Destination: Springfield was an idea that came into my mind in mid-October 2001. I soon decided to work on the site, making a design, and hoping to make enough content to go along with it. I went through many designs, tried many different color schemes, and finally landed on a grey-schemed design that I liked. It was my best design ever at the time. I was still a rookie when it came to design though, just learning all the effects, tools, etc. Destination: Springfield (Version 1) opened on December 15th, 2001, launched at Geocities, with a cjb.net redirect (murderhorn.cjb.net). DS launched with 50 pictures and other limited media. We received both good reviews, and a few bad ones. A few people accused our grey design of being copied from another site at the time, I admit the color scheme was similar, but nothing else was. Yet, some people still thought differently. These accusations had bothered me from the very start, and we didn't keep the grey design for long.

In early-mid January 2002, I began talking with Steven Kitchen (of the great Viva Los Simpsons) about being hosted at his site, The Simpsons Odyssey. After convincing him I was trusty-worthy, DS left Geocities and became a hostee at TSO, at the url http://ds.duffland.co.uk. For this special move, I figured it was a perfect time for a re-design. After being down for a couple weeks, DS relaunched Version 2 in February of 2002. The design received rave reviews, most loved it. We also introduced our new section, Framegrabs, we opened with 1100 of them. The design was very original, a red-maroon design, a scheme very hard to pull off, people said it was the best design that they had seen for quite awhile. DS was now being noticed, successing in the community. The Simpsons Top 100 made a list update and DS debuted at 22! Quite a high rank to join the 100 at. We were known for our high quality media content.

In late-March 2002, I decided to become independent, and bought a domain name of my own, www.homerize.com and bought hosting at OECK. Soon after, I took DS down from TSO and had planned to bring it back within a week at www.homerize.com. This unfortunately didn't happen. I lost interest for a few weeks, as it was getting close to the end of my grade 10 year and I had lots of homework and studying to do. As summer hit, I was free, and back came my interest. Throughout all of July, I was busy at work, making content a plenty. I made over 110 grabpics within 30 days and was fooling around with several different designs. In August, I slowed down a bit. I had the content, but not a design. I was going through a bad design phase, nothing worked. In September, school was back and I had less time. I fooled with designs, and nothing worked. Not until late-October 2002, did a design come to me. Over the several months down, I designed over 20 different concepts. Some unused designs and graphics are featured here. Destination: Springfield v3 finally launched on November 9th, 2002 and received great reviews and comments from fans all over the world.

In early April 2003, I began work on a modified version of Version Three, as I was becoming bored of the design. I didn't want to re-design the entire site, rather just improve the current design, revamp and better organize the sections, and that I did! The site went down for April 14th during the revamp and returned late on April 15th. I also introduced our new contest, Blackout, a "guess the character" game with a twist. The site's modification was posted on the message boards and received great comments yet again.

In late-May 2003, The Simpsons Top 100 updated their site rankings. We were moved from 10th place to 6th place! A huge improvement! To celebrate, I decided that I'd make a new header for the site, in an effort to spice the design's look up. And with that, Version 3c was born.

In August 2003, work began on Version 4 of Destination: Springfield. The site went down in mid-August, with a splash page displaying "September 2003" as our return. As it had been with the site and myself, the deadline was not met and so, DS was down longer than expected. Knowing more needed to be done, I delayed the launch date until November 2003. Why? I was having design issues, I made many different concepts, but nothing seemed to do it for me. I was trying to lose my well-known "stroke/border" style and create something in more of a "professional" fashion. I didn't have any luck.

While trying to design something to meet my expectations, I thought up an idea that would give me more time to work on the site itself while giving something to the visitors to keep them coming back. An idea that became Destination: Springfield's Halloween Special! I worked all of October 2003 trying to get it up just in time for Halloween. And that I did! On October 29, 2003, the Halloween Special launched! It stayed up at our main domain for over a week and was enjoyed by many. In mid-November, the Halloween Special moved to a subdomain and a new splash page was put up at the main domain, still, with a "November 2003" planned launch. The only problem, I still had no design.

