What is the "Old Web"?

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 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 maybe a guestbook comment!) Unlike how now every influencer is trying to leverage YOU into actual income.

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. Now, though, I am obsessed. The uglier and more visually unhinged, the better. Modern webdesign has my eyeballs STARVED for interest.

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 (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.

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!). Everyone changed their layouts ALL the damn time. Navigation was way more stremalined 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.)

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, and some people were certainly more "DO NOT TAKE MY CODE" than most others.. but none of these kids/teens were selling layouts (only the lucky ones could convince their parents to trust the internet enough to buy hosting, let alone have other types of transactions) anyway, so stolen code was not a missed opportunity for a commission. People were just working hard on their sites for the fun of it and being glad when other people loved them and wanted to use them 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 with their own webspace, it was almost always a blog, which pared down the layout options to just a few, and cut out almost all of the extra content that was not reverse-chronological, date-stamped blog entries. There was still tons of helpful and interesting blogs out there, and you certainly had a lot more visual customization that profile pages, but it was a long cry from the visually chaotic sites of the 90s, or the ecclectic sites of the early 00s. But still, personal blogs abounded- though generally the most popular 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 blogs (other than recipe blogs)?! People moved from actual personal websites, where they controlled their own content and "brand" (ugh that word as applied to people...), onto the websites of corporations. Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, etc. Sure, folks will have a .com, but it's usually nothing more than a glorified linktree. All these people's entire online presence exists on the sites of big companies who are out purely to make money. They are beholden to the companies rules and shareholders, etc. Any dray the rug could be pulled out from under them with some shift of policy or yet another BS algorythm alteration, etc. Yuck.