Past Websites of the Week
...Because Web 1.0 was awesome
21/06/2024: Aaron's Blink 182/Britney Spears Fan Site
First Created 2001 - Last Updated 2002
There’s not really much to see here, but I had to add it to the list because it’s so strange. Who in their wildest dreams would consider making a joint Blink 182 and Britney Spears fan page? You might as well create a site for Limp Bizkit and The Teletubbies, or Marilyn Manson and Pokemon. I’m not one to yuck on someone else’s yum though (I apologise, that phrase is truly horrible), so let’s see what this early noughties time capsule has for us, shall we?
I’m rather obsessed with Britney’s sparkly trousers. Surely they’re dry-clean only?
If you’re after pixellated, potato-quality photos of Blink 182 or Britney Spears circa 2002, you’re in luck. There’s also news (“Britney Spears is now engaged to Justin Timberlake of that dreaded manufactured boyband Nsync” and the Blink 182 “show in Portland was absolutly awsome!”), a brief history of Blink 182, Blink 182 lyrics, and an entire page devoted to Travis, Tom & Mark's Significant Others.
If I’m honest, I think the Britney information is lacking, though she was granted her very own secret page (which is displayed right in the list of links, so you can’t miss it).
24/05/2024: Eklectique
First Created 1998 - Last Updated 1999
Goths have never really gone away (the people with the pale faces and the black clothes, not the Germanic tribe who defeated the Romans in 378). In the 90s, goths were into Switchblade Symphony and Front Line Assembly, and they would have drained the blood of a dozen conformists to look as cool as this:
But how do I know? I consulted Eklectique, a “Gothic Industrial e-zine with art, humor, how to, reviews, and interviews”. Don’t let this website’s plain veneer fool you. Within the pages of these two e-zines you’ll discover all you need to know about the shadowy, gloomy world of the 90’s goth.
Cover art by Eric "you might remember me from such flyers as Clan of Xymox and Death in June" Hansen
With an issue count of only two (and Issue Two consists of just one band interview), Eklectique is another e-zine that ceased publication far too soon. But old bats should not despair; there’s still a mini-smorgasbord of gothic splendour to be found. I checked out What Your Buckle Boots Say About You to determine what I was trying to say to the world when I was living through my own baby bat phase (I aspired to be Nancy from The Craft, but I probably looked more like Emo Gollum). Let’s take a look at the results, shall we?
Leather Jacket
Message: "Not only do I not give a shit about the sacrifice of a peaceful animal, but I am also as dangerous as other stereotypical leather wearers, such as Hell's Angels, dominatrixes, and criminals. Grrr."
Morticia Addams Skirt
Message: "I'm so evil, I even oppress myself."
Boots
Message: "See these points? They make me ornery. Wanna know where I can stick them?"
Illuminating stuff.
17/05/2024: BannerzRus Graphics
First Created 2000 - Last Updated 2023
Serious webmistresses can’t have enough links to decent graphics sites. How else would you decorate your home page with stylish dividers or amusing animated gifs? BannerzRus would have ticked a lot of boxes for a website creator circa 2000.
Easy to scan layout displayed in a HTML table. 👍
Webpage sets (themed sets that usually included a welcome graphic, background image, divider, and buttons). 👍
Animated gifs. 👍
Blank banners and buttons. 👍
Multi-coloured Y2K bugs. 👍
Weird humour. 👍
It’s a veritable Aladdin’s cave of graphical goodness, and if you’re not interested in some super sweet images, you can enjoy the Dog and Cat Haikus.
The cat is not all
Bad - she fill the litter box
With Tootsie Rolls.
- Author Unknown
Litter box not there
You must have moved it again
I'll crap in the sink
- Author Unknown
10/05/2024: The Chupacabra Home Page
First Created 1996 - Last Updated 1996
Surely Princeton has forgotten that this beautiful relic is still floating around in the dusty depths of its servers? The Chupacabra Home Page is a one-stop solution for anyone struggling with Chupacabra-related queries. Queries such as, what the hell is a Chupacabra? (handily summarised as “a half-man, half-beast vampire who roams the countryside terrorizing farm animals”), is it an alien?, and is the government covering it up??
