I feel like this kid is now on metafilter. Come on fess up, who's Rory? I promise to tell you Ya Cool. posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:58 AM on February 7 [2 favorites]
Yeah, that kid was up waaay past his bedtime.. posted by obscurator at 7:01 AM on February 7
It's a weird world where 'random sampling of Geocities' == 'best of the web'.
Kilobyte Age? Never heard it. Byte Age, Megabyte Age and Gigabyte Age (current). Now moving to the Terabyte Age. Lot of ages. posted by stbalbach at 7:02 AM on February 7
An internet of people sharing their own ideas (even if they're a bit looney) instead of endlessly snarking on the faults of others. I remember that internet. Glad I was there to see the frontier. posted by tripping daisy at 7:05 AM on February 7 [17 favorites]
It makes me physically angry that Yahoo hasn't just given (or redirected) the geocities.com URL to the Archive Team people. posted by roll truck roll at 7:09 AM on February 7 [2 favorites]
Man, I wish these were the real thing & not just screen caps. Memories of surfing around via my AOL dialup account on my Centris 610, when you could go from site to site to site, clicking random links because no one was concerned with "retaining eyeballs" & everyone was willing to try their hand a building a page & learning a little html to make it happen... I feel old.
I particularly like that there's a link to every geocities page in the screenshot post, even though the link, of course, gives a 'page not found' message. A little lure, when one might actually want to read past that first page, that acts as a reminder that all this was washed away. posted by frimble at 7:10 AM on February 7
Oh, I miss this. I'm not all that old but to me, this will always be how the internet is 'supposed' to be. posted by showbiz_liz at 7:11 AM on February 7 [3 favorites]
WHERE ARE THE FLAMING SKULLS?
I've scrolled like almost three pages, and yet, no flaming skulls.
Oh those warm summer nights I spent lost in Ron's Poetry Garden. posted by griphus at 7:15 AM on February 7 [5 favorites]
I wish I could remember where my Geocities page was, or that there was a good way to search for it, or that I even remembered what moniker I was going by back then. posted by zengargoyle at 7:36 AM on February 7
Webpages don't welcome me to their homepages when I arrive anymore. They've lost all their manners. posted by rh at 7:49 AM on February 7 [1 favorite]
Man, remember when one of the constraints you had to design web pages around was dial-up download times? posted by gauche at 7:53 AM on February 7 [2 favorites]
Gotta love Lyndon's Homepage:
"This page is dedicated to the four main things in life: #1. ME"
An early on-line narcissist no doubt. I bet he has like a million Facebook friends today. posted by Seymour Zamboni at 7:53 AM on February 7 [1 favorite]
This is what most academic web pages still look like. posted by jeffamaphone at 7:56 AM on February 7
I was vastly worse than the worse page in this. In the beginning, I scorned the web completely. posted by Goofyy at 7:58 AM on February 7
Suggestion: Listen to the top songs of 1996 from the FPP earlier today while you are scrolling these screenshots. posted by Seymour Zamboni at 8:00 AM on February 7 [2 favorites]
Oh man I hope they got a screenshot of my long lost perpetually-under-construction Pink Floyd Tribute page posted by Elly Vortex at 8:06 AM on February 7
Looking at this gives me an almost painful spike of nostalgia. It's not that these particular sites are especially great or anything, but I think it really is better for people to make things they're passionate about with enthusiasm than to join some marginally creepy, basically useless "service" just because everyone else they know has. Ideally, we could've found some in between where a few places on the web get an established presence but it's still "normal" to go do your own thing for the fun of it; we've kind of just allowed the corporate side to raze nearly everything else, though, and it just feels weird.
Here we are, finally having the technology to do the things we dreamed about doing in the 90s, but all that stuff's passe now so let's just shrug and shuffle toward our lopsided panopticon intranet. Life is so weird. posted by byanyothername at 8:18 AM on February 7 [3 favorites]
Ideally, we could've found some in between where a few places on the web get an established presence but it's still "normal" to go do your own thing for the fun of it; we've kind of just allowed the corporate side to raze nearly everything else, though, and it just feels weird.
Man, remember when one of the constraints you had to design web pages around was dial-up download times?
That's why you reused your assets as much as possible. Once Netscape downloaded and cached the first flaming skull gif, adding a dozen more of them in a ring around your totally bitching logo was practically free! posted by Mayor West at 8:30 AM on February 7 [4 favorites]
... memories of looking up how to do this ... posted by kurumi at 8:30 AM on February 7
Now where did I leave my copy of HoTMetaL. posted by humboldt32 at 9:44 AM on February 7
That's why you reused your assets as much as possible. Once Netscape downloaded and cached the first flaming skull gif, adding a dozen more of them in a ring around your totally bitching logo was practically free!
I remember an article somewhere, maybe on A List Apart, about "spriting" your design elements into one .gif and just clipping parts of it out selectively (so, for instance, you'd have a row of button graphics in "neutral" appearance and just below them another row in "hover" appearance and another row below those in "active" appearance and you'd just adjust the y coordinates on hover and click but it would only need to load one big .gif for all your buttons.)
Well - if you want an archive of live pages (not screencaps), there is reocities... They tried to get as much of it as they could before they were shut down. Whether yours or someone you loved (or hated)'s page is on there, I could not say, but you surely can try it out. Just use the same url, except reocities instead of geocities.
Man, why'd the house/building metaphor die out? I'd like to think of myself being in MetaFilter's living room right now. I guess MetaTalk would be the bathroom. posted by ignignokt at 4:06 PM on February 7
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:58 AM on February 7 [2 favorites]