Crimes of Websites Past

[rheasilvia]

So, a while back galaxysoup and I were reminiscing about the horrors of classic fannish website design. Remember when Geocities was a thing and disclaimer pages made you hunt for the second comma in the thirteenth line? Remember purple text on black background, blinking gifs and flashing text, cheesy ornamental buttons, weird graphics and crazy fonts?

Well, as it turns out, I still have evidence of some of my transgressions. Here they are, for your amusement!

You Too Can Learn HTML

My first attempt at coding a website did not show great promise.



You Too Can Learn HTML, The Revenge: X-Files Versus Readability

Especially because I succumbed to the dark background craze, and evidently only had one image of these guys. Why is Krycek’s face so bumpy?



Quoth the Raven

I quickly decided this would not do and found a nice dramatic pre-fab website design featuring a woman, a scarf and a raven. And of course a dark background. Nothing could keep me from dark backgrounds, obviously.



The Red and the Black Archive

Believe it or not: This was an entirely unremarkable look for an author’s page in an XF fanfic archive to have, at the time.



Eroica Overload

I also made a website for a friend, which seems unkind in retrospect. While it did fit the fandom, the combination of rose imagery, font choice and gold was perhaps a tiny bit much.



Art Nouveau Green

When I kept writing stories, Raven Lady’s scarf grew too restrictive, and I had to switch to Pen Lady. I remember I wasn’t terribly thrilled with the green, but the design seemed nice and simple.



My Current (Abandoned) Website

My most recent website is more or less abandoned, but does still exist. I include it for research purposes. I still quite like it, but the AO3 has made individual author’s pages largely unnecessary, IMO.





Sooo… what do you think?

Poll #21797 Times were different, MacLeod. I was different.

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 27

View Respondents

But why?

View Answers

You Too Can Learn HTML
4 (14.8%)

X-Files Versus Readability
5 (18.5%)

The Red and the Black Archive
5 (18.5%)

Quoth the Raven
1 (3.7%)

Eroica Overload
4 (14.8%)

Art Nouveau Green
6 (22.2%)

All of the above!
8 (29.6%)

OMG. WHY.
1 (3.7%)

None of the above!
0 (0.0%)

NO SHAME.
22 (81.5%)

Spar….kles?
3 (11.1%)

SPARKLES!!
16 (59.3%)

Do you have any early website crimes to share? Show us the evidence!!

Comments

[lynndyre]

I think I read things on those websites! Especially the Eroica one looks very familiar. These are great! XD

[rheasilvia]

Heeee, fandom is such a village! :-) And how much do I love it that so many people remember those days? Fannish dinosaurdom for the win!

While I do kind of hope someone else comes forward with their own transgressions of websites past, I am resolved: I regret nothing. ;-)

[mekare]

Oooh these designs take me back. I never had a site of my own but I clearly remember the designs in the style of the X-files example and Red and Black Archive.

I still love how many personal sites there were, how many people taught themselves coding and had web rings and rec pages. While I appreciate AO3 a lot, I still have that underlying aüpprehension of putting all the eggs into one basket.... so I am all for keeping the individual sites up!

[rheasilvia]

It seems so jarring today, but yes, there were so many archives that looked just like it. Not to mention that I remember many a website with flashing, garishly colored text on a black background. In fact, I feel very virtuous in comparison. ;-)

I still love how many personal sites there were, how many people taught themselves coding and had web rings and rec pages.

Yes, me too! There were so many rec pages, and rec page indexes - of course there just wasn't a good way to find stories apart from them, but it also felt like it brought people closer together, somehow. On the one and only con I went to, I met people I only knew through their websites and rec pages, and it was great. :-)

And you have a very good point - who knows what may happen, fandom may well need those individual pages again some day.

[qikiqtarjuaq]

Hahaha I used to have an awful X-files website with black green color scheme and an animated lightning background. And of course, webrings, guestbook, and a permanent under construction gif. Those were the days! Your sites looked a lot better than mine.

