Webmonkey, a once-popular resource for web developers first launched around 1996, has relaunched as a wiki.

Webmonkey was a hot site in the ’90s, with a vast amount of information for web developers, but the site fell on hard times after being acquired by Lycos, and all but disappeared not long after that. In 2004, Jeffrey Veen, one of the founders of WebMonkey, wrote about its beginnings and later demise in a piece titled Goodbye, Webmonkey.

As of today, it’s back. Last week, Wired parent Condé Nast bought boutique tech website Ars Technica, Webmonkey, and Hotwired.com, and today Webmonkey relaunched as a wiki. New York Times reporter David Carr reports on the details , and looks at Condé Nast’s history of patiently growing businesses into blockbusters, like Vogue, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker.

From the new Webmonkey.com:

The original web developer’s resource has returned. Webmonkey has been completely redesigned, and we’re ready to rock once more. Also, our entire content library is now hosted on a wiki, so every tutorial, reference page and code example is open for editing. Come on in and show us what you’ve got!

I think this is a good move by Wired. Sites with a very focused purpose and, thus a very focused audience, are more likely to succeed as wiki communities. And it certainly helps that Webmonkey is considered a storied property that many web developers credit as one of their best sources of information in the early days.