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Resurrect the Old Web

stevedylandev.bearblog.dev

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Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#141

Post by AznHisoka »

lunias wrote: post #59

The "old web" to me was GeoCities and Angelfire, it was customizing your NeoPets shop, it was hosting a web server on your home network on port 8080. It was mailing a check to an address you found on a website in hopes that you'd receive a bootleg anime VHS in the mail a few weeks later. It was webrings, banners, and websites reviewing and promoting other sites through a "links" section. It was right-clicking to copy…

>> It was mailing a check to an address you found on a website in hopes that you'd receive a bootleg anime VHS in the mail a few weeks later.

Check? More like actual dollar bills stuffed inside a piece of paper inside an envelope, so nobody could see what it was

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#142

Post by [deleted] »

lockranore2 wrote: post #134

I was around for the leap from BBS systems to Fidonet; the bad old days when there were no such thing as graphics. I can absolutely sympathize with what's being said here, and for me, there are two primary reasons why I pine for the elder days. The systems then required some effort to gain access to which kept some of the signal to noise loss down (if you know the difference between CB radio and Ham radio, you know w…

[deleted]

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#143

Post by drnick1 »

Kovah wrote: post #140
drnick1 wrote: post #138

The first step to "resurrect the old Web" would be to remove the fonts.googleapis.com dependency from your blog. It enables Google to track people across the Internet.

Bunny Fonts is a fully compatible, GDPR-compliant, drop-in replacement for Google Fonts. https://fonts.bunny.net/

This may be better than Google, but I don't understand why a blog needs a font CDN at all. Just use standard fonts or host them yourself if you really can't do without your SuperCoolFont.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#144

Post by dcreater »

HermanMartinus wrote: post #31
wiether wrote: post #3

I don't get HN's appeal for the bearblog platform? If anything else, if one wants to resurrect the "Old Web", one shouldn't do it on someone else's platform. Parts of the "Old Web" disappeared when the platforms hosting it stopped. The brutal shutting down of Typepad should be another reminder of this reality: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/one-time-wordpress-c...

Creator of Bear here. Suggesting that because one project fails, others will too is a bit of a fallacy. Fact is that whether you self-host or not, you're still using someone else's platform (unless you're a real self-hoster with a box in your closet, in which case, good on you and godspeed). I think as long as platforms have an easy way for people to backup and migrate, that's fair. Additionally, part of the appeal o…

But isnt it structurally superior to not need platforms like bearblog, substack, medium etc.?

Deploying an astro blog template to netlify is literally 1-click. An instantenously superior option if you dont want to host/pay/code yourself.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#145

Post by tolerance »

Apreche wrote: post #25

The old web isn’t a platform, an aesthetic, or a technology. The old web is people creating and sharing because they are intrinsically motivated. Everything we hate about the current web comes from extrinsic motivations. Good luck removing them.

This is the most succinct critique of the “old web phenomenon” I’ve come across and I reckon can be applied to other issues as well. There doesn’t seem to be a dearth of extrinsic motivators these days, oddly mediated through screens.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#146

Post by akho »

drnick1 wrote: post #138

The first step to "resurrect the old Web" would be to remove the fonts.googleapis.com dependency from your blog. It enables Google to track people across the Internet.

They also have a youtube in there.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#148

Post by tolerance »

It’s hard for me not to read these “old/small web elegies” as coming from people trapped in a kind of perpetual adolescence leading them to contrive impediments to authoring a static website while grieving over a want for community.

I’m curious about the personal lives of the authors of these kinds of posts and whether there’s any shades of the film American Beauty in them.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#149

Post by Bjorkbat »

lunias wrote: post #104
Bjorkbat wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is crazy how much was lost when Apple killed Flash. Absolutely miss Newgrounds. It's still around of course, I'm reflecting more on the vibes when it was in its heyday. Unbelievable the games people were making with Flash back then and how it spawned the careers of a ton of indie darlings. Also, not Flash at all, but does anyone remember Exit Mundi? Absolute gold. Honestly, I kind of look back on blogging u…

Newgrounds was incredible! At the time, games (of any quality) for free was a biiiiig deal. It was even more amazing that you didn't need to wait hours to download and install them. I agree w/ your take on blogging... kind of a bland "one-stop-shop" for everything a person thinks of rather than an experience tailored to a specific interest. I used to make Dragonball Z fan sites mostly... even within a single domain I…

> I used to make Dragonball Z fan sites...

Based

I'm working on a revamp of my personal site. I do a lot of creative coding, most of them are throwaway experiments, so I thought I'd showcase more of them there. Besides that though, I have some "rare pepes" that I've been meaning to put somewhere. What I like about these is that they're highly polished, animated gifs that imitate the sort of "holographic" effect you'd find in rare collector's cards, but at the same time you can't track down who originally made them, they aren't part of some professional's online portfolio. In that sense they feel like a special piece of internet folk art, made by some complete rando.

Nowadays we have Pinterest and the like, but I really like the idea of creating my own little online space for images I like.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#150

Post by m000 »

rchaud wrote: post #106
Bjorkbat wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is crazy how much was lost when Apple killed Flash. Absolutely miss Newgrounds. It's still around of course, I'm reflecting more on the vibes when it was in its heyday. Unbelievable the games people were making with Flash back then and how it spawned the careers of a ton of indie darlings. Also, not Flash at all, but does anyone remember Exit Mundi? Absolute gold. Honestly, I kind of look back on blogging u…

Agreed on both points. When blogging became the dominant reason for having a website, we were already on the way to the "content" hell. Any semi popular website had pressure to post more frequently, diluting quality. And pretty soon after that, blogs went from 500 words to 140 characters, but 10x the frequency. Static websites that were updated only once in a while were far better at showing a cross section of someon…

In retrospect, I would say that the "blog rush" was kind of a precursor to the rise of influencers. There was even a crowd of "blogging gurus" that would ask a pretty peny for advice on how to advance your blog.

The blogging pressure got so out of hand, that even some EU bureucrat thought it would be a great idea for each FP6 funded project to have a blog besides its static website. At least with the influencing trend they don't ask researchers to do glamour shots with their food.

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