Like fuck all the proprietary junk and versioning, and just have a bare bones HTML ASCII extranet designed to be simple and without any bugs to patch? Obviously a naive question.
But seriously, the 56k dialup world with Napster GeoCities and AOL Instant Messenger was better. Add capacitive touch screens, current data throughput infra, and lithium batteries to 1999 and we are peak Matrix internet territory. Yahoo and net navigator were better than chrome stalkerware and google digislaver fascism.
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Your framework? The hipster café that"s “temporarily closed” every time you need it.
Haha, there are other language versions links at the bottom. I just started Czech course at university, and I think I will send my group link some time, because it’s pretty funny (for a Polish person at least).
Can’t easily verify on mobile, but iirc last time I inspected the html that site had a google tracker and there’s a commented line acknowledging the irony and challenges you to fight them. I could have it mistaken with another, similar site, though.
I’ve been around since the early 1980s on BBSs. I think what OP is describing is gopher:// links which were common in the early 1990s. I recall getting news and music tablature that way, but like others said it was boring and there wasn’t much else.
To me, 1996 to 2005 was the peak of the Internet experience, especially in the early 2000s when content was increasing. Big business was still oblivious about it, and little forums were able to truly thrive on their own without being on a billion dollar platform.
Web 2.0 was when it all went to shit. I remember the look when it was happening… every website went to white webpages, tons of white space, big-ass sans serif fonts, rounded buttons, and very little actual content, just minimalist screens everywhere. Every website was doing it. I knew at the time that this was symbolic of the vacuousness of the coming Internet.
For a more modern take on gopher consider also checking out gemini if you haven’t already. It is somewhat different yet familiar.
Check out Chinese internet. There’s shit everywhere.
It’s
vs 
Neocities encourages static 90’s style webpages.
For all y’all talking about the old private internet, it’s having a bit of a renaissance. Neocities is on of the big ones, but lots of people are straight up selfhosting them too. It’s not like you actually need anything more than a phone to run a static website for the tens of visitors you might get each month.
Here’s an example of one. Check the post dates. And the webrings. And the Glitter. And the, well, you get the point.
Because people who make websites want to get paid for them, payment is based on showing ads, ad companies want to maximize tracking via javascript, and if the only javascript is for ad bullshit it’s easy to block it so they force the content to load via javascript too.
It’s systemically fucked up in a way that goes beyond just the technology itself.
Tl;Dr: capitalism. Capitalism cannot allow nice things to exist.
The people that want to make money are not de facto legitimate. Some people want analog slavery too. Some people want fascism. Some people are serial killers. Some people are Google. I see no value in those people. They do not create content I find interesting. The things they fund are opposed to my principals and democracy. Those people buy and sell a part of me to exploit and manipulate me. Those people are criminals. Those people are bad neighbors and have no place in our communities and neighborhoods. We have a right to open public commons free from piracy, pillaging, and slavery. That is the fundamental flaw. The internet is public commons, not a slave market.
Are you denying the fact of capitalism existing on the internet? All you seem to say is idealistic non-statements that don’t engage with the answers you’re getting to the question you asked (or seemed to ask).
You do know that there’s a less intrusive way of advertising ? Right ?
You do know that advertisers want the ads to be as intrusive as they can make them? Right?
It wasn’t better. Static pages are just boring, you read it one time and then that’s it. Not enough people can write plain HTML so it would matter.
The internet today with Lemmy, Mastodon, etc. is way closer to what Tim Berners-Lee imagined that everyone would be a publisher, not only consumer.
You don’t have to know or write plain HTML. There are plenty of static page generators that take markdown and generate a site for you. Also, boring is good and yes, read once and don’t care next is also good: it’s how books work for thousands of years. If you like a site or article/post you’ll get back to it sometime, if not that’s OK.
Static page generator is already half way to a blog with a database.
It’s easier to learn and write plain HTML than it is to use a static page generator. I will die on this hill. Static page generators are all needlessly complicated because they are made by developers for developers to show off.
