These simple sites show us something profound: If you want something to last, don't base it on something that won't last. There are a some technologies that will never allow somebody to build a site and leave it unchanged for 20 or 25 years. Cold Fusion comes to mind. Almost nobody hosts it anymore for one. Can you imagine running the same WordPress version for 25 years? The version of PHP it runs on will be EOL long before.<p>I guess what I'm saying is that if you want to build a site to last 25 years without numerous redesigns, build a static HTML page.<p>Looks like Web 1.0 got something right after all :)
My 23 year old web site: <a href="https://jgc.org/" rel="nofollow">https://jgc.org/</a> It's still updated from a Perl script that generates static HTML.
My personal site was posted on September 12, 1999, is still updated, and has no problems. It;s a static site that mostly uses straight HTML/CSS. There are a few scripts that generate pages, but generating HTML/CSS pretty easy. <a href="https://dwheeler.com" rel="nofollow">https://dwheeler.com</a>.<p>Geocrasher said:<p>> I guess what I'm saying is that if you want to build a site to last 25 years without numerous redesigns, build a static HTML page.<p>Yes. I don't get paid to maintain my personal site, so simplicity and longevity are most important. If I have to rewrite things because of incompatible changes in the infrastructure components (e.g., Python2 to Python3), or because proprietary company C has decided to stop supporting product P that I depend on, then I have to spend time that doesn't actually provide any new value. Keeping things simple, and minimizing dependencies, can be useful. Like everything else, there's a trade-off.
Once worked on an enormous, very popular site built by hand in Frontpage.<p>It had millions of pageviews, made over 6 figures a month in AdSense and been updated so often and for so long that the owner didn’t actually know how many pages there were. Had to hire someone just to index it.<p>Not bad for plain old html and css.
As I spent half a day trying to wrangle my way through some sass grunt compiler frontend bullshit just trying to update the colour of some links on a client website, I find myself nodding sagely again. In the early days you could view source, see what was going on, copy and recreate someone else’s site, learn a whole bunch of new stuff and actually get shit done. Now, it’s all JavaScript bullshit and 100k lines of css. It’ll last about a month before it’s out of date and replaced by the Next Big Thing. HTML, css, a sprinkle of JavaScript. That’s what’s proven to last.
My favorite like this site is <a href="http://www.burger.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.burger.com</a> - this dude has a hilarious array of hobbies and awesome beveled button links.
But is it still running on Cern/3.0, installed circa 1993. Ours is:<p><pre><code> $ nc www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk 80
HEAD /staff/m.handley/ HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.0 200 Document follows
MIME-Version: 1.0
Server: CERN/3.0
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2020 17:02:59 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 9185
Last-Modified: Sun, 16 Jun 2019 15:27:37 GMT
</code></pre>
It's running on Sun Sparc hardware from the same era, and has been in active use for all of those 27 years.
I'm surprised to see <marquee> still exists and works in modern browsers. And saddened to see it updates at ~20fps, at least on Safari.<p>Time for a smooth, GPU accelerated 60+fps marquee implementation?
Here is a life-saver maintained by a 77 year young lawyer for a lot of public good: <a href="http://www.drtsolutions.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.drtsolutions.com/</a>. Case laws against SARFAESI, an Indian law that expedites bank recovery for non-performing assets. He updates it manually in FrontPage even today!
One of the most prolific and well-known music reviewers - Pierro Scaruffi - has a website built in 1995 with a design not updated much, or at all, since: <a href="https://www.scaruffi.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.scaruffi.com</a>
I sympathize with the author. I have built my maths site just 2 years after this one, when I was in high school. Ever since I've only been adding material, and occasionally moving old stuff into subdirectories; other than that, it's the same old geocities website made with FPE, except it's now hosted on a university server and has my academic title and office and no more colored background. Oh, and I now edit it with notepad++ and track it with git.<p>I've had plans to rebuild it for the last 8 years or so, to make it better and slicker and easier to navigate (as it stands, my new papers are mixed together with my scribe notes from undergrad). But I never figured out how to achieve this without also requiring javascript or relying on tools that may not survive the next decade and that I cannot tweak to my needs without learning a new programming language (hello Jekyll, hi Hugo). Nor did I ever find the Right Way how it should be structured; move one thing to the front and something else gets harder to find. I guess it will survive me.<p>Makes me a lot less judgmental when I see another academic website that can trace its lineage back to geocities and angelfire.