Accurate representation of me before coffee.
Obviously, all this information at your fingertips will only further spark your appetite for Chupacabra information. The Chupacabra Home Page had you covered with a Chupacabra discussion group and links to more Chupacabra-related websites. Point Review were certainly won over, awarding the site the Top 5% of all Websites Award. That probably put it somewhere below ishouldbeworking.com, and above Tokyo Toilet Map.
The truth is out there, and it might be sucking the blood of a goat.
26/04/2024: Robin’s FYI
First Created 1997 - Last Updated 2013
In the before times, when internet speeds were slow and dial-up modems were noisy, intrepid net surfers may have experienced a conundrum that is best summed up by Robin’s FYI About page:
“FYI is a cross between a personal website, and a directory site or what some people would call a Web Guide. It is for people that are surfing for information, that don't have the time to surf through 1 million matches on a search engine, where 90% of the sites either don't truly match the subject you are looking for, or are dead links.”
Being a 600+ page site with over 6,000 links, the range of topics covered by Robin’s FYI is truly vast. There’s information about animals (Robin was obviously an early pioneer of the clickbait title, as evidenced by the marine life section: All Wet), Irish cream recipes, a list of items you’ll need for your first website (which has links to providers of counters and guestbooks—you can’t think of designing a website without those!), and detailed instructions on how to be a good Christmas elf.
This website reminds me of early Yahoo, when their links were still curated by humans and listed by topic. In 1999, Robin’s FYI was receiving 2 million unique visitors per year. If my website commanded those kinds of numbers, and if just a small percentage of those visitors went on to buy a book, I could probably afford to buy my family a modestly-sized house with a detached garage.
19/04/2024: Tom’s Xena Page
First Created 1996 - Last Updated ???
I have deep nostalgia and love for Xena Warrior Princess. Back in the day, I was slightly obsessed with it. I taught myself how to decapitate a charging centaur with my mum’s broom handle Gabrielle-style and yearned to buy a pair of chakram earrings.
Woah, you can still find them for sale.
Being a Xena fan who was also online during the mid-nineties meant I could proudly call myself a Xenite. Xena fan sites were numerous in 1996. I’m pretty sure I remember making my own around this time, but if I did, it’s long been lost to history (or is currently chilling somewhere inside the Wayback Machine where it will never be found again). Luckily (if you’re also an aging Xenite), there are still some examples of Xena fan sites floating around the interwebs.
Tom’s Xena Page was one of the most popular because it just had so much cool stuff. You could sign up for your own xenafan.com email address, peruse the Xena Fan Fiction Archive, or read articles from magazines—all meticulously re-typed and posted with the accompanying hand-scanned images.
These were not the reasons why young me visited Tom’s Xena Page, though. I went there for the Xena Stuff for Windows 95. Oh, yes. If you wanted to “Xenatize” your PC (or your Mac!), this place had the goods. There were entire Windows themes, revolving chakram cursors, screensavers, and icon packs. I have very clear memories of changing all my desktop icons to little pixellated images of the Xena cast. What a time to be alive.
01/04/2024: The UNOFFICIAL Rugrats Online
First Created 1996 - Last Updated 2007
Ah, The Rugrats. There was a period in the 1990s when my sister and I watched so many reruns, I swore I could hear the tinkly theme music playing in my dreams. The UNOFFICIAL Rugrats Online solved an amazingly not-so-rare problem back in 1996, and that was to provide a comprehensive website focused on a specific piece of media, in the days before that specific piece of media had any official online presence of its own. The thought of a new movie or TV show not having a web presence now is unthinkable. Still, in the mid-nineties, many studio execs believed that the Information Superhighway was a passing fad not worthy of investing their dollars in, hence the unofficial fan site was born. The UNOFFICIAL Rugrats Online went on to be so popular and influential, the (actually) official Klasky Csupo site, CoolToons, interviewed the webmaster and admitted that the “...summaries of the Rugrats episodes, quotes and factoids inspired the creation of our own guide on this site.” That’s the sort of cool fan shit that wouldn’t be possible today.
