It’s an emotional moment when a child grows up and leaves home for the first time. The parents fret about whether their little baby will be able to fend for themselves on their own. Undeterred, the child throws himself, wide-eyed and fearless, into the big, wide world.
Today, Lachlan, Mark and Paul officially separated SitePoint Contests from the family to launch 99designs.
The launch is only the first stage of the 99designs re-branding — some of the features are new, such as user pages and the credit purchase process. The really cool stuff, however, will be rolled out over the next month or so.
As a bonus, the credit balance of any former participants in SitePoint Contests has been copied across to 99designs, effectively giving users a stack of free credits that they can begin using immediately. See the official 99designs blog for more information.
On behalf of the team at SitePoint we wish you guys the very best of luck, and we look forward to watching 99designs grow!
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February 14th, 2008 at 3:12 am
I assume this is the trial peroid before the design for 99 designs goes live? Or will it continue to look like it is now?
Either way, great work! Can’t wait to see how this turns out!
February 14th, 2008 at 3:52 am
The awesome new design (which we’ve previously shown mock-ups of) will indeed go live in the near-term.
February 14th, 2008 at 4:26 am
This is Lame. People used SitePoint Contests because they come here for lots of other content as well.
The new site creates a disconnection with the only reason contests worked in the first place.
SitePoint Contests worked fine, you got greedy, and this will fail.
Also the name is really lame.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Thanks for your positive feedback Tom. I guess we won’t need to leave a light on for you over at http://99designs.com
February 14th, 2008 at 9:45 am
The branding of 99designs does seem a bit diluted, largely because it’s still using the SP favicon :)
Maybe it’s just because I’ve seen the SP contest pages, but this does look like SP with a different logo.
February 14th, 2008 at 10:27 am
The reason it looks like sitepoint with a different logo is because that’s exactly what it is at the moment. We’re currently working on the new site design for 99designs. This is just an intermediate step. Read more about it here:
http://99designs.wordpress.com/category/announcements/
February 14th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Fair enough.
February 14th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Congratulationse guys - hardly any downtime between switchovers, some nice early changes, can’t wait to see what’s next :-)
February 14th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
If Sitepoint doesn’t continue to throw you hooks and remind me of you, I think you will fall into oblivion.
I agree with Tom and think it was a bit lame to give a sarcastic answer to his personal opinion.
February 15th, 2008 at 5:32 am
Here’s the new design that you’ll be seeing in a few weeks at 99Designs.com:
http://dev.sitepoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/99contest-index.jpg
http://dev.sitepoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/99contest.jpg
February 15th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
I agree. I’ve noticed that SitePoint has been really commercializing everything lately. I’ve recently unsubscribed from their newsletters because it seems to be a way to plug their products rather then what it used to be, informative.
Couldn’t agree more. An incredibly unprofessional response.
February 16th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Is this simply for re-branding?
February 19th, 2008 at 6:36 am
First off I’d like to apologize for being so rude in my original post. Must have just been a bad time of the day for me :(
While I don’t like how I said it, I will stand behind what I said. I feel like SitePoint contests worked perfectly fine here on SitePoint. I think it created another great point of interaction for the SP members.
Moving it under a new branding (even if you do keep the SP logins) is just an unneeded disconnection from the community that made it work in the first place.
Again, sorry for being rude before.
February 19th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Not a worry, Tom. We appreciate you clarifying your views.
You’re right to at least some extent. There will be some ‘disconnection’ from what there was before. What we’re hoping and planning for is for an increased sense of belonging and ownership to the new format, and ultimately a cleaner, clearer, better way of doing things. That won’t be immediate, but hopefully in six months time people will be saying “Y’know, this is way better now”.
I can’t tell you we’ll be reversing things, but we’re all ears if you have ideas on what you think would make a difference.
February 20th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Howdy. (long time reader first time poster)… I’m fairly new to SitePoint and it seems like a great resource overall. However, I find this 99designs site to be pretty much promoting “spec work” (AIGA’s stance). I was completely ignorant to the fact that there were design “contests” going on before this spin off site but my issue is with the concept in any format. I don’t like to get on my soap box but this kind of thing degrades the profession of design (web, print, whatever). The quality of the work seems sub-par overall (there are some nice pieces in there) so basically I see this as a way for cheapskate clients to get cookie cutter crap. Why even call them contests? 99designwhores.com or better yet farm it out to India for and start $1.99-logos.com (sorry I shouldn’t have said that. that will probably hurt some feelings somewhere. sometimes i just go crazy, but whatever)