Hunkered down at PDD World Headquarters, problem solving the switch to WordPress in 2009: Cory Fechner, Scott Lunt, Paul Lundgren and Barrett Chase.

Ten years ago — Jan. 30, 2009 — Perfect Duluth Day made the big leap to the WordPress publishing platform. Specifically, the upgrade was from Movable Type version 3.2 to WordPress version 2.8. These days PDD is on WordPress version 4.9.9. But enough nerdspeak.

What the move meant was PDD started looking better and working faster. The move also marked the transition of the site from founders Barrett Chase and Scott Lunt operating a hobby site to the addition of three new partners — Paul Lundgren, Cory Fechner and Brian Barber — sidebar advertising, and awkward use of the word business to reference goofing off on the internet.

In the ten years since Perfect Duluth Day has been a five-way partnership, the five partners have managed to all be in the same room just one time, for about 20 minutes, back in 2012. Barrett Chase left PDD in 2015 for a position at the Duluth News Tribune. Lawrence Lee became the fifth partner at that time. Since then the five active partners have never been in the same room at the same time.

The night of the WordPress conversion ten years ago, Brian Barber was the absent partner. He had young children at the time and was confined to his home, where he napped on the couch as the others slaved into the wee hours testing and repairing the new PDD.