Our history page will guide you through the process of PeerWeb DC++ and ApexDC++'s life to the present day. Anybody interested in the two projects will find it useful to understand how PeerWeb DC++ eventually matured into ApexDC++.

Timelime

The timeline is split into three parts, which are three separate projects. Details are given further down the page.

PWSDC++
  • 12th April 2005: Project started, PWSDC++ 0.100
PeerWeb DC++
  • 23rd April 2005: PeerWeb DC++, sub-domain (dc.peerweb.org) created, 0.202 released
  • 23rd May 2005: 0.203 released
  • 26th May 2005: Website revamp to mimic PeerWeb.org's template
  • 14th July 2005: 0.205 released
  • 21st July 2005: 5,000 downloads
  • 14th August 2005: 10,000 downloads
  • 26th August 2005: 0.300, PeerWeb emoticon pack 2.3 released, TGO official support hub
  • 18th November 2005: Switched to IPB 2.1 bulletin board
  • 21st November 2005: 0.400 released
  • 8th December 2005: 0.41 released (last version)
  • 29th December 2005: Project discontinued
ApexDC++

How it started

The project has had four different names to this day, few which have been long forgotten, like it's very first name PeerWeb StrongDC++ (PWSDC++) under this name the project existed only days or few weeks before it became PeerWeb DC++ (PWDC++).

The first community based release of PWSDC++ was published on 12th April 2005 (which technically is when our Direct Connect client customisations started). At that time, PWSDC++ was situated and new versions were announced on the PeerWeb Forums. On 23rd April 2005 we setup the sub-domain dc.peerweb.org due to the popularity of the project and a revision of the name. PWSDC++ quickly became PWDC++ and 0.202 was released on the same day.

At that time the project consisted of three members; Lee in his present role, Almiteycow as a coder and Wheezy, being referred as 'odd job'. Crise had contacted Lee three days earlier and thus 0.202 was the first version that he was more or less involved in. PWDC++ 0.202 was still very strongly a community project for P2P indexing site called PeerWeb and it pretty much remained as such until 0.3 which was our biggest release to that point.

To say bit about the early days of our website at first it was just a very basic page, but on 27th of May, shortly after the release of 0.204 Lee announced a website update that made the website look bit similar to what PeerWeb looks today, we did not have forums at that time yet, they became bit later on early June and were powered by myBB.

When the project was roughly three months old (21st July) we had reached the 5,000 downloads mark, to you that may not seem like much but for us it was notable achievement because that was still time before 0.3 which as said can be seen as a turning point from community project to something more.

Then on 26th of August we finally released 0.3, around that time we also came across Sidetrack and his hub which shortly came the official support hub for PWDC++ and just two smaller releases later (0.4) it was added by default to favourites alongside the PeerWeb Hubs (these have died since then unfortunately but TGO is to this day our official support hub).

On 18th November 2005, IPB replaced myBB as our forum software due to security related issues. Shortly afterwards the aforementioned 0.4 release became available to general public. Not much happened between that and the release of 0.41 (final release of PWDC++). On 29th December 2005, Lee officially announced that the project was discontinued due to his departure from PeerWeb's management team. PeerWeb DC++ existed for 10 months - which received 12 release versions and over 50,000 downloads.

Branding

So PWDC++ became a new client, neXT++. In the end it was never even compiled, only forum was created on neXTPeer ready for a public launch. There was discussion in terms of expected features, but most of that never ended in publicity apart of a small excerpt which was posted by Crise on the early days of ApexDC++.

On 13th January, 2006 a new news entry was posted on the old PWDC++ web site informing users that a discussion of the final fate of the PWDC++ project was underway. As a result of these discussions, the new plan was formed. This plan was what you know today as ApexDC++. As a collective group, we decided to move away from neXT++ and become independent, allowing Nas (who took over Wheezy in creating installers for PWDC++) to create a website under the ApexDC.net domain.

ApexDC.net formed, the long road to release

On 19th January 2006, ApexDC.net was registered. Donations were required in order to buy an IPB license for a permanent forum resource bulletin board. The donations were quickly collected by our initial subscribers to the project in a few days, and the forums went live.

Between January and August there was no ApexDC++ release due to waiting for StrongDC++ 2.0 to be released. During this 6 month period waiting for StrongDC++ 2.0, there was strong discussion as to whether we should revitalise PWDC++ using RC10 and release 0.45/0.50 beta to pass time. One of the reasons was that the logo concepts were practically ready for ApexDC++. Most of Easter and Summer holidays was spent doing nothing (where staff have the most free time) which was frustrating.

Our first release was officially announced on the 3rd August 2006 with an estimation of 3,350 downloads in 24 hours thanks to our official support hub's advertising across Direct Connect hubs.