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Resurrect the Old Web

stevedylandev.bearblog.dev

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Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#81

Post by superkuh »

The old web never went away, it never died. It was you who left. You who runs a corporate browser that can't even load HTTP pages anymore. You who only post on massive corporate run social media (like I am with HN). You who host your website on github or behind cloudflare or don't even bother and just have a mastodon or facebook page (both exclusively javascript applications).

The old web is still there, almost invisible under the piles of corporate javascript applications. There's probably more old web now than there was when the old web was new. It's just that in terms of relative ratios it's buried under so much crap and search engines are so bad no few can surf it. Heck, there's even still usenet and people posting there like myself. It's not dead and it's not spammed anymore, and it's a true federated protocol.

But it is easy to be the change. Self host your website from your home computer. Don't use Chrome or Chrome derivatives. Don't put computational paywalls in front of your services like cloudflare or even Anubis. The truth is that for most websites in most situations, all that is not needed. And most importantly, surf the web. That'll require setting up the modern version of webrings: feeds. And sharing feeds with your friends and peers.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#82

Post by mschuster91 »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #23
mschuster91 wrote: post #12

Old Web was killed by spam bots, Metasploit, Shodan and DDoS attacks getting easy enough to buy for random joes. I ran phpBB boards, my own blogs, an instance of a German php-based MMORPG I long forgot the name of. But it simply wasn't fun any more to keep up with the bad actors, to wake up and find someone found yet another bug in the MMORPG software or phpBB and in the best case just spammed profanities, in the wor…

Okay, so we need Old Web with extra steps (security). I’ll admit that when I lament the web we used to have, I’m never thinking about viruses, malware, pop ups/unders, &c. Seems like all that stuff was just a small price to pay for connecting with likeminded people. I have a slice of that with Mastodon but maybe being 20 years older and jaded is making me wistful, yearning for something that is never coming back.

We more-so need Old Web with actual consequences for bad actors. You know, the days when you could email an ISP's abuse mailbox with evidence of someone running portscans and they'd get at least told to clean up shop or else, and the or else went as far as getting their contract cancelled entirely.

These days it seems like abuse@ is routed straight to /dev/null, and that's not even addressing enemy nation states that willingly shield and host bad actors.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#84

Post by sumtechguy »

onion2k wrote: post #4

No ads I don't know what "Old Web" the author is remembering but when I was first paid to make a website in 1997, it had banner ads on it.

The 94/95 web had no banners. Because most of it was hosted on university servers or some random guy/company just wanted to bear the cost.

I remember the big decision on if adverts should even be allowed... Well here we are. Users get free things. Advertisers pick up most of the bill. The second that model doesnt work sites pack it up. The 'before time' could be there but servers/bandwidth/people are not free. You can minimize those but in the end someone needs to pay the electric bill.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#85

Post by matheusmoreira »

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...

> someone else's platform

> Parts of the "Old Web" disappeared when the platforms hosting it stopped.

The key is to put everything under our own domains. This turns the platforms hosting it into mere implementation details. If the host goes down, just move the data elsewhere.

I use GitHub Pages for my static site but I could trivially move everything to Cloudflare Pages if needed. I could also pay for a VPS or make my own server somehow. Moving away from gmail to my own domain was also one of the best things I've ever done. I'm a happy Proton Mail customer now but that's just an implementation detail, I could switch by simply reconfiguring DNS to point to new mail servers.

DNS is the ultimate layer of indirection. We must own the domain. If we don't have a domain, then we're just digital serfs in someone else's digital fiefdom.

And that includes sites such as this one. Make it yourname.com, not ycombinator.com/threads?id=yourname.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#86

Post by rambambram »

mallowdram wrote: post #72
wiether wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for taking your time to reply to my comment. I want to clarify one thing first: I don't have anything special against your platform, it's just that it seems I see at least one article a week about it on HN lastly and I'm wondering why. I'm sure you are well intentionned and you'll do your best to keep the plaftorm as true to the mission you have chosen to take and described in your manifesto, no doubt about…

Tech is stuck behind the symbolic threshold. We're at the point we use the symbolic, which is arbitrary, for literally everything as a substitute, mimic, representation that's in reality. Eventually the symbolic eats itself alive in arbitrariness and society capitalizing on that arbitrariness. This is basic stuff CS doesn't make itself aware of. We're at the end of communication in this symbolic era. You can see it i…

Interesting. Got a blog where I can read more about this?

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#87

Post by NetOpWibby »

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…

This was a beautiful read.

Can I read your blog? Mine is https://blog.webb.page.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#89

Post by lunias »

pif wrote: post #77
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…

> 8080 You mean 80. Ports after 1024 were for wimps.

Nah, port 8080 because your ISP is blocking port 80 to try and prevent you from running a home webserver.

Re: Resurrect the Old Web

#90

Post by butz »

I think youtube should not be mixed into old web. Either embed your video in website and provide download, or host it on peertube. I know about video file hosting issues and costs, so maybe use appropriatly sized videos? Low quality, low resolution, compress as much as possible, and it will probably won't take more than any average website. :)
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