Jan, Adam and I continued to work into night, with Jan working on perfecting the Movable Type templates, and Adam helping me format the Bill Bart interview while designing the first of many Insider images he would eventually create. About five minutes before January 1st, we were done. But something felt off. Then, I realized I had forgotten the staff page, and once again, we were frantically back at work, Adam quickly whipping up a few necessary images, Jan coding the page, and myself providing bios of the staff. We got it done in about twenty minutes, though it was a definitely a rush job, and finally we were ready to launch. It had been about a month and a half since I had first thought of the site, and the official day of its realization was here.

MacThemes.net opened a bit late, about fifteen minutes into 2004, EST. I took down the teaser page, sent out the prepared press release to several Macintosh news websites, and posted the news at MacNN. Then, I went promptly to sleep. The next morning, or perhaps afternoon, I woke up to a pretty sight (excuse me for that horrible pun). I found dozens of optimistic comments on the reviews and interview, and my host told me that 20,000 visitors had visited the site on its first day. And I also found that my friend had screwed up the ratings code, but luckily, I managed to replace it during biology the next day with Slava Karpenko’s generously donated and fully functional star rating system that we use to this day. And the rest, as they say, is history.

A year later, I’m proud to say that MacThemes.net has become the central destination for theme enthusiasts, especially with its new forums. There are now over a dozen interviews, many more reviews, and an expanded staff, though Adam Betts is semi-retired, having moved his permanent residence to Kalimdor, in the World of Warcraft.

Hopefully, theme enthusiasts, webmasters, and artists alike will find this article of interest, and of some use. Feel free to send it along to a friend if you found it an interesting read, and thanks to all who have visited the site over the last year, making it a resounding success. Keep on coming, and thanks for giving this a read!

Editor’s Note: Though the masterpiece Adam Betts created in 2004 has since been evolved by current designer David Lanham, the work Adam did in 2004 can still be seen today- including the blueprint background design, as well as the iconic logo.

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