just a quick shift of content. Simon Menhinick did a fantastic job of modernizing the look and feel of the site. Given time and a fairly ridiculous pirate-themed party, people came to love the anchors and seagulls. __
DiS 4.0
And lastly our current one, which after two years you should be well aware of. Take one last look and kiss it goodbye as we have a brand new site launching tomorrow.
---
To view more pages have a gander at Archive.org.
DiScuss: which one was your favourite? How long do you think it'll take to get used to a new site?
