A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch
I was browsing the internet the other day when I stumbled across the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Of course, I couldn’t resist typing in my web address and looking back at what I used to have published online. They had a snapshot of my web site as far back as 2001. That would have been right after I bought my domain name and moved it from the web hosting at AOL. Back then, if you paid AOL a bunch of money each month, you could get “free” web space. I started my web site in 1995. At one time, I had two web sites and averaged about 200 visitors a day.
Things have changed a lot since then. Flash was still in its infancy and many internet surfers refused to visit sites that used flash. Of course, this was before it was Adobe Flash. Originally, it was Future Flash and then became Macromedia Flash. I blocked Flash way back then. Today, I use the flash blocker plug in and don’t often let flash run in my browser.
Web sites didn’t have many graphics in those day. Broadband had yet to be invented. It could take several minutes to download a simple picture. Internet surfers didn’t waste their time looking at a cute picture of a dog. If you did include a media file on your site, it was good manners to let visitors know the file size before they downloaded it. I remember the first time I uploaded my BS to the internet. It took almost two hours for a relatively small site.
Another thing I remember is that almost all sites had a guest book. Visitors would fill in what information they wanted to disclose and click the submit button. Anybody else that visited the site could view all the guest book entries. The Netscape browser introduced us to cookies. The original “magic cookie” just checked to see if it was your first visit to the web site.
I remember when I made my first foray onto the internet. The first decision was what browser to buy. I decided to use the Netscape Navigator because they had a free trial period. Almost the whole web was nothing but text.
I can’t tell you that Google was the greatest search engine in those days. Google hadn’t been invented then. There wasn’t a real index of internet web sites. The first attempt to index FTP sites was called Archie. Gopher was one of the first “point and click” search engines and was created by students at the University of Minnesota.
Twenty years ago, if you wanted a web site you had to at least learn the basics of HTML coding. In the modern world, there are hundreds of programs you can use to create a website for free. All you really need to know how to do is enter your content.
That’s enough reminiscing. Personal websites are both easy and cheap. Why don’t you make one for your family and friends?
Thanks for reading.