Since its humble beginnings back in November 2001, this site has changed more than a little. The editors obviously believe that these changes are largely for the better but sometimes they involve the loss of something we'd rather not forget about altogether, so we keep them here in case we come over all nostalgic.

Click on the thumbnail images to see larger versions.

Having bought the dotdotdotcomma.com domain and some web space, we realised that we didn't have the first clue how to build a web site. This plain black page was the very first incarnation of dotdotdotcomma and seeing it live on the web got us far more excited than was seemly.
(Released 15th November 2001).

The original "You have been diverted" message. This was taken from the "Cathedral Of Hate" sequence in So Long And Thanks For All The Fish. A previous version omitted the "enter site" link, which was added after some people quite understandably thought that the page they were seeing was the whole site.
(Taken from a backup dated 20th December 2002).

The second version of the "You have been diverted" message, this version used the messages that were actually in the book, rather than just our own hazy memory of them, and it was also an attempt to make the words look more like the green neon that Douglas Adams described.
(Taken from a backup dated 17th September 2003).

The first animated dotdotdotcomma logo was intended to put the reader in mind of galaxies forming and then exploding. We like to count this one as a partial success. This page is also notable for the appearance of the first "Ellipsis Virgule" logo, that being the name we chose for the fictitous web-design outfit responsible for the site.
(Taken from a backup dated 4th January 2002).

Still sticking with the dark and gloomy theme, this version featured the dotdotdotcomma "Bond" logo, our homage to the now legendary secret agent's first 40 years, which was about how long it took to create the logo. We're definitely using Flash the next time we come up with another bright idea like this one.
(Taken from a backup dated 3rd June 2003).

The appearance of the dotdotdotcomma logo on Andrew Thompson's 2003 F3 car prompted our first major redesign, albeit some months after the event. The images used in the menu at the top of the page were meant to look like something you'd see on a control panel on the bridge in Star Trek. You be the judge. This page also included some boasting about our appearance in the hallowed pages of Autosport. Oh, yes.
(Taken from a backup dated 30th Aril 2004).

Only slightly updated, this version used a picture of Andrew Thompson's 2004 F3 car, sporting the dotdotdotcomma logo on its nosecone. The picture was taken at Snetterton, if anyone's interested and we don't blame if you're not. Desolate place. The page also displayed a randomly selected quote from the guest book and introduced the reader poll.
(Taken from a backup dated 22nd December 2004).

This version was updated to reflect Andrew Thompson's latest drive, an In2Racing Porsche 911 GT3-RSR, it says 'ere, which unfortunately we never got to see him race.
(Taken from a backup dated 22nd May 2005).

Using a sliced form of the picture of Andrew Thompson's 2004 F3 car from an earlier incarnation of the page, this version also ditched the guest book quote and that annoying little sliding menu that had seemed like a good idea at the time. Does anyone miss it? Thought not.
(Taken from a backup dated 11th October 2005).

In the early days, our home page greeted a reader by name, if he or she had taken the time to register with us. This was the horrible popup that appeared when the "register" link appeared. In our defence, we offer the fact that we'd only just discovered metallic effects in our image manipulation software of choice and possibly got a little carried away with them.
(Taken from a backup dated 21st November 2002).

A festive message for all our reader, which, after a couple too many glasses of mulled wine, struck us as amusing.
(Taken from a backup dated 20th December 2002).

After a year and a bit online, we launched the first (and so far only) dotdotdotcomma reader survey, to see what you all thought of us. For the seven responses we got (including three from the same bloke - thanks, Dome - and two from family and friends), we are eternally grateful. The second dotdotdotcomma reader survey has so far failed to appear.
(Taken from a backup dated 28th February 2003).

This appeared during the last days of our deal with UK Secure Web Hosting, who had done something that royally screwed up their server and then diligently ignored all our requests to sort it out. We couldn't whole-heartedly recommend buying a web-hosting deal from them, if they're still around.
(Taken from a backup dated 7th August 2003).

Not long after dotdotdotcomma's birth, we got a little excited about animated GIFs, as the exploding galaxy logo demonstrates, and for a short while the menu also had animated images. Sadly, the home page that housed these images has been lost but somehow the images themselves survived and have been used in this recreation.
(Taken from a backup dated 17th September 2002).
NB: When we last checked (6th May 2007), there was a problem with this page in Internet Explorer 7, in that the animated menu images weren't being triggered by hovering the mouse over them. This appears to be a bug in IE7, so to see the animation, you'll have to use a different browser, while we all wait for Microsoft to learn how to write software.

This early version of the F1 home page sees the dotdotdotcomma design team struggling to find his feet and coming up with a strikingly awful red and blue colour scheme.
(Taken from a backup dated 17th September 2002).

Before the days of "Road To F1", there was "F3". This is the first version of the F3 home page, which is more a statement of intent than anything with some actual content.
(Taken from a backup dated 17th September 2002).

A couple of months later and there's actually something to read, albeit surrounded by "coming soon" notices. In hindsight, visitors would have been well served by reading the word "soon" in conjunction with the disclaimer at the bottom of the page about Venusian time.
(Taken from a backup dated 21st November 2002).

The last version of the "F3" page before it became "Road To F1" and we've actually kept most of those "coming soon" promises. Still no sign of the "Why F3 is better than F1" opus though, which is a shame.
(Taken from a backup dated 20th September 2004).

Time was when every site had to have a page of links and this was our first attempt. The deity of your choice knows how we picked the sites featured - we probably didn't visit most of them more than once or twice. Anyway, the idea was to have rows of four links, consisting of three dots and a comma. As you can see, we only managed one "comma" image, so we just used that in each line. We're sure no-one noticed.
(Taken from a backup dated 20th December 2002).

While version one of the links page featured just one "comma" image, version two had every image changing from a dot to a comma when the mouse hovered over it. How do we come up with this stuff? The Buffy comma proved to be an enduring favourite, mainly due to the inspired way it neatly highlights some cleavage. The graphics department spent hours locked away in a back room with that image. That's dedication for you.
(Taken from a backup dated 3rd June 2003).