CoolToons also dubbed The UNOFFICIAL Rugrats Online’s webmaster the no. 1 Rugrats fan, and they probably weren’t wrong. The site is a huge depository of character and episode guides, Rugrats news and facts, episode transcripts, and links to other Rugrats sites. Many hours of cartoon baby devotion are on display here.
Now this is a beautifully tabulated wall of links.
Of course, being the webmaster of the longest-running and most popular Rugrats site on the internet does not come without its pitfalls. From the CoolToons interview:
“The strangest interaction, however, was a couple of years ago, with a fan who lived in the Vancouver, BC area. He sent me a few stories, but got angry at me because I edited out the cusswords that he included, along with a paragraph that had Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer get very critical of Jesus. I told him that I edited them because there are families viewing my website. He tells me that they would approve of them. Then, 6 fans, all of them aliases of him, wrote me, saying how they loved the show and they would rather like me to keep the cussing and the Jesus-slandering in the stories; I stood my ground… Apart from that freak, I am very cordial with my fans, and they are usually very appreciative of my site.”
Citing a lack of interest in Rugrats “post-Dil”, the webmaster’s long and storied reign as the world’s no. 1 Rugrats fan came to an end at some point during the early 2000s. Website duties were handed to their friend, Super Yo, with the former webmaster bowing out to work on “a new comic strip, and a new book” that their mom and pop wouldn’t approve of. My interest is piqued.
08/03/2024: sock-monkey.com
First Created 1996 - Last Updated 2008
A website featuring “...a wide array of oddities and random ramblings inspired by and dedicated to sock monkeys.”
At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be much going on here, but dig a little deeper and alongside the theories on sock monkeys and their origins you’ll find a (obviously not fake in any way) scientific paper from 1999 called Sock Monkeys Are The Solution To The Y2K Computer Crisis, an “incendiary statement” about pants-stealing aliens, and a heartfelt poem about cheese.
All jazzed up about cheese!!!!!
And if cheese were a kite could you fly it?
And if cheese were a piano, could you get some blind guy play it?
And if cheese were a tuba, do you think you could throw it off the Empire State Building?
Why am I asking all these questions?
Because I am jazzed!!!!!
Jazzed!!!!
All jazzed up about cheese!!!!
Much of the site relies on Adobe Flash Player which no longer works, but it is possible to click through to the Sock Monkey Store on Cafepress where (incredibly) a variety of sock monkey-themed items are still available to buy.
I wish I’d stumbled across this store twelve years ago. I feel like I missed out on owning a Sock Monkey and Cheese Maternity T-Shirt.
23/02/2024: Internet Pizza Server
First Created 1994 - Last Updated 2001
The Internet Pizza Server has been serving up instant pizzas (and hating on Pizza Hut) since 1994. Feeling hungry? Just head to the Internet Pizza Server Ordering Area and design your pizza (I recommend the large with extra salami and green M&Ms). In mere moments, you will be presented with a steaming hot, pixellated pie served on an attractive chequered tablecloth.
My pizza, topped with bacon bits, goblins (I assume they were finely sliced), fingers, mushrooms, and Altoids. Delicious. The price was fairly steep at B$3.25 (calculated in Beej-Bux, the “...standard currency for purchasing Internet Pizza Server Pies), but I was feeling greedy and ordered the family size so I only have myself to blame.
The Internet Pizza Server is one of those beautiful curiosities of the net that seem to serve no purpose, yet without them, the world would surely be an even crappier place.
"The seasoned Internet Veteran is rapidly becoming a minority, replaced by Green Card Lawyers and others out to make free money on the "Information Superhighway". Hopefully others will continue the age-old tradition of providing free services on the Internet and help to make this world a better place for all of us."
- The Internet Pizza Server Elves
Long live internet pizza.
