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Show HN: My embarrassing personal website from the 90s

boglin.iwarp.com

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Re: Show HN: My embarrassing personal website from the 90s

#211

Post by Firerouge »

skissane wrote: post #170

I used to have a Geocities containing weird bad poetry I wrote when I was a teenager. I forgot about it, until years later I stumbled upon it again. I was embarrassed. I asked Yahoo to delete it. But I'd forgotten the password, and I'd used fake personal details (wrong date of birth) to create the account, and I couldn't remember what the fake info was, so they refused to delete it because I couldn't verify that I wa…

So they trusted that whatever was posted on the site was yours, but wouldn't believe the site was yours, crazy.

Re: Show HN: My embarrassing personal website from the 90s

#212

Post by irrational »

TheGRS wrote: post #86
Legion wrote: post #54

I miss this era of the Internet. It represents a period of time where average people used the open Web to publish , rather than post on a corporation's platform. Obviously there's been plenty of development since then that I would not give back, but people favoring publishing their own sites rather than posting on social media is not incompatible with those developments. That part didn't need to be lost.

Most who were just tinkering still posted to something like geocities, but I agree that spirit has been lost. What do they do in middle school / high school web development classes these days anyway? Kind of the appeal 20 years ago was that you could learn HTML pretty easily and whip up a simple personal website like this and have fun doing it. It didn't exactly "teach" much, at least in my experience, but it was ins…

This is something I've struggled with. When I think of introducing people to web development I think about how I got my start - creating a website to display pictures of my newborn daughter in 1997. Only, who would do such a thing these days? People would just post those to Facebook or Instagram. Creating a web app is too much too soon in my opinion. What is a good project that has relevance in 2018, but doesn't require anything more than vanilla HTML, CSS, and JS?

Re: Show HN: My embarrassing personal website from the 90s

#213

Post by MisterTea »

FreakyT wrote: post #148
starsinspace wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When talking about this, people often like to joke about the webdesign back then. But the personal websites had personality. Facebook profiles feel like government forms to me... "here, fill in this standardized array of fields with your personal data."

I think MySpace ultimately represented the final form of the essentially unlimited customization of the early web. The terribleness of MySpace pages was, I believe, the catalyst that pushed the design trend in the opposite direction, resulting in the "standardized array of fields" as popularized by Facebook. That said, given the cyclical nature of design trends, I strongly suspect that we'll eventually start to see a…

Agreed. There were people who were using templates for their Myspace pages that were hideous. Facebook felt much more uniform and focused on the content (posts) rather than frivolous glitz. But today, I'm off Facebook and any other large centralized social platforms. In the suture if I decide to publish articles or blog posts then I'm going back to the personal web page.

Re: Show HN: My embarrassing personal website from the 90s

#214

Post by amasad »

Kids, btw, still like to build websites like this. At Repl.it we have a lot of teenagers using our product. Here are some of my favorite 90s style website:

- Turn the volume one for this one and peep the marquee in the title: http://erikflynn.repl.co/Website/

- A music website "imma be link yall up with some good playlists" http://lexiecampbell.repl.co/Music/

- JACK WEBSITE: with a fun animated background and his "bangin tunes" http://jackburgess123.repl.co/JACK-WEBSITE/

- "HOW TO BE A BOSS AT FORTNITE" http://daremccloskey_t.repl.co/FortniteTips/

- Space website: learn about blackholes, dark matter, and more http://laser431.repl.co/Real-Space-Website/

- A kid's website with resume and updates 90s style http://anonimoussyed.repl.co/My-website/

- Shitposting 90s style http://rmalagon.repl.co/Memes/

A lot more where that came from, if people are interested I can put up a page so you can surf!

UPDATE -- here are some games:

- Car Wars (this was trending on reddit) http://sbenderschii.repl.co/Car-Wars/

- Hard pong game (use your mouse to move) http://echocoding.repl.co/Project-Classic-Pong/

- Snake game http://noahcapucilli_shata.repl.co/Javscript-snake/

- Cookie clicker http://prestonsia.repl.co/Cookie-Clicker/

- Bounce blob http://birduugaming.repl.co/BounceBlob/

- Flappy ball http://gvanminsel.repl.co/flappy-ball/

To view source it's repl.it/@/

e.g. http://birduugaming.repl.co/BounceBlob/ -> https://repl.it/@birduugaming/BounceBlob

Re: Show HN: My embarrassing personal website from the 90s

#216

Post by aaron987 »

adventured wrote: post #175
FreakyT wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think MySpace ultimately represented the final form of the essentially unlimited customization of the early web. The terribleness of MySpace pages was, I believe, the catalyst that pushed the design trend in the opposite direction, resulting in the "standardized array of fields" as popularized by Facebook. That said, given the cyclical nature of design trends, I strongly suspect that we'll eventually start to see a…

Tumblr has never really lost its wide variety of customization. I'd argue it carried on the Geocities and MySpace individual touch. If you go from one personal tumblr to the next, they often vary to a great degree in atmosphere, color scheme, content posted, purpose, layout, etc. You also still see all the expected bizarre design choices, broken layouts, etc. that one would expect given that. Being able to customize…

Though it might also be worth mentioning that Tumblr is a total pain in the * to use precisely because of that customization. Every dang page is different and I never know what to click. Worse, Tumblr is so slow that every wrong click is an expensive loss of time and patience. On the rare occasion that I find a Tumblr worth following, I just use the RSS feed because the site is too frustrating.

Re: Show HN: My embarrassing personal website from the 90s

#217

Post by ajmurmann »

baby wrote: post #124
starsinspace wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When talking about this, people often like to joke about the webdesign back then. But the personal websites had personality. Facebook profiles feel like government forms to me... "here, fill in this standardized array of fields with your personal data."

I need to write a love letter to Flash and how it made every website look like a christmas tree. There was so much life in there, it was a race to dynamism when we didn’t know how to make things dynamic. Now it’s all about flat design and static pages and don’t make the users learn a new UI and use the same CSS framework everybody else is using.

Hah, flat design and static except for the ads.

Re: Show HN: My embarrassing personal website from the 90s

#218

Post by campbellmorgan »

BeetleB wrote: post #114
AndrewStephens wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are the target audience for https://wiby.me - the search engine for old school websites

I clicked "Surprise Me" and got this creepy page: http://idiom.com/~beverly/hans_resume.html

Very creepy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser

Re: Show HN: My embarrassing personal website from the 90s

#220

Post by stavros »

Legion wrote: post #54

I miss this era of the Internet. It represents a period of time where average people used the open Web to publish , rather than post on a corporation's platform. Obviously there's been plenty of development since then that I would not give back, but people favoring publishing their own sites rather than posting on social media is not incompatible with those developments. That part didn't need to be lost.

I wasn't going to post this yet, but fuck it: I miss that era too, and I wanted to make it easier for people to publish their websites, so I made this with a friend:

https://hearth.eternum.io/

It gives you a folder, like Dropbox. Drop some files in, and you have your own website (over IPFS). It's still early, but it should work well enough. I'd love to hear some feedback, if anyone tries it.

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