MexConnect is 30 years old this month! Happy Birthday MexConnect! ¡Feliz cumpleaños, MexConnect!
While the precise date is lost in the mists of time, this 1997 newspaper article, based on an interview with MexConnect founder David McLaughlin, dates MexConnect definitively to June 1996, when, from the then small village of Ajijic, he established its first online presence as a website for all things Mexican.
An August 1996 “NetReaders’ Guide to Cyberspace” listed Mexico Connect (as it was then known) as the “Premium site for information on all aspects of Mexico as a country to learn about or visit, to live in, invest or do business. http://www.mexconnect.com.”
Thirty years is a lifetime on the web… and the design of MexConnect has evolved over that time in response to changes in readership, the marketplace and technology.
Front page from 1996
Front page from 2004
It did not take long for the site to become known familiarly as MexConnect after its domain name, a name forever enshrined in web history.
Want to learn more?
- Welcome to the new MexConnect (2020)
- MexConnect – The next twenty years (2016)
- MexConnect – The evolution of MexConnect over its first 25 years (2021)
- Explore past editions of MexConnect on the Internet Archive
Wherever you are, please join us in raising a glass and toasting MexConnect and its visionary founder David McLaughlin. ¡Viva MexConnect!
- In memoriam: David McLaughlin (1946-2019), founder and CEO of MexConnect
- Our Day of the Dead Tribute to David McLaughlin, this site’s founder
Published or Updated on: June 8, 2026