It's impressive the amount of content inside! There are countless pages about literature, religion and physics. It's a good reminder of the original goal of WWW: share information.
In my ~17 year career as a professional web developer and consultant, I'm not sure that any technology has made me more frustrated and miserable than the days when I had to help people who insisted on using Frontpage to build their websites.
Remember the Front Page license.<p>Originally, Front Page had a four page license. It specified that if you use Front Page to create a web site, you cannot disparage Microsoft, Expedia and a list of several other Microsoft owned properties.<p>So with a license like that, I can't assume that any site created with Front Page is unbiased when it comes to a list of various Microsoft owned properties.<p>After the slashdot effect (long ago) Microsoft removed this from the license.
There is a search engine dedicated to finding "classic" websites:<p><a href="https://wiby.me/" rel="nofollow">https://wiby.me/</a><p>Click the "surprise me..." link to see a random one.
There’s so many italian old italian sites with this design<p>My favorite in High Scool was <a href="http://ripmat.it" rel="nofollow">http://ripmat.it</a><p>That site is the only reason I managed to learn Math school
My personal web-page is from 1992 and updated occasionally. This page is preserved as it was in 1994: <a href="http://timonoko.github.io/alaska" rel="nofollow">http://timonoko.github.io/alaska</a> . It started as Gopher-page in 1992 and I just moved those associated pictures into it, without truly understanding formatting and all that shit. Some dudes in Usenet told me about <p> and <img> tags.
The biggest drawback of sites from this era is they don't reflow on mobile screens. On a desktop they still work as well as they ever did. I'm still searching for a good WYSIWYG HTML composer that can generate clean, responsive pages. Seems like this is a problem where there isn't sufficient incentive for the big tech companies to tackle, and the only s/w that seems to come close is BlueGriffon.
My 83 year old dad has updated his website since the mid 90s, it's actually pretty interesting to look back it in the Wayback machine, the design is exactly the same in 97. He'd really get a kick out of it if someone commented on one of his articles. <a href="http://aoi.com.au/" rel="nofollow">http://aoi.com.au/</a>
Check out my Dad's from 2002. He's still using it as an e-commerce site, regularly getting orders and directing customers to it.<p>Deleted URL thanks to friendly advice
My father still updates his website with Frontpage (he had a recent 6 month outage because he inadvertently deleted the Windows XP vmdk on his system, but I recovered that for him recently.) He’s 75, and isn’t interested in converting or learning anything new at this stage.<p>The funny thing is for years his home-made site was the top google hit if you searched for “hill's criteria” (See Hill's criteria of causation). His site is <a href="http://drabruzzi.com/" rel="nofollow">http://drabruzzi.com/</a>
My website is still as of 1999, but it received some design updates (and a blog section) two years ago. However, there's still some original content, some even older than the particular website. E.g., see this 1998 demo for what we may now call a single page app, entirely rendered in JS from central data files (but using frames – well, it was the 1990s):<p><a href="https://www.masswerk.at/demospace/relayWeb_en/welcome.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.masswerk.at/demospace/relayWeb_en/welcome.htm</a><p>Slogan: "Microsoft keeps talking about Active Server Pages – We're offering Active Client Pages"<p>Mind the charts section, rendering graphs by outputting tables with tiny images using `document.write()`, since the canvas element wasn't even dreamt of. (Displaying charts was a tricky business, then. Usually these were rendered server side as GIFs, where they caused heavy load. The alternative were Java applets, which had an enormous effect on the client load and delayed page display quite considerably, while the JRE was starting up. Enter JS to the rescue…) Also, note the period design, including marquee tickers, custom fonts from GIFs, etc…
My personal/hobby business web site (<a href="https://www.rlvision.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.rlvision.com</a>) is based on code 22 years ago. It's built with tables, because that's how you did things back then. The age shows. But I haven't found reason to rebuild it yet. Simply put, it works. It may not be mobile friendly, but the goal is to make available my Windows software, so my aim is desktop users.
Only 520 lines of HTML. And readable!
view-source:<a href="http://www.fmboschetto.it/" rel="nofollow">http://www.fmboschetto.it/</a>
This guy has a Frontpage-generated site too, and it's full of useful Win32 programming tips; he replies if you email him too!<p><a href="http://flounder.com" rel="nofollow">http://flounder.com</a><p>Nothing wrong with readable content, regardless of the generator. In fact, I like reading his site precisely because it is speedy to load and render, and because it has content (unlike, for example, Apple's developer documentation).
