It’s coming back, and returning to it’s roots.
In 1994, ThoughtCafe was the first website I ever made. At the time it existed as a single page “concept” for an online magazine, or “e-zine” as they were called at the time. The web was in it’s infancy, dynamic sites didn’t exist, and it remained an “idea”, never realised.
In 2000, ThoughtCafe became a community of aspiring writers, hosting many thousands of daily visitors, a regular newsletter, and bustling forums. It eventually collapsed under the weight of it’s own success in 2003 - amid calls to rescue or revive it. The code was made open source, but efforts to replicate the original community didn’t gain traction. A site has continued to exist in various forms until the present day, but this post effectively marks the end of the line for it.
In eight days time, ThoughtCafe will return to the internet in it’s original form - a web based magazine of the internet community, for the internet community. I am therefore going to be writing my favourite bloggers to find out if they might be able to contribute.
ThoughtCafe was once insanely great. It’s going to be great again.