November 2003 came and went, and Destination: Springfield Version 4 didn't launch. Rather than putting a month, "The time is near" was now displayed on the main page. Unfortunately, the time was nowhere near. January 2004, February 2004, and March 2004 all went by and still no change. "The time is near" stayed put. In April 2004, I finally created something to attract lost visitors back to the site, Destination: Springfield's Chalkboard. A php-infused image generator, it allowed visitors to input any phrase of their choice on the same chalkboard Bart writes his lines on each week. The Chalkboard stayed put through April and into May. In May, along with the Chalkboard, a few of the Ullman shorts were available to download, as well as a full-length episode, Homer At The Bat.

Finally, in July 2004, the site was back! Sorta. I launched a "Summer" version. It was everything that previous versions were except some of the older, disliked content was gone. The site only featured Pictures, Framegrabs, all 48 Ullman Shorts. and Production Art. I slowly began to make Framegrabs, getting Seasons 1, 2, and 3 up and complete.

November 2004 came and it was still Summer at DS. See, the problem with a themed-design is that once that theme is over, your site's theme should be over too. That wasn't the case with DS though. The Simpsons were still surfing into late November.

In December 2004, another themed design was made. This time though, it was Destination: Springfield's Christmas Special! Somehow, we bypassed the entire season of Autumn, opting to go straight from Summer to Winter. As a Christmas gift to our visitors, several episodes from Season 16 were available to download and watch. Pictures, Framegrabs, Production Art, and the Ullman Shorts were there too.

January 2005 hit and as with the past, Destination: Springfield went down! We moved hosts from Compact Vision to the much larger Globat. DS wasn't down for very long though, in late February 2005, it was back! The design was very simple. A donut. A donut, that's all. As with the previous themed designs, we featured Pictures, Framegrabs, the Ullman Shorts and even more Season 16 episode downloads. It was at this time that I became a Framegrab-making machine.

Over the course of Spring 2005, the site remained up and consistently updated. DS went from featuring just over 20,000 framegrabs from about 90 episodes to featuring nearly 130,000 from every episode aired to date in a matter of several months! The site's design was revamped a few times, turning the simple donut design from February into a full-out design that launched on June 28, 2005.

Destination: Springfield now features the largest gallery of Framegrabs available on all of the World Wide Web! We've come a long way since our debut in December 2001 and we only hope to continue our growth in the near future.

VERSION 1.0

VERSION 2.0

VERSION 3.0

VERSION 4.0

BRIAN SUTTIS.. Webmaster & Owner

Having been involved in the Simpsons Web Community for nearly 5 years, I've seen and done a lot. My first website debuted in late 2000. Trust me, you don't want to see it. It was just like anything else you'd find at a startup place like Geocities, complete with animation! In the summer of 2001, I started work on a character site called Bart's Bedroom. Like my first site, it debuted on Geocities. However, it actually had a design and original content. It didn't last very long and soon I wanted to work on something new.

And as mentioned above, I began work on Destination: Springfield in October of 2001 and haven't looked back since. In 2003, I, along with the help of Jon Levin, lauched a site called Springfield in Pixels. A site offering tutorials and helpful tips to the people who were looking to get into the online Simpsons community. It was a way to encourage a new era of webmasters and websites. It did a lot, and was appreciated by many young webmasters and respected by the veterans.

Much has changed since I was a young webmaster, many sites that existed back in 2001 have since gone offline. A few have stayed. I hope to keep Destination: Springfield up and running for as long as I can and to this day, I still look forward to updating and working on the site.

And as for the vitals, I'm a 19 year old dude living in the Great White North working towards a career in the Animation industry.

THANK YOU TO..
The many people who have helped me over the years, a few being Jon Levin, Steven Kitchen, Max Williams, Mike McKinnon, and YOU, THE VISITOR for appreciating the many hours of hardwork I've poured into my tribute to the greatest cartoon of all time!