I'm surprised no one mentioned it here: before Front Page was a Microsoft product it was created by an independent company, Vermeer. But as many pointed out it produced horrible code.<p>My favorite editor of the day was a "hand coder" called Home Site<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macromedia_HomeSite" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macromedia_HomeSite</a>
My personal favorite, which is in a similar vein - an Italian, although the site is in English; Frontpage; still updated - is <a href="https://www.luigicases.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.luigicases.com/</a>. He makes leather straps and cases for cameras. Famous in the classic camera community. Only active site that I can think of that still uses frames.
I have a 'personal' website which is also about 18years old. It was the first website I built while in elementary school, also in Frontpage. I uploaded it to I think Geocities or something like that, I think it was Yahoo related hosting, can't remember exactly, but it was free hosting.<p>Some 'fancy' JS effects do not work on the page now, but it is still up. I forgot about and remembered it few years ago and checked it to find it still up. But I can't remember where could I login to see the files and what are the credentials so it makes me giggle that it will stay up for who knows how much longer as a small part of my past :)<p><a href="http://dzigi.itgo.com" rel="nofollow">http://dzigi.itgo.com</a><p><a href="http://dzigi.itgo.com/o_autoru.htm" rel="nofollow">http://dzigi.itgo.com/o_autoru.htm</a> "about author page" with a bio and pic haha
My first site is still live. It went live in 1997, hand coded (using tables). Went through a few redesigns but the 2000 version has been left online as a fixed digital artifact from the time: <a href="http://pwp.detritus.net/" rel="nofollow">http://pwp.detritus.net/</a>
My personal website is also around 18-year-old. I actually do not remember how old it is. I did not have a domain at first and hosted it on AOL or something.<p>Here it was: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20030908174016/http://www.benibela.de/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20030908174016/http://www.benibe...</a><p>But in 2005, I made a complete redesign: <a href="http://www.benibela.de/index_en.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.benibela.de/index_en.html</a><p>The backend went through a few reimplementations. Individually made html files (with front page express or something), a template tool written in Delphi, another template tool written in Java, a complete XQuery interpreter written in FreePascal
Here’s an archive link in case this gets hugged to death:<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200214134509/http://www.fmboschetto.it/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20200214134509/http://www.fmbosc...</a>
One of my favorite websites is clocking in at 25 years now- Marathon's Story [0], a website dedicated to the lore of Bungie's Marathon series.<p>[0] <a href="http://marathon.bungie.org/story/" rel="nofollow">http://marathon.bungie.org/story/</a>
2251 Mb size!
"Qui c'è una applet Java. Mi spiace che il tuo browser non le supporti" = Here's a Java applet, I'm sorry your browser doesn't support it
Marquee still gets animated :O
"Questa pagina è ottimizzata per un formato 1024 x 768 pixel a 16,8 milioni di colori, carattere medio" = This page is optimized for a 1024x768 pixel format, 16.8 million colors, medium sized font
Still apart from the ancient tooling, it's an example of a personal wiki as periodically come on HN, there's a lot of content!
Another mention of this fantastic cycling website: <a href="https://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris/" rel="nofollow">https://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris/</a>
As an Italian, reading this is site is absolute bliss. There's just so much to discover. I really suggest non-Italian speakers to automatically translate it with Google and dive into it.
I visited this on mobile expecting it to be a laugh, but was surprised to find that it's actually amazing!<p>You can see the whole page in a single column, and just pinch zoom to the bit you're interested in to read/interact. Scrolling downwards and sideways to pan around works fine, super intuitive. The UX of this is so great, feels just like that original iPhone demo [1].<p>...why don't we do this again?<p>[1] <a href="https://youtu.be/vN4U5FqrOdQ?t=2530" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/vN4U5FqrOdQ?t=2530</a>
Anyone else still sad over the demise of FrontPage Express? It did everything I needed at the time, it was free, and really easy to use. The HTML wasn't as bad as FrontPage either.
My personal site, <a href="http://don.dream-in-color.net" rel="nofollow">http://don.dream-in-color.net</a> has been at that URL (and with this design) for over 20 years. The reading list (<a href="http://don.dream-in-color.net/books/" rel="nofollow">http://don.dream-in-color.net/books/</a> ) dates back to a page that was originally served over FTP and will turn 25 years old in May.
If you like this?
