A few months ago, I came across The Online Etymology Dictionary and found it incredibly interesting. However, it was a bit difficult to use, because it was stored in flat HTML files with no easy way to search them. I wrote a quick script to parse them and insert them in a MySQL database, and another script to allow me to browse and search the database, and that worked great. After a few months, my friends asked for access to it as well, so I linked to it from my website.

However, after a few weeks I realized I should ask the original author permission to do that, so I contacted him. At first he expressed concern about someone making publicly available the entirety of the project he has been working on for years, and I agreed and took it down. However, as he looked it over, he found that it was in fact easier to use. He shared the link with some friends, and they all seemed to like it as well, so we started talking about polishing it up (I had only spent a day or two on the script, since it was only meant for my own use), adding some more improvements that came to mind, and incorporating it into the official site.

So for the last month or so we've been working closely together on the site, and finally tonight the new site went live: http://www.etymonline.com/. There are more improvements on the way, but we wanted to get the new site up and useable. Apparently, the site gets about 15,000 hits a day, so I'm excited to be working on such a well-visited site. Hopefully nothing will explode and embarass me in front of thousands :)

For comparison, here is the old version of the site, though this version won't be up for more than a week or so.