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I don’t think it’s any harder now than it was then. It’s not like people somehow automatically knew where to get free hosting or how to use it. They’d learn it

I don’t think it’s any harder now than it was then. It’s not like people somehow automatically knew where to get free hosting or how to use it. They’d learn it from friends, or books, or online sources. You can do the same today. The only difference in difficulty is that the resources are much more readily available and there’s far more high quality free software you can use. (Anyone remember paying for an FTP client?) If it seems harder today, it’s only because the newer options are so much easier. Back in the day, if you wanted to put something up for people to read, you figured out web hosting or you didn’t do it. Now, you figure out web hosting or you post it on Medium/Facebook/whatever.

Raphmedia 7y ago
Yes and no. I remember as a child, I simply clicked the little "built with Geocities" or "built with [Free Blog provider]" badge at the bottom of the sites I went to and then read what those services were. Created an account, put text and images in the WYSIWYG and saved. There you go, the site was online.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  Similarly, I think I got started because AOL added a "feature" of free web host space, and curious about such new features I explored using it. As much as Usenet laments that first part of "Eternal September" when AOL opened up a ton of such features to become a "real" ISP, they also launched a lot of test space for early website design for some of us. (At one point I think I had all 5 screen-names that AOL allowed per account just for website hosting. I was privileged in that no one else in the household ever needed to use AOL much, I suppose in hindsight.) I remember moving stuff to GeoCities and Angelfire and weirder lost cousins like XOOM only when AOL started adding hidden fees for web space (I recall something like they started with a 10MB/screen-name free cap and then dropped to 1MB/screen-name cap), and then it was more important when the cost structure of AOL itself couldn't compete with other ISPs and it was time to move on from AOL dial-up to DSL. It's a shame that "free web space" stopped being a competitive "feature" for ISPs. I like the tilde.town aesthetic of bringing back shared shell space. I sometimes wonder if there were a way to make something like that a "feature" that any kid "already has access to and should explore", but doing that at scale seems tough. Maybe more reason to see if we can do interesting things in decentralized web and decentralized web discovery mechanics as most people's home computers are already more capable than many of the very web servers ISPs used early in the web when free space was a competitive feature (they are just locked behind too many NAT layers and firewalls, for both good and bad reasons).
  - Raphmedia 7y ago
    I haven't played with it, but I know that there's https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/ which is a spiritual successor.

Raphmedia 7y ago

Yes and no. I remember as a child, I simply clicked the little "built with Geocities" or "built with [Free Blog provider]" badge at the bottom of the sites I went to and then read what those services were. Created an account, put text and images in the WYSIWYG and saved. There you go, the site was online.

WorldMaker 7y ago
Similarly, I think I got started because AOL added a "feature" of free web host space, and curious about such new features I explored using it. As much as Usenet laments that first part of "Eternal September" when AOL opened up a ton of such features to become a "real" ISP, they also launched a lot of test space for early website design for some of us. (At one point I think I had all 5 screen-names that AOL allowed per account just for website hosting. I was privileged in that no one else in the household ever needed to use AOL much, I suppose in hindsight.) I remember moving stuff to GeoCities and Angelfire and weirder lost cousins like XOOM only when AOL started adding hidden fees for web space (I recall something like they started with a 10MB/screen-name free cap and then dropped to 1MB/screen-name cap), and then it was more important when the cost structure of AOL itself couldn't compete with other ISPs and it was time to move on from AOL dial-up to DSL. It's a shame that "free web space" stopped being a competitive "feature" for ISPs. I like the tilde.town aesthetic of bringing back shared shell space. I sometimes wonder if there were a way to make something like that a "feature" that any kid "already has access to and should explore", but doing that at scale seems tough. Maybe more reason to see if we can do interesting things in decentralized web and decentralized web discovery mechanics as most people's home computers are already more capable than many of the very web servers ISPs used early in the web when free space was a competitive feature (they are just locked behind too many NAT layers and firewalls, for both good and bad reasons).
- Raphmedia 7y ago
  I haven't played with it, but I know that there's https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/ which is a spiritual successor.