09/02/2024: The Art of Jonathon Earl Bowser
First Created 1995 - Last Updated ?
If this site had a smell, it would be “90’s new age shop”—like patchouli incense and beeswax candles. The website showcases a huge body of Bowser’s work, but the jewel in the crown is surely the Mythic Naturalism series—a collection of intricate paintings featuring ethereal mermaids, nymphs, and goddesses that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the cover of an 80’s or 90’s fantasy novel.
Rose Window ©Jonathon Earl Bowser 2000
The Art of Jonathon Earl Bowser follows on from last week’s entry, The Land of Faery, which used art from the site—made possible because the artist has generously provided permission to do so right on the front page.
If you were never a fan of 90’s mystical websites, chances are still high that you’ve seen Bowser’s work in the wild on a t-shirt or a collectible plate. Saddam Hussein even used one of his paintings for the cover of a novel called Zabibah and the King (today I learned that Saddam Hussein wrote novels and appreciated Mythic Naturalism…)
Apparitions of the Angel of Civilization ©Jonathon Earl Bowser 1994
Being a showcase and storefront for Bowser’s art that is still maintained today, the site is an atypical recipient of the Web 1.0-era Website of the Week accolade. You’d have to sneak a peek beneath the hood to understand my reasoning, because a quick look at the page source reveals that the code relies heavily on the use of tables, and is written in ALL CAPS. If you’re as old retro as me, you might remember that when people first started making personal websites, the advice was to write all the HTML tags in caps, and using tables to organise content was considered a clever coding hack (tables were originally meant to be used for tabulating data only, not for designing website layouts).
I love the fact that this site still looks clean and beautiful today, but has maintained its retro code. Web designers have long been told that using tables is an outdated no-no. Same goes for the capitalised tags (and scrolling text and animated gifs and web page counters and anything else that ever brought joy to an amateur webmaster). This site is a perfect example of how just because “they” say you should code your web pages a certain way, doesn’t mean you have to listen. Use tables if you want to. Use them if it makes your content look cleaner, or just because you want to, damnit. David Siegel, arguably the father of table layouts, seems to agree (although even as far back as 1997, he could see that stylesheets were the future).
"The hacks I've espoused, especially the single-pixel GIF, and using frames and tables to do layout, are the duct tape of the Web. They are the designer's finger in the dam, trying to keep the ugly gray sites where they belong--at Yahoo!, not in our portfolios."
The Art of Jonathon Earl Bowser is a table-ridden, graphics-heavy beast, and it’s glorious. (It doesn’t scale for smaller screen sizes, but we’re going to let that one slide…)
26/01/2024: The Land of Faery
First Created 1998 - Last Updated 2015
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,
Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,
Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue...
Land of Heart's Desire,
Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood,
But joy is wisdom, Time an endless song.
It’s hard not to admire a website that starts with a Yeats quote, then entreats you to “Enter through the mist......”
The Land of Faery takes faeries very seriously (as well you should if you don’t want to be led astray on a misty night or have your baby swapped for a hideous changeling). The site is set against a dreamy Jonathan Earl Bowser background and decorated with a proliferation of faery gifs and images. It even had its own webring once (“The faeries have created a webring for their land, your invited to join so we can keep the magic alive”) but sadly, it was hosted on Bravenet and is no more.
I discovered many things while surfing this site. Did you know that “...there have been sightings of fairy funerals”? or that some faeries have “...ugly faces or deformed bodies like trolls”? Perhaps the most horrifying thing I learned (though surely also a solid life tip) is that “There is another way to see faeries and that is to apply faery ointment to the eyelids. However it is unwise to do this without the consent of the faeries, their punishment is harsh, for whoever applies this with without consent will be blinded.” Blimey.
The site also has a Samhain page, which has information about welcoming the dead nestled alongside cute gifs of witches, ghosts, and feminine pumpkins.
"On October 31, mortals may see the fairy sidhe, those beings that dwell in the parallel universe of the supernatural. This is the time to reflect on the journey of death and to remember those that have made the journey."