Check this one: <a href="https://www.gratiz.nl/" rel="nofollow">https://www.gratiz.nl/</a>
Updated every day :-)
My page(<a href="https://www.towardssoftware.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.towardssoftware.com</a>) isn't quite that old, but it gets the job done with an incredibly simple content manager - plain html/css editing.<p>There is almost no javascript, and I have to say, it's done wonderful so far. I have tried Hugo to manage stuff, and a couple of others, but for a lot of blog type of stuff, html just works!
I had this perception that those spinning gifs and moving text made pages crazy hard to parse but I was pleasantly surprised that this site seemed simpler and easier to parse than half the sites today with pop ups, notifications, and blocking modals. Is it just me, or are these notifications and modals that are getting so prevalent really degrading a lot of the web browsing experience today.
This is pretty cool. I had to look Frontpage up! Logic dictates that there must have been a point in time where the prevailing opinion shifted from “Uses ancient UI” to “Has a cool retro feel”. Probably all technologies go through this? Like vinyl becoming cool a few years back. Has happened with Flash games recently. Is there a name for this?
I started with FrontPage 98 in '99. Moved to a self-written PHP CMS, then WordPress, then back to static HTML.<p>Had I stayed with FrontPage, my life might have been simpler - porting 20 years of content is not simple - but I would have missed out on learning a lot of HTML, CSS, PHP, Python, MySQL, character set conversion, MySQL vs UTF-8, etc.
I really have a soft spot for these kind of sites. Often people have pretty interesting and unique content on this kind of websites. I always try to help by keeping things very simple to maintain but just a bit better, like making a PHP include of the menu and then replacing the top part on every page once.
I learned Frontpage in 2000 in a King's Cross (Sydney) internet cafe where you paid 2 AUD for unlimited time...but you couldn't leave, not even to go to the toilet.<p>That html went straight to Geocities.<p>The feeling of power part of a minority of people who could actually publish something on the net was amazing.
A company in Germany called Arcor had the front page website of my band from 2001 which used frontpage serverside extensions still online about 4 years ago. I couldn't find the FTP password to download the source code so it died when they finally pulled the plug.
I generated my website at server.giessmann.net just last year using Lotus FastSite and the geocities gif archive.
I included my fax number, icq id and a PO box.
Of course there are 9/11 conspiracy theories and a banner to download the latest Netscape browser.
<a href="http://explorermag.com/" rel="nofollow">http://explorermag.com/</a><p>My 21 year old site focuses on Windows NT and the upcoming Windows 2000 release. Back when MSFt focused on operating systems. Billg still in charge!
We are talking about a God given website. Of course it's old and still ongoing :P<p>Jokes aside, the first thing I read was the sentence "here there is a java applet, sorry your browser doesn't support it" :D Which is funny, after all.
Not to forget the geocitiesizer:<p><a href="https://www.wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/</a><p>"Make Any Webpage Look Like It Was Made By A 13 Year-Old In 1996"
Mine, in plain HTML, is almost 25 years old. I have to admit that I did change the layout a little, through the years, but it has been rather constant, because updating 974 HTML files, is not something that is easily done.
One of my favorite pieces of software, that I still use to this day, is 20 years old version of SpaceMonger.<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/XMwNRR3.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/XMwNRR3.png</a>
Another classic from an electronic music pioneer, author of the original TRON score: <a href="http://www.wendycarlos.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wendycarlos.com/</a>
Simple and useful.<p><a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/simpleuseful/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://s3.amazonaws.com/simpleuseful/index.html</a>
One made with Word and still updated: <a href="http://villemin.gerard.free.fr/" rel="nofollow">http://villemin.gerard.free.fr/</a>
I love that you kept the style too. This brings back good memories. I’ve learned HTML using Frontpage and gifs were a must in my geocities hosted websites.
You're telling me their site still works in 2020 <i>without</i> needing to serve the client as a server-side rendered react app with the data being provided by several node.js microservices containerized and deployed to a kubernetes cluster and accessed through a GraphQL interface? IMPOSSIBLE!
I recently did a history of my old websites:<p><a href="https://battlepenguin.com/tech/a-history-of-personal-and-professional-websites/" rel="nofollow">https://battlepenguin.com/tech/a-history-of-personal-and-pro...</a><p>Most of the content is still there, but it's been shifted between static pages, Rails, Wordpress and now Jekyll.<p>It's neat to see one of these gems still out there; a picture of the 90s web that's still functional and being used. Too many of these sites are lost; only available in the Internet Archives.