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. Originally made available using
print on demand, the book went on to sell 20,000 copies. 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. 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==