[rheasilvia]

You too?? That color scheme seems to have been more or less mandatory! And I remember the animated lightning - wow, that was everywhere for a little while. Like snowflakes and sparkles - a very stylish choice!

I'd forgotten about the "under contruction" gifs. They really were everywhere!

Now I'm feeling nostalgic. ;-)

[eva_rosen]

The raven lady should have been the host of a The Cure rpf site (if there was one. What am I saying, of course there was). But hey, neither of these were that terrible. Except the Red and Black archive, OMG.

[rheasilvia]

Hee, you are right, she totally should have been! She was not the perfect match for X-Files, really, but at least the color scheme fit, as well as the general witchiness vibes.

YES, OMG, the archive was an extreme case. I take no responsibility for that one! :-)

[riventhorn]

Haha, yes I remember sites like this! And also all the fandom specific archives, like Fiction Alley for HP. What I find fascinating is how it is only once things have evolved that the older stuff suddenly seems so funny. At the time, all of this was like Really Cool.

[rheasilvia]

There were *so many archives*. I remember making the rounds, checking all the archives and all the rec pages to see if anything new had been posted, and then checking again...

It really was pretty cool, absolutely! Even when I had trouble reading some of the more extreme color combinations, and the sites that went overboard with the animated backgrounds and flashing gifs tended to make me nervous. (The disclaimer pages that forced you to read half a novella to find the link to the stories did always make me roll my eyes a bit, though.)

[maggie33]

Oh, wow, I remember The Red and the Black Archive - that brings back memories. And I've just now realized that you're the author of Men At Some Time - my favorite Once A Thief fic ever. And I see it's on AO3, so I'm going to re-read it now. :)

[rheasilvia]

How cool is it that you remember that specific archive?! It's so wonderful how many fannish veterans are still around today, still fannish and falling for new fandoms. :-)

OMG, you remember that story? Heee! I loved Once a Thief so much - it really was something special, even though fandom did not linger there very long IIRC.

[trobadora]

Wow, that takes me back!

[rheasilvia]

Your icon! *dies* Who or what is Hoschi?

[demitas]

Oh man the memories, lol.

I guess old-school web design is kind of making a comeback? (Article from Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell fame on the topic) I'm... not sure I'm ready to go back, personally, haha. But then again I'm on a weird early '90s aesthetic kick right now, so maybe it's only a matter of time before I succumb.

[rheasilvia]

Oh dear, really, is it making a comeback? I am definitely not ready! The link seems to lead to a 404 page, so I am not sure which aspects of yesterday's excesses are looking attractive to today's pioneering young designers, but I certainly hope it isn't the color schemes. Or the blinking text and flashing backgrounds. O_O

The memories, though. Yes! From the safe distance of today, I am rather fond of those websites. :-)

[firestar]

Oh my god, the flashbacks. XD While I was never in X-Files fandom, it still reminds me of something. Maybe a Stargate archive? Hmmm.

[rheasilvia]

I knoowww! It seems simultaneously like yesterday and a hundred years ago. :-)

I don't have any other archive pages saved, sadly (I don't even know why on earth I saved that one, though I am glad I did for historic reasons). If I remember correctly, though, that XF archive's look was a fairly common and popular one for smaller (non-automated) archives, at least in the scifi corner of the world.

[asya_ana]

These were DELIGHTFUL. Although we can't always be trusted, I do love the way everyone had such ownership over their space. <3

[rheasilvia]

I don't know if delightful is precisely the word I would choose, but they certainly do have me all nostalgic! :-) At the time, they felt very modern and stylish - even the RatB archive.

Although we can't always be trusted, I do love the way everyone had such ownership over their space.

I love the way you phrased that! :-) Yes! In a very real way, it was a truly pioneering time.

[anotherslashfan]

Ah, this brings back so many memories of my first years browsing for fanfic online! I also definitely visited your websites to read your stories, both version You Too Can Learn HTML (for The Gift of an Enemy) and the most recent one (for Learning How To Lose).

