when was the heyday of the 'personal web site'

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since pretty much no one bothers to have one anymore (no one i know, anyway) (blogs don't count).

you know, pages with pictures of your new nephew, links to pages of interest and some gaudy background .gif overlaid with blinking text.

shall we say 1996-98?

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 06:43 (twenty years ago)

I have one but I've never really known what to do with it.

― kate/baby loves headrub (papa november), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 06:51 (twenty years ago)

that's about right. last month I was trying to look up a friend on the internet and kind of caught his trail through his little sister's old website(c. 98), full of her natural bubbliness and vegan idealism and the type of... formatting enthusiasm you describe. Did some more digging and found out she apparently died last year. Still haven't found my friend, but her stupid little site is the most poignant thing in the world right now.

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 06:56 (twenty years ago)

I'd say 1999 was... I remember tons of dorks in my high school getting accounts on pair.com and some even learning CGI programming. I had a wicked elaborate webpage for managing the status of my network with links to all the pages of users on it. This was also the heyday of actual content on free servers like geocities

― green uno skip card (ex machina), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 07:46 (twenty years ago)

^Oh dear, that's so sad. :-(

― nathalie barefoot in the head (stevie nixed), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 08:01 (twenty years ago)

1993-1996

― donut debonair (donut), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 09:33 (twenty years ago)

My old angelfire website still has a webcounter and pop-up ads!! I preserve it as an historical document.

I'd agree with the 96-98 angle.

― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:06 (twenty years ago)

Same with my geocities site!

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:10 (twenty years ago)

Same with my geocities site! Welcome back to 1999.

(After revisting that, I can't believe that I took the time to copyright that. I'm sure that lil' © would really hold up in court now.)

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:13 (twenty years ago)

See myspace for the nu-personal web site.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:13 (twenty years ago)

I had a geocities site in 97. I posted a short story and a bunch of Repo Man images. Then I forgot about it. A few years later, I tracked it down, and it had been hacked. There was this message "You've been hacked by Dr. Coolbot" or something, and I'm like, oh wow, way to go.

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:14 (twenty years ago)

PP, why were you in WL? Just wondering, because I live there...

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:15 (twenty years ago)

Oh nevermind, you're in the one in Louisiana. Sorry.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:16 (twenty years ago)

Excellently old school pleasant! I reckon in a few years hipsters will set up websites to look like retro-websites!

http://www.angelfire.com/wy/bby2k/

― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:16 (twenty years ago)

I was unemployed for a bit in 1997, so I made a website. It was exactly exactly exactly the kind of website yr all talking about. I feel both ashamed and comforted.

― Markelby (Mark C), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:17 (twenty years ago)

my original angelfire site has disappeared :(

― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:17 (twenty years ago)

I spent a lot of time in the LRC at uni in 1997.

― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:19 (twenty years ago)

I'm in Arkansas, jocelyn. You're not Mrs. Elders in real-life, are you?

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:23 (twenty years ago)

Shhhh...I'm trolling ILX for all the masturbation threads.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:32 (twenty years ago)

Memo to Ms. Elders: they're all masturbation threads.

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:37 (twenty years ago)

i had a 'personal web site' for maybe six months in 1995-96, and then a bare-bones website for my radio show for another six months in 1998-99. and that's it. i found an archived copy of the latter on a server that had been forgotten when my old isp was swallowed up by another and then another.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:41 (twenty years ago)

I used to have one of these circa fall 1996 through my dial-up ISP, some small local company. It's funny because it used to show up in web searches long after I had quit that account.

― o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:41 (twenty years ago)

i had a few in undergrad for research experiments, no vanity sites though.

― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:44 (twenty years ago)

My best friend and I had one with quotes we had collected and pretty background pictures at some point, probably freshman or sophomore year in high school. The main formatting problem was that it was through yahoo and we couldn't get the text to go to the center of the page instead of clumping on the lefthand side. I'm pretty sure it no longer exists, though.

― Maria (Maria), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:47 (twenty years ago)

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