CSSline is a showcase gallery of excellent sites since 2009. This is the story of who built it, and how it still runs ad-free.
Origin
2009 — 2012
CSSline was founded in 2009 🚀 by @virlander, who was tired of CSS showcases like CSS Beauty and Stylegala 😴. They listed ugly, boring sites. There was room for a showcase with better taste. 
With @superfelipe, both developers at Valve, they shipped v1: jQuery ⚡, CodeIgniter, hosted on Media Temple, Slicehost, then Rackspace. It went live in 2009 and ran until v2 in 2020. Thanks to our sales manager (@snellman), we sold 🤑 a copy of the backend to a mystery B2B buyer. That sale has kept CSSline ad-free ever since.
Visual identity
The logo is by @meteufacik & @junnuvuorela, two designers who made something that still holds up. The site grid and the rest of the look were designed by @virlander.
Redesigns
2012 — 2020
In 2012, @samnivala designed a new CSSline: a tighter grid, better type, a clearer experience. 
@junnuvuorela also made an Angry Birds inspired 404 page. Neither ever shipped 😢.
Version 2
2020 — 2025
After @superfelipe moved to Reaktor, @virlander introduced CSSline to @tsuvinen when he joined Valve in 2016. 
They rebuilt it over years: Angular.js, then Angular 4, then React, then React+Next.js, and finally React+Razzle (Node, Razzle, React, Redux, Styled-components + Firebase). First Angular work in 2016; the Razzle site went live in 2020.
Version 3
2025
After @tsuvinen moved to Columbia Road in 2020, @virlander kept v2 running. When Firebase breaking changes slowed the site 🐌, he rebuilt it in Astro, still on Firebase. 
April to May 2025 was the fastest CSSline redesign yet. Since the move to Astro, CSSline keeps getting small improvements every month.