DACCAA was first created in 2012 (in its web form), all be it with a very different spelling. DACCAA went through many iterations and actually stemmed from a “computer club” (although this would have been prior to 2012 — about 2009) that I ran with Andrew, one of my friends (another friend called Jack also helped later on). This computer club needed a name and of course, I settled on the name “True Smile”. Andrew told me just how awful this name was, but I loved it. This was the first thing I had ever named and was a force for positive change that I was pushing (at the age of twelve). True Smile’s logo loomed over the future slides of our demo PowerPoint’s in a horrible rainbow coloured Word Art.
Eventually, Andrew managed to persuade me otherwise. We changed the name to “DAACC”, which stood for Danny and Andrew’s Computer Club. This was what the name ultimately was until we left primary school and stopped our club. Overall, I think our computer club was a success. We were teaching year 4 students (we were in year 6 at the time) how to use PowerPoint before it even came up in their ICT lessons. We had never been taught PowerPoint as it was a new tool at our school but the drive to learn a new software was always strong within me and heavily encouraged by my father.
“DAACC” became “Dacca” because it looked nicer and read softer. However, after a year I realised that Dacca was the former spelling of the capital of Bangladesh — now Dhaka. This posed a problem; I could never possibly compete with the capital of Bangladesh for traffic and as such my little project site would never be discovered. It was at this point I decided that the perfect solution to this would be to add the additional “a” onto the end thus making it Daccaa. There were many variations in between where the case went to all lower “daccaa”, however since around 2015 it has always been styled in full upper case.
DACCAA has always been a project site, a place where I can experiment and teach myself new things. This is where I could learn to code and learn to make new systems. They would be publicly available, and I could get my friends to test them out and see what they think. In 2012, Andrew showed me a website called “Blackle” that aimed to take on Google but with a full dark mode theme. The idea being that it would save energy by using a fully black design. This inspired me to find out how they could do this and for me to try and make my own version. I quickly found out about GCSE (Google Custom Search Engine) and had an early version running. DACCAA Search was the very first service I ever made.
DACCAA then ran on with me expanding to make many new services, some that are still here today, and some that are not. DACCAA Edits was an example of an axed service — an online encrypted notes service. This ran on happily until 2020 — this was my final year of university. In my computer science classes I met with many likeminded people. I met Ethan and we discussed the possibility of turning DACCAA from a dream, a project, an idea I once had — into a reality. That is when DACCAA was setup and created in three separate areas:
DACCAA Creative was made to allow us to create websites for third parties, business or individuals who wanted a website — this has since gone on to include digital marketing and even looking into branding. DACCAA Studios will make and produce all of DACCAA’s apps, games, and media content — this will be different games like Yeet Pete and the SCP game that we are working on. DACCAA Web was the final part which continued with everything DACCAA once stood for — making digital online services that can try and help people. DACCAA continues to try and run these services free of charge with no adverts — this had been our philosophy and for as long as we can afford to, we will.
DACCAA has taken a major step forward and officially registered as a limited company in England and Wales on 4th February 2023. This move will allow us to further expand our services and continue providing digital solutions to individuals and businesses alike. Our commitment to offering high-quality and ad-free services remains unwavering, and we believe that this new chapter will bring exciting new opportunities for growth and innovation.
If you want to learn more about me, you can visit my personal website. If you want to learn more about our current offerings, you can learn more.