What happened to the old website swanky.org?

April 13, 2006 11:27 AM

Whatever happened to that old popular website swanky.org?

I remember a youthful, well-designed site with lots of strange things going on, back in the early days of the web, pre-blogging. Now the domain seems to have been taken over by one of those portal firms. Anyone know what happened?

posted by dagny to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

I'm guessing money/hosting trouble.

right now we are stuck with a truly horrible provider, and we need a change. as of right now we do not have alot of money to spend monthly - and we consume about 300 megs of space, and average around 30,000 impressions daily.

- Dustin Vannatter, founder of swanky.org - Sept 14, 1997.

PR Release about Swanky.org

Found some mentions of Vannatter, Swank.org and the SwankArmy, but not much that states current whereabouts.
posted by Orb2069 at 1:08 PM on April 13, 2006

Wow, 300 Megs! You couldn't even fit that on a Zip disk- you'd need a JAZ!
posted by mkultra at 1:31 PM on April 13, 2006

Best answer: Maybe this explains it, sort of.
posted by nanojath at 1:53 PM on April 13, 2006

i was in swanky, but i don't really remember what happened. it started growing at a really huge rate and i just kind of bailed out when i got my own domain name (OMG how do you get your own domain name?!).
posted by subclub at 3:25 PM on April 13, 2006

I've been wondering the same thing. There was a swanky member whose websites I always loved to visit, but I can't remember her name. She played the trumpet, dyed her hair lovely colors, and was from Silver Bay ("Silver Bee"). You'd think with all those details I'd be able to find her, but no luck. She was very, very funny! Hm.
posted by Marit at 7:23 PM on April 13, 2006

i totally loved that site. good times. unfortunately, i was in law school at the time and my focus wasn't on design-type things as much as it should've been (and is now) and i never got my act together enough to submit a portfolio before it faded away. :(

a bit of googling reveals that dustin's current weblog is here. not much there, but i think it will answer your question, and there's an e-mail link if you want to contact him to find out more.

i wish there were something like swanky now. i mean, there are lots of design portals, but none with the kind of fun community feel that swanky had...
posted by ab3 at 7:26 PM on April 13, 2006