19/01/2024: Nana’s Place
First Created ? - Last Updated ?
There’s a little caveat to be aware of with this website. When I viewed it in Chrome with no ad-blocker, it looked like a dystopian vision of capitalist hell and was virtually unviewable. When I viewed it in Brave however (which blocks ads automatically), it worked fine. So now you know.
In the long ago before times when people first made personal web pages, they were often nothing more than snapshots into that person’s life, interspersed with animated gifs and littered with guest books. Nana’s Place is a great example of that type of site, complete with family photos, favourite recipes, and movie recommendations.
Nana’s Place has an oddly fitting late-90’s-goth aesthetic, with bold red writing (Comic Sans, naturally) on a red and black background. I couldn’t find any dates but it’s a Tripod site (can you believe Tripod sites are still live? Angelfire, too) so I’m guessing it must have been made in the mid-late nineties. Most of it still works, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get over the disappointment of finding that the link to LUMPENSTEINS CHAMBER OF HORRORS (“Beware. Our cat Lumpy is coming for you! She's got her own scary movie site”) is broken. It led me instead to a modern Yahoo page which on the day I visited, provided me with the news that the Princess of Wales is laid up after surgery, and social media is controlling my life. Now I’ll never know what Lumpy thought of Demon Knight.
It feels a bit voyeuristic in 2024 to be made privy to the sort of information that’s now reserved for friends lists on walled gardens like Facebook. I know that Nana married “...a guy whose net nikname is Punchy”, she collects cow trinkets, and one of her hobbies is “...stitching together small childsize dolls and dressing them in actual kids clothing.”
I’m not creeped out, you are.
If you decide to drop by Nana’s Place, sadly you can’t mark your visit by signing the guestbook because clicking on it just takes you to the Lycos frontpage (yes, they still exist, too!) but you can grab a sweet recipe for barbecue chicken wings.
12/01/2024: Frogland
First Created 1995 - Last Updated 2006
My daughter’s mad about frogs at the moment. Frogs, toads, and mushrooms. Her bedroom’s starting to look like a weird 60’s acid trip. Do you know who else is mad about frogs? This person:
The person in question being a webmaster called Dorota, a self-confessed “...freak who really likes frogs.” Frogland (surely Dorota’s magnum opus) is a huge site presented on a salmon pink background which includes the FrogBlog (for all the “…latest random Froggy News!”), an extensive frog art gallery, Froggy Games, and frog jokes (“What happens when you mix a frog with a bathtub scrubby-mit? A rubbit!”)
This website was obviously a labour of love. The ultimate froggy passion project, if you will. Among all the fun things is a plethora of information about frog species (did you know the pixie frog is one of the largest frogs in South Africa?) and frog care—so much of it in fact that Dorota has kindly provided a page called Teacher’s Corner, in the hope that kids will “...have lots of fun learning about frogs AND playing on the Internet!” Honestly, Dorota seems like an all-around awesome froglerino. I wonder if they ever envisaged a time when teachers would beg kids to STOP playing on the internet?
15/12/2023: Pi Zine
First Archived 2002 - Last Updated ?
Who remembers zines? They’re making a bit of a comeback online. Back in the day, they were small self-made magazines—usually photocopied and then stapled, covering topics ranging from punk music to literally anything. Pi Zine promised to deliver games, poetry, stories, pictures, essays, and “...oodles and oodles of great writing about feminism and grrrl issues.” This sounds like it was an utter bargain for the low, low price of “Just one dollar and fifty cents, as well as a stamp!” (never forget the stamp!)
You know an old-school webpage is going to be good when the homepage’s background is glittery purple dragon scales. The zine’s writers have amazing Web 1.0 handles too, namely thirdwavegrrl and miserywinter. My teenage self could only have dreamed of coming up with such awesomeness.
