Brickset: 2000-2007
Posted by Huw,
To mark our 20th anniversary, I will be taking a look back at how the site and its logo have changed since it was launched back at the turn of the century.
This first article covers the site's first seven years, during which it went through 5 redesigns -- mainly to take advantage of emerging technologies -- and the first 'social' features were added.
1997-2000, before Brickset.com
Brickset started out as a combination of two hobbies: software development and LEGO. It was a way to learn about new-fangled Internet and website technologies and putting that new-found knowledge to some practical use that supported my other hobby of collecting promotional LEGO sets.
Prior to the launch of Brickset.com the site was hosted on my Internet Service Provider's server, as part of my 'Home page', which were common at the time, before people started registering domains and paying extra for dedicated website hosting.
Initially it was a series of static HTML pages and an archive of the site from 1997 can be viewed at archive.brickset.com.
Later on, as technology and my skills progressed the site was rewritten in ASP: it consisted of just three types of page, and used an MS Access database to hold set details.
For a few months prior to the launch of Brickset.com it was accessible via the URL brickset.co.uk but from what I can recall that was just a redirection onto my 'home page'. I think that continued until 2001, when it was hosted elsewhere.
The domain was registered on 10th July 2000 and the new URL was announced on Lugnet (THE place to be back in the day) on the 14th:
2001: version 1
The Internet Archive Wayback machine has proved to be an invaluable resource for researching this article and jogging my memory. It's done a pretty good job of archiving the site through the years although, as you'll see, sometimes it doesn't look quite right and many of the images are missing.
The earliest working version in the Wayback machine is from April 2001. Here's the home page. Notice how, even then, someone was selecting a random set every day!
Search results and other listings looked like this:
Perhaps surprisingly, users could rate sets and write reviews, although there was no requirement to log in: User accounts would not be added until 2005.
Here's a set details page:
That was about the extent of it, but as you can see, aspects of that early design are still evident in today's site.
The logo started out with just 1x1 plate and a capitalised the S in the name.
2002: version 2
The first version of the site was written in Microsoft Active Server Pages but following the release of the far superior ASP.net the opportunity was taken to rewrite the site, and version 2 was launched on 27th March.
The home page had news stories on it now, although there was no commenting: remember you couldn't log in until 2005!
The capital S has been dropped from the site's name but the logo still has just one plate. I suspect green was chosen to contrast with the predominantly blue page design
2003: version 2.5
In November 2003 the site and the logo received a refresh. However, functionally, it doesn't look as if much has changed since 2001.
The pages expanded to fit the width of the browser, which in 2003 were probably only 1024 pixels wide!
2005: version 3
This is the year things start to get interesting when many of the features that today's site is founded upon are established.
In May a new version of the site was launched which introduced user accounts, and it was now a requirement to log in to write reviews. However, that was all a logged-in user could do.
The pages would have had a 'Brickset blue' background (#4667a4) but it's not been captured by the Wayback machine, unfortunately.
A month later, 'My sets' was introduced: a means of recording your collection on the site. This was probably the most significant feature added in the site's 20-year history: it elevated it from being just a database to a useful tool.
Looking back through the news archive for 2005 and subsequent years, it seems to have been an immediate success: by the end of the year some 1000 users had recorded 70,000 sets. By March 2006, we reached 100,000 and by May 2006, 500,000. Now we are up to 25 million.
The site's logo was changed again, to feature the three 1x1 plates that are still in use today. The font is pretty awful though, ITC Avant Garde Gothic, I believe.
2006
Nothing much changed in '06 but the Wayback Machine has captured a fully rendered snapshot of the site from June that year:
2007: version 5
(I'm not sure what happened to version 4, it seems to have been skipped!)
In March, a completely rewritten version of site was launched which, leveraged the advantages of the newly-released ASP.net version 2.0 on the server, and maturing client-side technologies such as CSS, XHTML and Ajax.
Some of the code written for this release is still in use today.
In June, we suffered data loss as a result of a server failure. Our server host had no recent working backups but thankfully we were able to restore most of the data from a backup taken a few weeks prior which was stored locally.
Logged-in users could now comment on news articles, although the feature seems to have been launched without announcement.
In September, the first affiliate links were added. LEGO launched its affiliate program in 2005, but we were not aware of it until someone from the affiliate network contacted us in 2007, explained how it worked and asked if we'd like to give it a go. There was no cost and nothing to lose, so we did so, not really expecting much.
However, given we had been running the site for 7 years and had built up a fair amount of traffic in that time, the site started making a small amount of money immediately, which helped with hosting costs and so on.
Overall in 2007, the site served 18 million pages to 3.5 million people, so had grown quite significantly since its humble launch at the dawn of the millennium.
Stay tuned for part two which will cover the years 2008 to 2014, which is when the current site was launched.
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34 comments on this article
Thank you very much for all the work you have put into this site over all these years, Huw!
This is a walk through memory lane. I remember the old website as well and the lugnet announcement. rickset has always been the best resource online for sets. Thank you for all that you do @huw !
I see a mention of Znap on that first page. Interesting that Brickset was around in Lego's own dark ages in the early 2000s and predates some, erm, much loved Lego themes like Clikits and Galidor. I wonder if there were news stories or announcements about these themes when they arrived.
