Skip to Main Content
Members:   Log In Sign Up
Text:  A  A  A

The History of ToffeeWeb

In November 2000, the decision was finally taken to amalgamate the two longest-running Everton sites on the web. A casual e-mailed conversation about the merits of two massive unofficial Everton websites running in opposition led the respective webmasters of ToffeeWeb.org and Evertonia.com to the only sensible conclusion: merge.

Five months of design, gruelling content migration, and preparation followed and in March 2001, ToffeeWeb.com was launched to an unsuspecting Evertonian Internet community.

Bringing together the fruits of 12 cumulative years of work by Marko Poutiainen, Michael Kenrick, and the ToffeeWeb.org team; and Lyndon Lloyd and the sporadic contributors to Evertonia.com, ToffeeWeb represents the pride and devotion a group of Evertonians to the club they support. While unofficial Everton sites have come and gone over the years, ToffeeWeb has continued its quest to be the best online resource for Evertonians.

ToffeeWeb.org - first on the scene

When in 1994 a fanatical Finnish Evertonian named Marko Poutiainen* decided to transfer his love of the Blues to a fledgling forum called the Internet, there were hardly any football sites of any description in existence, let alone ones devoted to Everton.

Two years before Everton Football Club had even thought of a site of their own, a nameless resource that would one day be christened ToffeeWeb was chartering new territory for the club.

Marko gradually transferred content from his native tongue onto a website that was to become the focal point of the Everton online community, where Michael Kenrick volunteered to help clean up the text and fix language issues.

Sticking to a tried and trusted formula of content over superfluous design, Marko's and Michael's site grew in line with the expansion of Blues fans online and the popularity of the ToffeeNet mailing list.

In 1997, the site acquired the name ToffeeWeb, its own domain name and the beginnings of a design in the face of competition from a succession of other Everton sites that started to spring up around this time.

Exclusive interviews and columnists followed and by the end of the 1990s, ToffeeWeb was arguably the premier Everton site for information about the club.

Evertonia.com - the pretender to the throne

Two years after Marko had started his tribute to the Blues, another in a increasingly long line of fans sites sprung up in 1996 in the form of the bizarrely titled "Tumbleweed's Everton Centre", the summer project of university student Lyndon Lloyd who was learning to build websites at the time.

Changing names soon after to "The Realm of Everton", the site grew from a few text pages of results, reports and tables to a fully-fledged competitor to Marko's site – conveniently "borrowing" some of his historical content along the way!

Trading on relentlessly updated news, evolving aesthetic design and fan interaction, the site became Evertonia in February 1998 and for the next two years, ToffeeWeb.org and Evertonia.com remained the undisputed heavyweights of unofficial Everton websites, Everton itself having finally produced an official site of its own worthy of the name. (Ironically, Lyndon was interviewed by Peter Johnson for the position of Everton's Webmaster in 1997 but, in the end, the club opted for a fully-fledged design agency to oversee the management of the official site.)

Evertonia.com was briefly relaunched in 2015 as a curated collection of links to Everton-related articles and syndicated news but has since been put out to pasture again.

Awards and recognition

2004 — Runner-Up, Independent Football Site Awards
2008 — Shortlisted in a number categories in the Football Fanzine Awards
2008 — Shortlisted in a number categories in the Football Fanzine Awards
2012 — Winner, Readers Choice EPL Talk Best EPL Blog for 2012/13
2013 — Winner, Editors Choice EPL Talk Best EPL Blog for 2013/14
2014 — Winner, Readers Choice EPL Talk Best EPL Blog for 2013/14


*Note that Marko no longer plays an active role in the maintenance or direction of ToffeeWeb.

OK

We use cookies to enhance your experience on ToffeeWeb and to enable certain features. By using the website you are consenting to our use of cookies in accordance with our cookie policy.