I assume physical copies of Pi Zine no longer exist, but thankfully there are some remnants of its former glory left on the site in the form of highlights from all four issues. Spooky Girl’s plea to adopt a cat had me wondering about the fate of Percy, who sounds like the cutest vampire kitty to ever prowl the night: “Are You A Lonely Little Goth Child? Well, of course you are - don't try to deny it! What you need is a cat! At A.S.A.P. there is the perfect cat for you - Percy! He is a neutered black cat about 8+ years old. He is a domestic short hair and has beautiful green and golden eyes. He's clean, calm, and very affectionate. The best part about Percy is his cute little fangs. you gotta check them out. I could swear he was a little vampire. So if you're looking for the perfect companion - come to A.S.A.P. and check out Percy! But hurry, we don't adopt out black cats near Halloween because of all the sick people out there.”
Pinky Royale from Zine Guide sums this all up much better than I could in Pi Zine’s (criminally) single review: "Goth poetry and thrift store reviews for the greater Santa Barbara area. Drawings of spiders and teeth, too. A good article on 'How To Beat Up Boys,' which, if you're a boy, could be seen as 'What To Watch Out For When You Cross The Line, Dumbass.' There's some information on runaways, and how to get help or help out. Sometimes life can be a big barrel of rancid pork rinds, drowning out that glimmer of hope that exists everywhere, and those damn goth folks really know how to balance their hope and their despair. Kudos."
If I’d stumbled across this site while the zine was still operational, this would have been me:
08/12/2023: Emerald City
First Created 1995 - Last Updated - 2006
This website is a bonafide treasure. Emerald City was an online publication that reviewed fantasy and sci-fi novels. It ceased publication in 2006 but every issue since 1995 is still available to read.
The book reviews do not hold back the sass. From a review for The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie: “I don’t like trade paperbacks. They’re unwieldy, like hardbacks but without any of the expensive-feeling durability, and they’re even more prone to broken spines and bent corners than mass markets because of their size. Really, they’re the worst of both worlds. (NB: Not that I’m adverse to people giving them to me for free.) And so it’s a measure of quality that, despite my having Joe Abercrombie’s debut The Blade Itself in trade paperback, I didn’t hold its material handicap against it. I carried it around with me; I took it on the bus; I read it in the bath.”
This is from a review of Emerald Eye, an anthology of Irish horror fiction published in 2005: “...if you look at the cover of the book you will probably conclude two things. Firstly that it is self-published (which it isn’t, it just has a cover that doesn’t do the book justice), and secondly that it is a collection of fantasy stories. It is predominantly green, and features a girl with a long braid that transforms into Celtic knot work. To be fair, the introduction does say the book doesn’t contain any leprechauns. But it doesn’t contain any fairy princesses or handsome, muscle-bound swordsmen either. Indeed, the stories by McCaffrey, Shaw and White seem very much out of place, because Emerald Eye is mainly a horror anthology. Not that this is a bad thing, but it does come as something of a shock.”
A bad book cover (allegedly).
There seems to be a bit of a running theme regarding early ebooks, particularly early self-published ebooks—i.e. the site’s writers weren’t fans. There was an entire essay published in Issue 59 (July 2000) explaining why ebooks were a terrible idea. Reading this is a joyous tumble into a now hazy past, written long before Kindles existed: “At present the only way that most of us can read an eBook is on a PC. As I quickly found out when I tried to read one, this is a pain in the butt. A book I can take with me anywhere. A PC is stuck on my desk.”
It’s interesting to see how attitudes towards ebooks and self-publishing have changed (or, I hope they’ve changed!). From the About page: “Electronic publishing is very cheap and easy. As a consequence the is a vast amount of material out there, most of it self-published and not very good. We try to review only the best quality SF&F fiction. If some of that is published as e-books, all well and good. But if you are publishing electronically because you can't get accepted by a print publisher there may be a good reason for those rejections.” Ouch!
They did make an exception when it came to Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Magnificat, which was described as “...a little Sheri Tepper-ish, in that it aims an incisive intellectual stiletto at the heart of patriarchal theology and impales it mercilessly.” Unfortunately for the ebook-wary reviewer, the book did come “...on a standard CD” and “...the installation process was nowhere near good enough.” Can you imagine selling or reading a book on a CD now? The olden days were wild.
