Web Site Archive

Ever since my family got Internet access in the mid-90s and our ISP gave me space to host a web site, I’ve fought with HTML, CGI, CSS, and then eventually led to the inevitable conclusion that JavaScript is terrible and weird and web development will never be for me.

Remarkably, I managed to keep pretty decent copies of the various web-sites and stylings from 1999 to 2004 and have curated them here. Each page has some lovingly hand-crafted JavaScript injected to help make the experience more enjoyable. The JavaScript adds:

A floating, expandible info bar at the top with the site name, approximate original publish date, developer commentary, and a list of links on the page.
Handling of dead links to save the viewer from trying to navigate to pages/sites that no longer exist.
Other tricks to try to get these old, dusty pages to appear to come back to life.

Censoring the Past

In an attempt to ensure my site is kid-friendly, I have revisited my Web Site Archive and added a tiny bit of censoring of text and images. Despite not striving to do so, most of the content I have posted over the years is surprisingly mostly OK for kids. But, a few words/images/themes cropped up in these pages that I wouldn’t put into a childrens’ book and didn’t add significant content to the pages, so I censored them. The point of the Web Site Archive was to help paint a picture of my web development over the years, rather than to re-iterate any particluar thoughs I had when I was creating them.

The content isn’t really gone, just obscured a bit, so the genius kids will figure out how to see it anyway if they really want to (I’d be delighted if they spend that much time reading to care).

The Curly Fish symbol has not been censored. It’s not intended to be sacrilege, only an homage to my friend’s dog and parodying the ridiculousness of the ichthys copy-cat bumper stickers that were prolific in the late ’90s.

Links to the web sites are below. Bon appétit!