[rheasilvia]

Yes! Finding fanfic was such a different experience back then - I remember it well! And I love how many people who were already in fandom back then are still around today - and that we seem to find ourselves again and again. It makes me happy. <3

(BTW, I didn't have The Gift of an Enemy on my website until well after the first one - Quoth the Raven was the first site it went up on. I always kept the stories themselves very clean and simple, though; merely text with a white background, no frills. That may be why it reminds you more of the bare-bones site than the Raven Lady. *g*)

[likealeafonthewind]

OMG, the memories. I had a really basic Geocities website but I didn't keep it up for long. I just remember setting up a guestbook for it and fiddling with a page counter.

Also, yes, I totally remember having to hunt through a disclaimer page to find the embedded hidden link to get into the archive. And some sites even set up a false link so if you clicked the wrong thing, it just took you to a page that said you were too young to be there.

I still think about setting up my own site (and now I actually have original content for it) but AO3 makes it so easy to format fic that I hadn't really looked into it. But I saw another commenter here say that you never know what might happen in the future which *sigh* is so true.

[rheasilvia]

The page counters - and the false links! Oh boy, yes. :-) It feels like it was ages ago...

I'm the same - AO3 is convenient and quick and I am too lazy to put up my stories on my own website, too, when there isn't really a need. Not right now, at any rate! Mekare is absolutely right, we shouldn't expect AO3 to be around forever, but I also don't think we have to prepare alternatives right now. When and if it happens, we'll find a way - whether it's back to individual sites and smaller archives, or something entirely new.

[abyss_valkyrie]

Believe it or not,I'd have been tempted to go read on Eroica overload and Red&Black archive!

[rheasilvia]

Oh, I believe it! I read stories on pages like it all the time, back then. Even though I did have trouble with some color combos and the more excessive blinking and flashing sites, I never really questioned it back then. It was just what the fannish internet looked like. :-)

[stranger]

I can't fault the Eroica website, since I okayed the design. In retrospect, it's a bit... pink... but it certainly suited the title character in that manga. Roses! Guns! Over-wrought declarations of love! Death threats! All at the same time! If anything, scrolled lettering and pink was overly restrained.

Also, thank you again, from my younger self, for the whole website. I loved the Raven Lady and the green Pen Lady, and all the X-Files stories.

[rheasilvia]

it certainly suited the title character in that manga

That is definitely true! Nobody should ever let Dorian design a website - it would not end well, and an excess of pink would be the least of it.

And hey, those were good times, regardless of our color schemes.

You are more than welcome! Thank *you* for letting me archive your wonderful stories, and for being so nice about my younger self's design choices! I am using the Methos defence a lot these days - it's true, though. Times were different! We were different! ;-)

[ranalore]

OMG, I remember the RatB archive! And you wrote "The Gift of an Enemy!" You are that Sylvia!!! I actually didn't read much XF fic, because I hated David Duchovny, and Mulder by extension, but that story was recced to me as a Krycek fan, and I adored it so much.

I've always had vision-linked migraines, so the dark backgrounds, the dark text on dark backgrounds, and the things like blinking text and gifs, were all challenges for me; which begs the question why, when I taught myself HTML and set up my own first website, I too succumbed to a dark background (and eyebleedingly neon graphic elements, but the text was white!). Sadly, I never thought to screencap any incarnation, but the one I switched over to and which is still in existence--if very out-of-date--is here. At the time, I thought it was super clean and readable, and it matched my custom LJ theme. Now I think the background of the sidebar's too busy, as are the headers, which are hard too read, and the font overall is too light. If I were updating it, I'd change the base font to black. Of course, if I were updating it, I'd probably bribe someone else to do it, because I think it would require CSS, and every time I try to parse that, my brain just gives up and wanders away to see what's in the hallway vending machines or something.

[rheasilvia]

Your icon is brilliant!! So very fitting. :-)

I love how many XF fans are turning up in Guardian. Though really, come to think of it - the tone and style of the shows are very different (which I am grateful for), but the basic themes do overlap. Hmmmm...

