The Internet in the 1990s was completely different than it is today. Difficult to understand without visiting the sites. Here are some live ones.
The notion that anything that once hits the Internet stays there forever is wrong. Something is constantly missing from the Internet, whether it’s a missing online community or a web hosting failure, a blog whose archives are erased, personal sites that cease to exist when their owners stop paying the server. The sites below are landmarks from the 1990s that have survived all this time to give us an idea of the early days of the internet.
The sites listed in this article are taken from the 404PageFound Bible and small finds here and there, among others.
Personal Sites: The Spirit of the Beginnings of the Internet
In a world before Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube, the very idea of posting your thoughts and making them available to a mass audience without any filtering was almost unthinkable. The World Wide Web has made this possible, and we’ve come to the conclusion that most people aren’t really interested.
- Jim’s website: This kind of site was the site of a Twitter user who had three followers. And there were billions of them. With an introductory page, “funny”pictures and links to other sites. Almost no one visited them. This one was saved from Geocities thanks to the restorativland project.
- Vanity Plates: This website listing funny license plates dates back to 1996. It was last updated in 1999. This is a true time capsule of the golden age of the internet, with its design, navigation and its awards proudly on display.
- Spork.org: A site that is very outdated, which in 25 years will be almost depressing.
- The court life of kings, peers, saints, knights and commoners: With this Angelfire page from 2003, it’s a bit of a love-hate relationship. This is Margaret Sipnevskaya’s life’s work of genealogy and history from the early 1960s Be careful, it stings your eyes!
- Inside the X: This page has been a goldmine for X-Files fans, with detailed descriptions and all the dialogue for each episode. Huge job!
Artists and thinkers
Intellectuals and artists who stood at the origins of the Internet often wondered what kind of web it was, and no one then suspected that today it would take this predominant place.
- Parallel/Suzanne Treister – Hall: Take a virtual tour of the castle through whimsical photographs with lots of stylized swastikas. Anti-Nazi? Pro-Nazi? Who knows. Be that as it may, this site was born with the November 1995 issue of PARALLEL magazine, which “represents the interdisciplinary work of artists and writers. It encourages the exploration of web practices and theories.”
- The Simulator: This 1997 site attempts to explore “the boundary between the Internet’s simulacrum and banal physical existence”through an adventure in which you are the hero. Extremely disruptive. And everything still works great!
Primitive Entertainment Marketing
While ordinary people and artists were still trying to figure out how to take advantage of the Internet, advertisers quickly realized that it allows people to watch movies and other TV shows.
- The Nanny: The original The Nanny website is still up and running, providing fans with cast images, an episode guide, and more.
- Space Jam: The Space Jam site has been around since 1996 but has recently moved. Now it’s here, but at least it still exists!
- Jurassic Park: This site for the first Jurassic Park movie dates from 1997. This is a good example of good marketing. In true InGen intranet style.
- A Field Guide for North American Men: Marjorie Ingall’s book site is still alive, a true testament to good design. Outdated, obviously, but the information is still presented clearly, the look is minimalistic. What to want to buy a book.
Flash sites
When Flash took hold in web design in the late 1990s, many innovative and creative lazy-loading sites were created. And now that this technology has even disappeared from browsers, it’s impossible to go back to that golden era. However, feel free to take a look at this blog post for a little preview.
Politics in the Web 1.0 era
In the 1990s, Internet propaganda was not the work of some Eastern peoples. It was a homegrown operation, very lively, and some sites survived.
- DoleKemp96: Bob Dole’s site is really annoying, but it’s the first presidential site, and at the time it was something. What’s more, it retained its original domain name, and the history of its development and preservation is fascinating. You can also visit the Clinton/Gore site for animated wallpapers and GIFs.
- People Eating Tasty Animals: This parody site appears to be designed to tickle liberals. It has everything you need to give them a break.
- McSpotlight: This 1996 site has a major issue with McDonald’s and contains all sorts of information about the company’s practices, legal policies, and more.
Domains that never sell
Many people made a lot of money in the 1990s and 2000s buying and reselling domain names, but despite the very popular names, the two sites below have always remained independent since the mid-1990s.
- Taco.com: Technical Advisors offers system and network administration services: “We don’t sell tacos. We don’t make tacos. In fact, some of us don’t even like tacos.”There is no doubt that there must have been many proposals for a domain name.
- Milk.com: Dan Borestein explains that milk.com is “not for sale”. This person has been running the site since 1994 and says he likes the name and doesn’t need the money unless the price is high enough: “If you don’t offer $10 million, I’m not interested.”
Hall of Fame
The sites below are some of the best and most popular on the Internet 1.0. And they are still famous!
- Heaven’s Gate: Most of the members of the Heaven’s Gate sect died in a mass suicide in 1997, but the site survived, supported by two members of the group. They kept it the way it was then.
- FogCam: one of the first webcams. It has broadcast a view of the San Francisco State University campus since 1994.
- Aliweb: One of the first search engines on the web, Aliweb is a good example of the old adage that being first doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. Aliweb required the sites to provide information themselves rather than indexing existing content. It was a failure. But the homepage has been around since 1994, and the links to it are dead, as is its business model.
- Zombo.com: This parody site is legendary but does nothing. A parody of the promise to do nothing, absolutely nothing, so common in the early days of the internet. Animations are everywhere, colors are everywhere, completely useless. Fantastic!