Back in 1995, after a few months testing interest on a gopher/web server we had set up at our then employer, we officially launched UK Theatre Web (UKTW) - our initial bank loan of around £10,000 was only just enough to get us a PC, a laptop, Microsoft Office, a scanner and a printer - and the laptop was too under-powered to run our database properly.
Our official launch date was 14th February, Valentine's Day, an easy date to remember, so today we are officially 23 years old. It was such a long time ago that we pre-date Google and even the WayBackMachine (Internet Archive) which first caught up with us in 1996 by which time we were already working with our friends at Whatsonstage.
Today, we are listing over 13,000 current and future shows of which around 8,500 have links to tickets and we just topped 15,000 links to tickets for the first time, covering around 140,000 performances with tickets from over 20 suppliers.
The iUKTDb archive of our older listings now includes 118,942 works in 186,357 productions involving 191,563 people/companies giving 990,223 events in 3,290 venues - the million is not so far away!
Our site and services have undergone many changes over the years but our aim has always been to provide good quality information to anyone interested in live performance. We have also moved around, starting in Witney and then Fernham and now in Weston-super-Mare, though nowadays we can work the listings from pretty well anywhere with an internet connection.
Thank you all for your support over the years ....
Still going strong ....
Fran & Robert