The 90s (ish)

I really can't overemphasize how different the pre-monitized web was.

People made/did things for the FUN of it, or to help other people (for free!). Not to attract customers, not to cater content or posting schedules to algorythms or monitization programs. The only "user engagement" people were worried about was "will people find this useful/fun/interesting?", IF they even cared that much.

It was glorious. It was fun to see people's websites. Unlike our current cookie-cutter social media pages, everyone's websites could be utterly and completely different in content, theme, appearance, navigation, and general vibes. And no personal sites were trying to get anything out of you (beyond a guestbook comment!), unlike how now every influencer is trying to leverage YOU into actual money for them.

In the 90s and for a couple years after, these sites were, pretty much as a rule, hideous (or very grandmotherly). I remember when website fashion changed and being so beyond disgusted/embarassed by old geocities/etc layouts. Of course now I am obsessed, though. The uglier and more visually unhinged, the better. Modern webdesign has my eyeballs starved for interest.

There aren't many personal pages saved to Web Design Museum to choose from, but here is one simple example of a 90s style:

The 00s (ish)

In the early 00s design changed very drastically, particularly among teens/young adults. I was a very active personal site maker/visitor starting in 2000 (sites were still very 90s style) and again starting in 2002(00s style), and there were definite patterns among my fellow teen webmasters. Iframes, image maps, way too tiny text, the intro of the "me/you/www" categorization, etc.

While webrings were huge in the 90s already, the early 00s seems to be when blinkies/buttons/cliques/fanlistings started. Guestbooks were still going strong. Though most sites I visited had a greymatter blog installed on the homepage, so comments were often there too.

Kids who had their own paid hosting would host the sites of others, who would then have a subdomain (so you wanted a cool .com that people would want a subdomain of!).

Navigation was way more streamlined and "well designed" (even if those designs are out of fashion now) and navigation was less of an adventure than it had been, but that felt very refreshing at the time (and still can now someties.)

Everyone changed their layouts ALL the damn time. Layouts were super varied, but also a bit more interchangable. Many of us got our layouts from those who had lots of premades on their site for visitors. Or.. ahem.. it was also just very standard to take the code from someone's site and update it with your own colorvscheme/main image etc. Now, it was certainly polite to give credit, for sure, and you'd never claim you wrote code that you didn't write, or redistribute it without the original person's permission, but none of these kids/teens were selling layouts (heck, only the lucky ones could convince their parents to trust the internet enough to buy hosting from big well-known websites, let alone have any other types of transactions), so stolen code was not seen as a missed opportunity for a commission. People were just working hard on their sites for the fun of it and in general they were just glad when other people loved their work and wanted to use it too.

The '10s (ish)

Then corporations took over the internet and all forms of individuality were stripped and switched out for cookie-cutter profile pages.

For those still with their own webspace, it was almost always a blog, which came in just a few general layouts (though they could still be styled differently), and which cut out almost all of the extra content that was not reverse-chronological, date-stamped blog entries.

There were still tons of helpful and interesting blogs out there, and you certainly had a lot more visual customization than profile pages, but it was a long cry from the visually chaotic sites of the 90s, or the ecclectic but polished sites of the early 00s.

Still, personal blogs abounded- though generally the most popular/famous ones (and big time bloggers were the inifluencers before that was a term) were mom blogs, techblogs, and, of course, cooking blogs.

Now in the 20s..

Where the hell are all the people-run (non-recipe) blogs?!

People moved from actual personal websites, where they controlled their own content and "brand" (:/), onto the websites of corporations like Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, etc. Sure, folks will have a .com, but it's usually nothing more than a glorified linktree, if not just actually a linktree.

People's entire online presence exists on the sites of big companies who are out to turn those same people into money. Creators are beholden first and foremost to the companies shareholders and their rules and decisions. Any day the rug could be pulled out from under them with a shift of policy or yet another BS algorythm alteration, etc.

Making things online is a deeply different experience than a couple decades ago, whether or not you are trying to do it professionally.