CSS Reboot Spring 2006

CSS Reboot is a community event for web professionals. May 1st, 2005 at 6:00 GMT Rebooters from all over the world will launch their web standards-based redesigns simultaneously, bringing traffic, interest and a little respect to their sites. There are no prizes or arbitrary winners, just great exposure and the knowledge that we all participated in something great.

A Little History

CSS Reboot first started as an idea in a blog post at my old blog BenjaminAdam. In that post I said:

Yeah, yeah, I know we’re all busy but come on we’ve got almost 2 whole months! I’m participating - want to join me? Better yet, want to join me and help spread the word on this new era of the May 1st Reboot? Redesign your site with CSS and web standards in mind and show the entire world all at once just how great accessible, standards design can really be.

The reaction to the idea was so positive and so many people suggested that I make it into its own site that I couldn't say no. So, on March 6th, 2005, CSS Reboot was officially born. I knocked it out in around 5 hours before my wife and I went on vacation for her Spring Break -- so while it may have left a little to be desired in the design department, it got the job done.

Design bloggers from all over the world started linking to the site and in just three days there were over 100 signups. Then over 200 ... 300 .. until eventually well over 400 people signed-up to pursue the goal of redesigning their site with CSS and web standards. This blog entry broke down the countries of origin of all the Rebooters as of April 20th. 40 countries in all.

Then May 1st Came ...

After weeks of preparation and late nights working on both the CSS Reboot site with Matthew Pennell and my own redesign of BenjaminAdam, May 1st 2005 finally came.

I stayed up all night April 30th resizing and uploading close to 200 thumbnails of all the sites that did actually redesign and launch. Just around half -- and thank goodness. If all 400 plus people who had signed-up had actually launched I don't know what I'd have done.

All day May 1st I uploaded and resized screenshots and fielded emails. The visitors and links started to really poor in and it was a relief to see that it was going to be a success.

The Reboot broke the top 5 most popular sites in both del.icio.us and DayPop, it lit up Technorati and in just the first 2 days there were 15,000 unique visitors and over 54,000 combined pageviews. In 2 weeks there were 34,000 unique visitors and over 185,000 page views. Not too shabby for a done-in-5-hours website and 2 months of light promotion. Not too bad at all.

... Then May 1st Went

So, with the success of the first Reboot under my belt I was faced with the need to make a decision on what to do next. Keep it annual? Or try to take it a little further than that? At first I was thinking monthly, but then I scaled that way back to what it is now -- bi-annual. Spring and Fall.

Then I was only left with all the ways to make it better. If you'd like to read a little more about all the improvements with this redesign, you can read the first entry in the CSS Reboot Blog. It talks all about them.

And that brings us up-to-date. I think this Reboot will blow away the first one and I can't wait to see what happens. Thanks for reading (or skimming if that's the case) this far and if you haven't signed-up yet, even after reading all this great lore, what are you waiting for? Sign-up, participate in something great and get to work!