XF was a challenging show in many ways, though fortunately I didn't know anything about the actors (the myth arc plot issues were more than enough for me to deal with). I am very glad you enjoyed Gift of an Enemy anyway! To be honest I am a little afraid to reread it after all this time, since I suspect it might not have aged well...

Yikes, it must have been rough braving the sites of ye olde fandom with the threat of migraines looming. And it certainly does show the extent to which fannish fashions determine our fannish output. I've noticed it in writing styles, too. Fascinating, really!

It's too bad your earliest site is lost to time, but your most recent site is not bad at all. A bit busy perhaps, but I'd say you were well ahead of the curve when it comes to design. ;-)

[lilacsigil]

I'm so nostalgic now!

[rheasilvia]

Me too! The websites were sometimes a challenge to read, and stories were definitely harder to find, but it was a great fannish time. :-)

[yantantether]

This gave me wonderful nostalgia, because I was a Mulder/Krycek fan and I'm 100% sure I would have been reading your fic! Maybe around 1999 or 2000? The archive page in particular looks *so* familiar.

Also, it's wonderful that you still have these because it's real internet history.

[rheasilvia]

Wow, I really can't get over the number of XF fans in Guardian fandom! I am tempted to do a poll on people's previous fandoms, for science. ;-)

YES, it was such a great time for fandom! Looking at these old designs is really taking me back, too. I have no idea why I saved all of these, especially the RatB archive page, but now I wish I'd saved something from TER/MA, too. (I suspect it looked pretty much the same, really. *g*)

[galaxysoup]

Yessssss you posted them!! :D It was definitely worth the wait. Oh, the nostalgia!!

I'll have to start the hunt for my old sites now that you've posted yours. If only I'd written down somewhere what I titled them!

[rheasilvia]

ROFL! Your icon is so great. :-)

The nostalgia somehow makes all the eye-searing color combinations and blinking elements seem... almost charming? Errm. Kind of.

YESS! Show us your old sites! Don't be shy!

[tinny]

I had one (or two?) like that, too. They were terrible! They had floating images with badly made integrated shadows. /o\

But honestly, those were the times... *G*

Those all look perfectly fine to my old, old eyes. <3

[rheasilvia]

I like to think I skirted the worst excesses, given that I didn't even have an animated background, but still...

But honestly, those were the times

Yeah, times were different! Culture can drive you to consider all kinds of behavior perfectly normal. ;-) And before you know it, you will be living out all of your illicit fantasies of wild color combination, bad photo manips and animated lightning backgrounds...

[tinny]

OMG I found it, the wayback machine still has it:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010826061247/http://www.geocities.com:80/Hollywood/Cinema/5432/index.html

[rheasilvia]

OMG, it is a work of art!!! The orange/yellow textured background! The mirrored floating heads!!

I am in awe. I seriously love it! :-)

[ariunderscore]

OMG, I'm afraid to even say anything about websites *hides from you*

(but sp.net is still up. I keep meaning to totally prune it, because OMG EMBARRASSMENT, but... *sigh* that would mean some kind of _effort_)

I loved your green background, btw. So soothing. And I did read on pretty much all of the sites shown.

[rheasilvia]

Strangeplaces is really nice, though! I still like it - it's simple and elegant. I don't think you need to be embarrassed at all.

Not for sp.net, at any rate, though if you do have old website crimes to your name, I would love to see! Come on, share. We've all been there. :-)

Pen Lady's green background grew on me, although I really would have preferred a different color. I'm glad you liked it! :-) And hey, it could have been so much worse. ;-)

[paintedmaypole]

I am fairly positive that I remember reading fic on some of those websites. :D

LOL. I forgot about hunting for the commas in disclaimers. Good times...

[rheasilvia]

Oooh, your icon! I love that there are so many vintage fans around again these days. Makes me feel young again! :-)

I forgot about hunting for the commas in disclaimers.

*g* Yeah, that detail really sticks in my memory for some reason. I don't even remember being particularly annoyed about it at the time, but...

Good times indeed. :-)