17/11/2023: Tokyo Toilet Map
First Created 1996 - Last Updated - 1997
This website does exactly what you think it does—it’s a literal map of toilets in Tokyo, which is handy (or it was in 1996), but also just a little bit gross.
Voted "Harsh Site of the Day" in July 1997, this compact webpage features pictures of Tokyo’s clean and dirty toilets, “cool” graffiti (definitely NSFW), and the all-important Tokyo Map (which will only work if you use Netscape v2.0 or higher!) There are also reviews of the toilets to go along with the pictures (“This toilet is simple and clean. I think this toilet is a little known hot spot.”) If you ever time travel back to 1996 and want to visit Tokyo, you’ll never be caught short again. My favourite review was of a dirty toilet, although it included a five-star rating which is a head-scratcher after reading the review: “This toilet is under stair to platform and a lawless zone. It is shit outside of bowl and the worst smell. Help me! After taking this picture I felt nauseated.” I’d have given this particular toilet two stars at most.
Sadly, I’ll never be able to learn "How to use Japanese style toilet bowel", because this page uses Shockwave Player which was discontinued in 2019. If I ever do find myself in a position to use a toilet bowel (which I’m now imagining as some sort of sentient demonic toilet with digestion issues), I’ll just have to muddle through the experience without proper guidance. Thanks for nothing, Adobe.
03/11/2023: The Resort
First Created 1992 - Last Updated - 1997
This is the oldest website I’ve so far discovered for this series that still exists. How does it still exist?! Probably only the Mystical Head of 'Bob' knows. (Bob is the ultimate oracle who can answer any question. He used to be a Magic 8-Ball but it “went away because of a letter from Tyco's lawyers indicating that they didn't appreciate my abuse of their Copyright”).
A beautifully preserved early web time capsule, this website features grainy photos of The Resort’s residents, a preoccupation with Renaissance faires, and an enlightening guide to enlarging your nipples, among many, many other weird-ass things that probably only ever made sense to twenty-something coders in the nineties with a penchant for conspiracy theories and martinis.
The Resort was purportedly a real place—a self-proclaimed “geek house” in the Santa Cruz area inhabited by people with names like Banshee and Pooteur (it might also be “the temple of a religious cult who eat babies and nail young kittens and bullfrogs to trees”). If you’re not sure what a geek house is, you need to read Microserfs by Douglas Coupland because this website could honestly have been a meta advertisement for the novel.
Bob demands that you visit!
29/09/2023: Hazenworld
First Created 1998 - Last Updated - 2014
How to best describe this noisy, blinking, colourful behemoth? It describes itself as “Home for music, lyrics, pics, info, Animated Gifs, Elvis Costello Stuff”, and it hits all the classic Web 1.0 tropes. I’m talking inescapable background music, starry night background, a large spinning globe on the front page, and a multitude of animated divider bars. It’s truly glorious stuff. Also, this guy really loves Elvis Costello.
My personal highlight is a preserved copy of an old Geocities guestbook—surely one of the wonders of the ancient world. There’s also a page that I think hope is a joke, called ADULT PIX OF ME! Click at your peril (the bone-eating troll in the Complaints Department is cute, though).
18/08/2023: Topher's Castle
First Created 1997 - Last Updated - 2018
This is another one of those websites you never knew you wanted to visit until it popped up on wiby.org.
A beautiful rainbow of a site that isn’t afraid to play with multicoloured fonts, Topher’s Castle is a vast repository of information as disparate as cruise and travel, and guides to every character in Winnie the Pooh.
My favourite part of the site is Topher's Breakfast Cereal Character Guide, described as, “a non-commercial site with the sole purpose of assisting visitors in locating information on their favorite breakfast cereal characters.” According to the now-defunct Voting Booth, the ancient internet’s favourite cereal character was Big Yella. Big Yella is new to this British millennial, but he looks like a cross between Mr Benn and Bert the Muppet.
Personally, I would have voted for Cliffy the Clown.
