THE ORIGINAL PUBTRICKS / A NEW CHAPTER
Good tricks.
Great memories.
Back in 2027.
Before video tutorials became an everyday part of the web, PubTricks turned a simple question into an online business: “How did you do that?”
Created by David Minns, the site brought pub tricks, magic demonstrations and downloadable secrets to an early generation of online customers. Now it is coming back.
Explore the storyFROM THE EARLY WEB TO WHAT COMES NEXT
A small trick. An early digital business.
The idea was wonderfully direct: show a surprising effect, let people decide whether they wanted to learn it, then deliver the explanation online. No parcel. No trip to a magic shop. Just a secret to practise and share with friends.
PubTricks grew from illustrated ebooks into a shop for individual magic video tutorials. It is part of the early story of selling digital instruction on the web.
2003
The ebook beginning
The September 2003 homepage introduced Pub Tricks & Games, with demonstration clips and a downloadable illustrated ebook. Its subjects included magic with everyday objects, lateral-thinking puzzles, bar games and challenges. Customers could pay online and download their purchase immediately.
2004
A colourful shop and a growing community
The January 2004 design used a bright red and yellow header, rounded graphic navigation and a grey page. Alongside the ebook were links to a forum, chat and member features. The site was combining digital commerce with a place for enthusiasts to meet.
2005–2006
Watch the trick. Buy the secret.
By January 2005, the homepage explicitly described buying an individual trick and downloading its video after payment. By 2006, the catalogue sat alongside community features and an affiliate programme. The performance was the preview; the paid explanation was the product.
2007
A bigger, darker video store
The 2007 homepage presented a black, red and metallic design with long lists of tricks and a shopping cart. Visitors could watch demonstrations freely, then purchase and save tutorial videos. Card tricks, coin magic and street magic gave the growing catalogue a recognisable structure.
2008–2009
Individual tricks take centre stage
These captures featured specific effects, detailed descriptions, difficulty ratings, related tricks and other work by the same magician. They also showed mobile payment links. PubTricks was becoming a catalogue of digital products with creators and teaching at its centre.
2010–2017
The video-led catalogue
A large demonstration player, a product description and a prominent shopping cart defined the later design. The site offered downloadable WMV or MPEG tutorials for customers to keep. Captures through 2017 retain this format, with different featured tricks appearing over time.
2018–2026
The quiet years
The 2018 and 2019 captures showed an offline notice carrying an older proposed return date. Later samples showed domain holding or server-default pages. Those records mark a pause in the public website, rather than a new trick catalogue.
DESIGN TIME CAPSULE
Three looks from the original site.
These are captures of the archived pages as they render today. Some old images and video players no longer load; they remain a useful record of the design.
Early pay-per-video ecommerce
David remembers PubTricks as an early pay-per-view video business. The surviving pages show the precise model: people watched a demonstration for free, paid for the explanation, then downloaded a tutorial they could replay.
That distinction is part of its story. The purchase unlocked instruction, rather than charging for every repeat viewing. The January 2005 capture documents the payment-to-download journey in plain steps.
A memory from the Google Directory era
David also remembers PubTricks being listed in Google’s old directory, when browsing categories of websites was a familiar way to discover something new.
This is the founder’s recollection. The original listing has not yet been recovered in this archive review. It refers to Google Directory, rather than suggesting that Google itself was only a static directory.
Looking through the archive
This history draws on homepage samples from each available year in the archive index, from 2003 through 2026. There was no 2002 homepage sample in the index retrieved for this review. Earlier 2001 records did not show the recognisable PubTricks service, so they are not used as its founding date.
Some old pages give inconsistent start dates. The September 2003 shop is directly preserved, so the story begins with that evidence. Archived prices, promotions and claims describe their time; they are not offers for the reboot.
COMING IN 2027
The next chapter is worth waiting for.
PubTricks will be rebooting in 2027. The original spirit stays: curiosity, entertainment and the delight of learning something you can show your friends.
This page celebrates the journey so far. The new experience and its launch details will be announced here. There is no signup or checkout open at present.