I only read the entry for 1984 which is an interesting – and likely embellished – look into 1980s hacker culture.
One thing I’ve noticed about GenX when they write about themselves on their personal home pages: they’re more likely to do it in narrative form than later generations. These are more like articles and less like posts. Posts hadn’t been invented yet.
Dr. Tichenor’s Antiseptic Mouthwash
This website hasn’t changed since 2011. This product was a staple of my childhood. I’d spend summers with family who lived on the Mississippi coast and get eaten alive by mosquitoes. The family always had a bottle of Dr. Tichenor’s in the medicine cabinet and swore by it.
www. burger .com (cant put in links??) is my favorite. its run by a lawyer named Donald Ray Burger, and im pretty sure it’s a blog. its updated semi-regularly, but took a long break from 2023 to now. it got updated in january tho. page was put up on july 4th 1996, and looks like its from 1996.
Love it! I like the look but I also like how he’s mixed personal and professional. The Wayback Machine save from 1998 (earliest one they have) looks the same as today’s website.
One of my favourite websites is Roadside America. We rarely go anywhere without taking a look at the odd and quirky places to visit.
We’ve just got back from a trip through Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. One of the highlights and one my wife didn’t think was stupid and boring was the Pink Elephant at DeForest, Wisconsin.
She wasn’t at all impressed with the world’s largest square knot at Hudson, Illinois; the Yellow Moose or the mouse with cheese at Black River Falls or the Dead Mailmen Haunted Castle at Elk Mound, both in Wisconsin or anywhere else we visited, but she loved the Pink Elephant.
Homosassa Springs has a ginormous manatee statue. Wonder if it’s listed on Roadside America.
Edit: apparently it’s not listed, but real manatees are. :)
Gay History and Literature last updated today, appears to be from 2002 (earliest date I could find, but I didn’t search every page) and looks it!
Lots of essays about gay History by historian Rictor Norton, a gay man born in 1945!
seems mostly untouched since 2001. still has references to co.yu across the website
I came across this Jim Carrey fansite which started in '96 and still has a cool mid-00s web design. The latest news update was at the end of July this year so it’s still getting updated and everything.
Wayne’s Word is a static, purely informative, html website about biological topics from my 40 year teaching career in the Life Science Dept. at Palomar College. It is an “Online Textbook of Natural History” containing over 1600 html files and 14,000 images. It was hand-coded using a source code editor called Arachnophilia written in Java by Paul Lutus. W.P. Armstrong, 17 Dec. 2022.
fantastic site full of information and a wonderful example of 90s-style website design!
Here’s one that I ran into while scraping a new entry for my old link project - surprised to see it’s still out there. This was a project in the early 2000s, I believe it started with students doing questionnaires in the street, telling people that dihydrogen monoxide kills millions of people a year and asking them if they would sign their petition for a ban - and people did sign it because of the scary chemical-sounding name. It became a bit of an in-joke among people who were being pretty funny but also maybe thought a little too much of their own intellect. And it’s still out there! T-shirts out of stock, alas.
this accidentally started a cheese thread in a discord server i am in. thank you!
Misspelled the website for the newspaper The Guardian and ended up back in time.
I have occasionally been looking up strip comics - the kind you find commonly in print newspapers across the country.
I was really surprised to discover that these two sites are both extremely archaic-looking, but also rigorously maintained with the latest comics as of that day appearing on the homepage. Just reiterating these are in print currently, but these websites are from a different time, yet function commercially for their artist.
Mister Boffo - been in my newspaper forever. Look, it’s an archive, has the latest strip, and his email and phone number printed on the homepage.
Zippy the Pinhead - Up to date, but in eyebleed colors, extensive archive, shop to buy originals. *This is little-known indie-flavored strip maintains its fairly surreal introspective dialogue since the 70’s ( has not watered down in my opinion ). It’s the origin of the anxious phrase “Are we having fun yet?”. Labyrinth of cheeky informal pages.
Wizworld - Mike Jittlov’s website
He’s a stop-motion artist that had a brief career in hollywood. “The Wizard of Speed and Time” is his major contribution to media, a live action stop motion film ( watch the short ). This small website is riddled with that informal Gen-X comic humor. If I remember right, he spends his late years taking care of his mother ( if she is still alive ) and he lists his real phone number on his website, which people were welcome to coldcall him for conversations. I was always a bit mystified/in awe of that. He’s easy to crowd spot as he tends to wear the same green clothes ( he’s the wizard, as you know ).
Via the wiki:
Jittlov maintains a distinctive appearance at science fiction conventions by wearing his traditional green jacket and green shoes, similar to the ones seen in The Wizard of Speed and Time. He was an early Internet user, with his own website, and frequent poster to his own Usenet group, alt.fan.mike-jittlov. He is also a prolific practitioner of origami.
Found this old school website for resources on american sign language when looking up a word in ASL. It has gifs and frame by frame clips of words and phrases and stuff all in a web 1.0 bundle. Pretty interesting.
https://www.theadminzone.com/ it’s an old school admin/webmaster forum that has been around since 2003-2004.
There’s a lot of good articles and resources on there.
https://flyingstart.ca/ shows that really old school html still renders perfectly!
(the site actually belongs to a friend and she mentioned it in passing while we were chatting. I also gave her my copy of Good Internet issue 1!)
Pretty sure this counts?
The height of internet culture back in the day
Holy heck, that takes me back. TWoSaT was a family favorite when I was growing up.
