The Project
Hello! You seem to have stumbled upon my SUPER AWESOME webpage! And that's awesome.
You're welcome here, please don't close out your browser. However, you may be wondering what exactly this is.
Well, don't worry! I'm going to explain it for you.
First or all, please note the URL. "1.0af" This is shorthand for "Web 1.0 as fuck". What does that mean?
Well, for those of you who remember the early 2000's and the late 90's, WebSites were hosted on various free servers, or ISP provided space. Usually something partly, like 10 MB, yes, MEGA bytes, not GIGAbytes.
One of the most popular hosts of the day is the now defunct GeoCities, people also used Tripod, Angelfire and Homestead; to name a few.
These sites were usually personal sites where you would share your opinions about something with the ENTIRE INTERNET! Needless to say, these were exciting times in the history of the internet. You can bet your ass I had a sweet GeoCities page about FF7.
These sites were usually static, too. Like, for example, the main index page could be nothing more than a table of links to other more interesting parts of the site. I know when I was making sites, I'd have this table, then a small updates section. These "Updates" were made on my local computer, modifying the HTML file manually and then uploading it. Most content was static.
I mentioned static content a lot there. Because, for the longest time, free servers didn't allow server side includes to make life a little easier. I'm using them right now, the navigation table is a SSI. If it wasn't, I'd copy paste it into EACH HTML FILE. Work was tedious back then. But, you know what? Things seemed a lot more..organic back then. We liked this, we kept making pages upon pages, creating those hrefs, and just..typing into a terminal. Again, mentioning static pages, we did have ways for visitors to leave us comments. They were called guestbooks.
This concludes a brief history lesson.
Now, what exactly was the point of reading all of that text?
Simple!
There was a clue up there. >"But, you know what? Things seemed a lot more..organic back then. We liked this, we kept making pages upon pages, creating those hrefs, and just..typing into a terminal."
That was the thing. We LIKED this! The only reason I can think of is that we were making our mark on this gigantic new thing. Of course, most of those marks are now gone. Either eroded though the annals of time (read: the shutting down of GeoCities/other free services), or forcefully removed. I could tell you that if you found a webpage I made in 1996, I'd disown it. Even if I, for some reason, put my IRL name on it. See, that was a thing that we never did back then. We all had handles. Some of us still do. I can tell you, right now, that I'm using the webarchive of my most popular 1.0 site as the basis for the design of this site. Fuuuuck, I fourgot about the hr's, YES! View what you can of it. I was about 19 at the time of this site, and it shows. Hard. Am I embarrassed by it? A little. Am I using it as an example of 1.0 in one of its purest forms? Hell yes I am.
One of the first things you may notice, is the layout. The 'bookcover' with Trunks? A goddamned HTML table. I crafted the fuck out of that thing in FrontPage, and I'm not scared to admit that. Learning HTML at home was a scary thing. We have it easy now. As I'm typing this, I literally have a preview of the file open, and everytime I save, I get to see if I borked the formatting. In 2000, I didn't have that luxury. Well, I did by 2001, but I didn't know it at the time.
The next thing you may notice? The updates section. Very concise updates, but with enough ambiguity to make you want to read. Sooooo, clickbait before clickbait was fucking stupid. And a PUBLICLY CLICKABLE EMAIL ADDRESS. Sure, it went to a throwaway account, but you're toates fuct if you do that now. That'll be mined SO HARD! And finally, a link to an older updates section. Which I then had organized by month. Those pages? They were static! I literally copy pasted the updates from a given month into a new HTML file, and included a few links to get back! Now? On my main site, WordPress does that shit, and I don't have to think!
The last thing? A goddamned guestbook. You can view the first page of it. Go on, you know you want to. Hell, you might even be one of the people in the guestbook. I know I am.
Let's go back to the navigation of the site. Look at the links. Judging from what you can see, this was a site about Internet Role Playing, and I played Trunks. (I also played Trunks well.) You may notice that there was a section for RP logs and my writings. And, of course, the ever present Links section. People wanted to be on that page. We used to exchange links and then put them on pages like that. You may notice that there's only one link to find out about the person behind the mess. If you're brave enough to click that link, you will soon learn that while it was a page about me, it wasn't very personal. It was pretty much a list of things I liked and didn't like at the time. And then the names/handles of my internet friends. And something special that I'm making a page for. Don't look at that part. That's for later. As the site grew, I also included a couple more personal things. Before the decline of the site (or getting ToSsed by Tripod) I included slightly more personal stuff. You knew by that point I was in love with OS X. And had compiled files (on paper) for a sequel to Chrono Trigger.
Now, what exactly was the point of reading all of that text? 2: Electric Boogaloo
I did stray a little bit, but it was meaningful. Using the site, I provided you with an example. We all did sites like these. They were creative! We enjoyed making them and sharing them, in all their hamfisted glory! I can tell you, in the years that that site (and duplicates) was active, I felt like I was blazing a trail with some other cool people for AIM RP battles. And you know what? I think we did it, and did it right. We kept the mun (man under name) shit out of the pages, or kept them to a small section of the site, as to not overwhelm the visitors that just wanted to learn or read.
I seem to have strayed a little. This page, not THIS page, is a way for me to rekindle that Web 1.0 spirit back in myself, and maybe you, too! I know that Neocities exists. But, I've always been a stickler for doing things the way I want, where I want. So, here it is, in all of its Web 1.0 glory!
This document last modified Sunday, 24-Jan-2016 14:47:26 PST.
I typed this on a keyboard from 2001. This automatically makes the page more legit.
"The Last Website" and all pages within are © "Oapboap"; like you'd want to steal content, anyhow. All images that are not mine belong to their respective owners. Image links will be shared in the "Credits" page.