It is kinda ironic having this debate on a platform that isn’t static html
This is one of those times when the attempt to address the wrong part of a statement immediately goes into Ackermann-like recursion.
The only irony present is the pretense of validity of the supposed contradiction.
The 512KB Club is a collection of performance-focused web pages from across the Internet. To qualify your website must satisfy both of the following requirements:
- It must be an actual site that contains a reasonable amount of information, not just a couple of links on a page (more info here).
- Your total UNCOMPRESSED web resources must not exceed 512KB.
https://geminiprotocol.net/ (The site’s certificate has expired. I really hope they fix it.)
Gemini is a group of technologies similar to the ones that lie behind your familiar web browser. Using Gemini, you can explore an online collection of written documents which can link to other written documents. The main difference is that Gemini approaches this task with a strong philosophy of “keep it simple” and “less is enough”.
Gemini might be of interest to you if you:
- Are sick and tired of nagging newsletter subscription pop-ups, obnoxious adverts, autoplaying videos that chase you as you scroll and other misfeatures of the modern web
Came here to post about Gemini, that’s what they want
I qualify for the 512kb club, that’s mint!
Going to add my site to the list
Also it’s great to see sites that don’t have a butt load of JS and ads and other crap!
Signed certificates cost money. Notepad++ had a similar problem where they lost their certificate recently. They temprarily added a self-signed certificate until they could find a sponsor for a signed certificate. I think they fixed that now
Used to, until Letsencrypt started proiding free ones. These days, cost is no excuse.
I miss webrings. Especially for mods.
Nexus is great, but i remember when darkone started it with Morrowind mods.You can. What makes you think you can’t?
The thing is that there’s no demand, not least because there’s no direct interaction between users. People yell bloody murder if a game doesn’t have some sort of multiplayer component and static content is single player internet.
It takes a critical mass of like minded people.
That is not really the point here. The actual question is more about stopping the evolution of hardware and software deprecation, like creating a minimum system that is never updated.
Oh right , i forget; this is not “no disingenuous questions”. Hard to tell sometimes.
You want a decent webpage AND attention / clicks?
Your problem is not the coding of the webpage. pebkac.
You must be a bot. If not your face must have a lot of well earned character.
haha yeah, i i was actually so pissed that i “walked into a tree” last night. Still a wee bit merry. pebpat
Huh? I don’t understand, are you saying you can’t have static websites on today’s hard/software? I’m so confused.
Demand? What?
You can just have a site that says things. You might just get a trickle of readers, and that’s okay. Not everything has to try to rule the world. You can contribute this little part of it, that might amuse or inform some people, and not pile up yet more value to a terrible corporation like Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit or (while I’m ranting) Fandom.
Plain HTML doesn’t break. You don’t need to update frameworks. It won’t make the user’s browser consume a ton of their RAM. Even if your image hosting goes down, the text will still be there. The biggest problems with HTML are external. Google giving attention to Reddit over your site, or de-prioritizing it if it’s not “responsive to mobile,” and web browsers choosing not to reveal by default what terrible resource hogs big sites can be. Check about:processes (on Firefox at least) some time, I’ve seen Youtube, Facebook and Twitter consume over a gigabyte of memory by themselves, apiece. (Nota bene, Mastodon consumes a lot too.)
It’s okay to be small. That was what the World Wide Web was envisioned as, its motto: Let’s Share What We Know.
I don’t disagree.
There are still fragments of the old internet around, though I agree that it’s nothing like it once was…
I’m an old E2 member!
I would just like to add my favorite way to surf the old web is to go to https://wiby.me/ and click “surprise me…” and then either keep doing that or scour their link sections for more similar sites.
https://marginalia-search.com/
“The need for discovery
Nothing you do to try to make the web a better place matters if nobody can find what you did. There are a lot of precious websites out there that deserve an audience, but instead are languishing in obscurity.
This makes alternative discovery mechanisms an urgent priority of the free and independent web, both document search as well as blog and RSS-feed discovery.”Sometimes I remember the joy of using Gopher or dial-up BBSs and cry actual tears. Nothing makes me feel older.