Can you imagine waking up to that face staring back at you from across the breakfast table each morning? Time to rise and shine, kids! Finish up those sugary wheat puffs and get yourselves off to school right quick, or Cliffy will come fer yer eyes with a sharpened cereal spoon!
11/08/2023: Rock Jem
First Created 1997 - Last Updated - Recently
All this recent talk about Barbie has led me to reminisce about Jem, the most truly outrageous doll to blast out of the 1980s. Barbie may have tried to compete back in the day with Barbie and the Rockers, but Jem and the Holograms were the true doll rockstars and every discerning 80’s child knew it.
Credit: Something About The Boy
Derek was a fine piece of manly plastic candy, though. Perhaps he should have joined up with Jem and created a supergroup.
Someone else who knew it was the creator of Rock Jem, a massive fansite with a focus on the accompanying Jem cartoon series. This site is still going strong after 26 years and has welcomed 700+ visitors a day.
Credit: www.victoriartilloedm.com
There really was never a contest. You can clearly see Jem was a bad bitch, and that’s before I’ve even started on their slightly sinister rival band, The Misfits.
Rock Jem really leans into its early internet heritage and features a brief history of the site on its About page, complete with screenshots of the website in earlier incarnations. There’s also an entire page dedicated to Jem Fan Site History.
FYI, I would still kill or maim for a working pair of Jemstar earrings.
21/07/2023: Prime’s Face
First Created 2008 - Last Updated - 2011
A site that dares to dream, “WHAT WOULD OPTIMUS PRIME LOOK LIKE WITHOUT HIS FACE MASK?!”
A small collection of pictures taken from official Transformers sources show a variety of things going on behind Prime’s mask. In my favourite picture, it looks like Prime is weeping after being torn open by a very large can opener:
The page is part of a larger site called The Obscure Transformers Website, “devoted to the unseen, the unknown, and the unwanted of the Transformers universe.” There’s also a fuck-ton of old Toy Fair Catalogs.
14/07/2023: Hollywood Tarot
First Created 1998 - Last Updated - 1999
A humour site that provided real tarot card readings based on the Rider-Waite Tarot (using the Hollywood Tarot, of course). Sadly, this function no longer seems to work. I was told this cryptic tidbit though: “Your football team's going to lose. Sorry.”
I don’t support a football team. What could it mean?
Thankfully, you can still peruse the entire Hollywood deck and read the fates of various celebrities through 1999, as divined by (the totally not fictional) Madame Esmeralda and Lady Esmene. Spoiler: Bruce and Demi aren’t going to make it.
23/06/2023: Lissa Explains it All
First Created 1997 - Last Updated - 2016
May I present to you the website that first taught me to code. Lissa wrote HTML, and later CSS, tutorials in a clear and concise way, on a brightly coloured website that didn’t burn your retinas to look at. Back in 1997, she seemed like a genius–and she was only 11! Although, it is mostly her fault that “Caroline’s Titanic Page” was created, only to blight the world with a background midi playing My Heart Will Go On on an infinite loop.
16/06/2023: Buffy Phenomenon
First Created January 2005 - Last Updated February 2016
Because Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans love nothing more than discussing which episodes were the best, Buffy Phenomenon has kindly curated an enormous collection of greatest episodes lists, with the lofty goal of creating the definitive best and worst episodes list. If that doesn’t grab you, visit to indulge in the starry background and links buttons shaped like stakes (surely modelled on Mr Pointy).
09/06/2023: Diabella Loves Cats
First Created 1997 - Last Updated January 2021
If there is anything on this good green earth that absolutely nobody could disagree with, it’s that Diabella loves cats. This webpage is primarily geared towards providing information about cat rescue but the best part of the site is the enormous collection of vintage cat graphics. “What's better than a cat?” Diabella asks. “A dressed cat!” There are cartoon cats in 60’s outfits, cats in humourous t-shirts, cats eating burgers with elves, cat fairies, and cats in bikinis. If you were wondering, there’s a dog section too.
