The ToL web project represents the collective efforts of over 300 international biologists to capture information about the evolutionary history and characteristics of (eventually) all groups of organisms. At present, development of the infrastructure of the ToL aims to provide an open-source, uniform and linked framework in which to electronically publish this information.

In this talk, we will briefly discuss the broad vision of this project, as well as a few of the nitty gritties, such as:

• design of flexible databases, to allow for interaction with other biodiversity related databases.
• development of data-entry tools for biologists,
• implementation of a customizable web interface to allow our 40,000+ distinct visitors/week to get information according to their needs.

Of course, we'll also touch on a number of pitfalls we've met along the way; what else would a project of this sort be without a few dead ends?