Find out about the beginnings of Last Exit To Springfield and its owner, and how the website came to be one of the longest running and most successful Simpsons fansites.
Following the launch of the website, it became part of something greater - a community of Simpsons fansites, the likes of which are no longer seen in today's digital landscape. At its peak, the Simpsons fansite community had hundreds of websites, owned and maintained by like-minded Simpsons fans presenting their content across the internet, to share their appreciation of Our Favourite Family.
Those days are behind us - and yet, the show remains on the air, with a solid and dedicated fanbase, new and old - perhaps against anybody's expectations.
Which is why Last Exit To Springfield is still online, two decades on. The site exists not to compete with other Simpsons websites, nor to generate revenue. It exists to provide an outlet for fans to learn more about the show that they love. It is simply my take on what best represents the show that I grew up with - a show that, whilst I have personally moved away from, still makes me part of who I am today.
If you're reading this, you're not only part of our rich history, you're a true Simpsons fan who has stuck with the show over the last 35+ years, or perhaps you've discovered the show in its later years. Whatever the case, thank you for visiting!
Since 1997, Adam Wolf has put his free time into his dedication to what he believes is one of the most enjoyable shows on television. Hailing from Adelaide, South Australia, Adam started the site at the age of 12, and is the sole designer and maintainer of the site. What began as a hobby has lead Adam into a career in web development, user experience and digital marketing.
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R. Winograd, John Szymanowski, Chris Jean-Louis, Jan Selig for contributing their efforts pre-2001.
Brad Dugan, Eric Wirtanen, Nate Gilmore, Lee Kaldany, Nick Laws, Jukka Keskiaho, Bryan Ludvigsen, Justin Trevena, John Fiedler and others for their continued support and competition during the website's heyday.
To all the dedicated visitors who have stuck with the site for years and reached out to tell me the impact the website has had on you - thank you for helping retain my interest in paying the hosting bills and keeping things active.
The Simpsons Channel was opened on December 17th, 1997 by Brian Chen. An archive of its content is available in our "Newsroom" section.
Due to complications with our Wordpress database, some articles were reproduced and republished. Contributions attributed to Adam may have come from Brian Byrne, Graham McMorrow, John Kraft, Rob Jacks, Steven Alcantar.
During the late 90s, 20th Century Fox found itself at odds with the burgeoning community of The Simpsons and The X-Files fan sites, among them Last Exit To Springfield. Fox issued this website, and countless others - many of which were owned and maintained by children - cease and desist orders to stem the tide of unauthorized copyrighted content. This sparked debate about fair use and the rights of fans to interact with their cherished cultural touchstones.
While some sites complied and closed their doors, others, like Last Exit To Springfield, held their ground, enabling Simpsons online fan communities access to the content dedicated to the show they loved.
We retain this notice as a reminder of our past challenges and as a mark of respect to the Simpsons website community and their combined efforts made to ensure today's diverse online landscape can thrive with accessible multimedia content.
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Launch of The Simpsons Extravaganza on Geocities after I discovered I could get a Free website. This started as a hobby, alongside a Garfield page and also a Nintendo website which had a couple of years online.
Later that year, the website rebadged itself to The Aussie Simpsons Extravaganza - citing my roots - but I was never really a fan of the name.
At some stage, the website rebadged itself again to The Simpsons Down Under.
The Milhouse File launches alongside The Simpsons Down Under.
I take ownership of The Simpsons Channel and maintain both websites until its closure in 2013.
Not content with owning three Simpsons websites, The World of Bart Simpson launches alongside The Simpsons Down Under. I promise that's it.
The website finally settles on a name that will remain with it forever - launching on the eve of the 1999, Last Exit To Springfield was the result of several months full rebuild. It was housed at springfield.simplenet.com/lets.
A quick redesign after two months - Last Exit To Springfield v2 launches on this day.
The World of Bart Simpson closes after just a year online. All of its unique content was folded back into Last Exit to Springfield.
The website kicks off the millennium by locating to its permanent new home at lardlad.com
To celebrate its third year online, Last Exit To Springfield unveils a new design, Version 7, to go with its new domain name.
Last Exit To Springfield launches Version 8.
Version 9 launches, with a flash animated logo and navigation - a staple of lardlad.com for the next 15 years (the technology became long obsolete during that time!)
Version 10 launches with a bright new color scheme.
Last Exit To Springfield is selected as the Netscape.com "Cool Site Of The Day". This was way beyond Netscape itself being a thing. But it felt like an achievement at the time!
To celebrate 10 years online, Last Exit to Springfield launches version 11, which would go on to serve the website for the next 18 years.
The last recorded update for Last Exit to Springfield. The website remained online but generally only received minor maintenance work or content updates that were added behind the scenes.
Our "sister" website The Simpsons Channel closes for good after 16 years online. You can now view all of the articles from this site in Last Exit To Springfield's News section.
The website silently returns from its unplanned hiatus, replacing its entire suite of Framegrabs with a higher resolution set of images from all episodes covering Season 1 - Season 26. This work was undertaken in 2014 as part of a plan to redesign, update and restore Last Exit To Springfield to its former state, but due to an unfortunate hard drive failure, the work never saw the light of day and was largely lost.
Here's a sneak peek at the planned redesign that did not eventuate
5605 days after its last official update - Last Exit To Springfield returns at a time where all other Simpsons fan sites have been closed and neglected. The latest version of the site is designed to be a lightweight historical snapshot of the website, less reliant on an update model, mobile responsive and compliant with the latest web standards (that is, until they change again in the next ten years).