Our news archive goes back to 2002 so you can have a rummage to see :)
https://brickset.com/news/year-2002
https://brickset.com/article/14397/galidor-and-other-new-sets-added
So BrickLink is even older? (by a few months)
:D Happy Anniversary anyway!
Very interesting read! I love the use of the phrases "turn of the century" and "at the dawn of the millennium"!
@Huw said:
"Our news archive goes back to 2002 so you can have a rummage to see :)
https://brickset.com/news/year-2002
https://brickset.com/article/14397/galidor-and-other-new-sets-added "
https://brickset.com/article/14365/images-of-2003-bionicle-sets
" I guess as long as there are suckers out there willing to buy this junk they'll keep on re-inventing them every year."
Harsh critic on Bionicle back then? Yes sir!!! I can totally relate! They DO ended up a successful theme though.
Happy Anniversary ,this place is my mancave ,and the swissarmy knife of lego. I'm here everyday and love the comments and banter of the forum, the trivia is astonishing at times ,the Quizzes enlightening and Secret Santa a wonderful cap to another great year thanks Huw
Very nice to look through the history of the site. I only discovered Brickset in 2016 (aka somewhat recently), so this is a treat!
Yes, the 2005 screenshot takes me back. There must have been some hiccups in June 2005 with Brickset 3.0 that must've been what ate several of the set reviews I posted in that timeframe. I sent an email to Huw on June 11th, 2005, noting how reviews I wrote under my old username for sets like 6277 and 8563 had seemingly disappeared. Never got an answer for that, but considering I only just remembered this by looking through my ancient emails, it must not have fussed me too much! In all honestly, I could probably write better reviews than what I wrote back then!
Happy 20th Anniversary Brickset! I am here each day as Brickset is where I visit for my daily LEGO fix. I love the community here as we all have the same hobby.
People probably forget that there is a person/people behind this website who put in a ton of work for the community’s benefit.
Thank you Huw!
@Wolpertinger said:
"Thanks, but the site wasn`t full of commericals and advertisement back then. Today it's a mess."
If you’re logged in, then there are no ads.
Happy anniversary to Brickset.
I joined in 2007, but was already visiting in 2005-2006 where I also was visiting http://www.peeron.com .
At this time I was regularly synchronising my collection between both sites.
Now peeron is like dead (© 1998-2011 Peeron.com).
Happy Birthday Brickset
Many thanks @Huw for your great work during the past 20 years
In French I say "longue vie" to brickset
Happy brithday. Nice to see the evolution of the site.
We don't show ads to loyal users once they are logged in but showing to them to casual readers has helped keep the site online and updated, so please don't despise them too much!
“Cool Stuff” oh how I miss the internet in the early 2000’s!
It's really cool to read how this has evolved over the years, as I only discovered and joined the site last year! Looking forward to part 2 and 3!
This takes me back to 10th grade back in 2005, browsing the site during one of my free periods. Simpler times...
I love the RSOTD from 2006:
“10006: 1x6 Sand Red Bricks”
It’s no Clickits - but wonderfully random all the same.
Thank you Huw for such an exemplary website. My day is not complete until I visit your site.
My thanks too to all those who have written reviews on various sets that I always consult before committing myself to buying a set.
My thanks to Huwbot for making me smile whenever Clikits come up!
I still remember the old Huw's Lego page. It had an odd url, started with www4 and ended with /~huw
Even back then it was one of the most well curated sites in terms of sets. It's actually remarkable how many sites have been and gone over the years. I really appriciate @Huw your efforts to continue this page, and not see it disappear entirely like Brickshelf, or fall into unmaintained/abandonware status like Peeron and many others.
^ www.pncl.co.uk/~huw, I believe...
Huzzah!
Congratulations on 20 years. Joined in half way through the 20 years and have found the site invaluable for advice and many happy memories of the 1960s - 1970s when I was a nipper
Best wishes for the next 20 years
@Huw said:
"^ www.pncl.co.uk/~huw, I believe...
"
Couple of the old links:
http://www.pncl.co.uk/~huw/lego/
http://nt1.pncl.co.uk/huw/psd/index.html
Thanks a lot for doing these “history lessons”, many of this is new to me and probably to many who stumbled upon Brickset through the years. Here’s to many decades and beyond!
This is very cool... a trip down memory lane. Also a stark reminder of times when server backup options were not as cheap or plentiful as they are today.
I knew this site was written in ASP.NET.
The quality of this framework is so tangible here. That's part of the reason I love Brickset.
Which version introduced the API? It's my experience that very few sites are willing to open up all of their data and make it freely available, and I view it as one of the most community friendly initiatives undertaken by any site.
^ 2010, I believe.
Happy birthday, Brickset - it was a good day when I found you!
I wasn't around for any of this but I find internet history fascinating so it's a welcome walk down memory lane. The changes over the years are more dramatic than I thought!
Happy Birthday! This pre-dates my time with Brickset and so interesting to see. Oh the early days of websites - asp, asp.net, css, java, etc. Looks so crude compared to today's sites.
Random Minifig below random set in the first pic? Is that feature still around?