13 ms·

Pizza Hut’s First Website

246 points by for_i_in_range 7y ago

baxtr 7y ago
I thought I’d see a very old version, but I just see the current website... is that their first?!
- okramcivokram 7y ago
  Yeah, I'm getting redirected to the current website too. You can see the page archived here: http://archive.is/https://www.pizzahut.com/assets/pizzanet/home.html http://archive.is/https://www.pizzahut.com/assets/pizzanet/h...
wideasleep1 7y ago
Requests too much PII! Run away!
- raywu 7y ago
  internet was a safe place!
- magashna 7y ago
  Pizza Identifier Information
harshbutfair 7y ago
Redirects to the pizzahut.com.au main page for me.
- nobrains 7y ago
  Redirects to pizzahut.ae for me which sucks because this page should be a corporate website not linked to a region.
- smnrchrds 7y ago
  In Canada, it redirects to pizzahut.ca
  - bch 7y ago
    With a bad cert, no less...
    - rosybox 7y ago
      The bad cert is for https://pizzahut.ca/ https://pizzahut.ca/ but https://www.pizzahut.ca/ https://www.pizzahut.ca/ is fine. The cert loaded on pizzahut.ca is for shortener.secureserver.net. The cert for www.pizzahut.ca is good for *.pizzahut.ca, but they're just not loading it for pizzahut.ca. :/
      - dubcanada 7y ago
        GoDaddy lol, why is PizzaHut using GoDaddy?
    - tgtweak 7y ago
      Easy solution, redirect to the proper fqdn (with www.) or request a multi domain certificate including both.
    - rconti 7y ago
      and a maple leaf in the logo, I'm sure
      - bch 7y ago
        Every pizza comes w automatic pineapple...
- jve 7y ago
  Yeah, looks like regional redirect. For me redirects to .lv which returns SERVER NOT FOUND error. Probably should have been PIZZA NOT FOUND error or PIZZA UNDELIVERABLE.
  - fortyseven 7y ago
    FoRbIdDeN pIZzA
- ollran 7y ago
  pizzahut.fi for me
  - ptaipale 7y ago
    Indeed. Too bad it doesn't redirect to pizza.hut.fi (which was a host at the Helsinki University of Technology, I think it was a Sun box).
- kiwijamo 7y ago
  Yep redirects to the .co.nz site for me.
- sgt 7y ago
  Redirects to pizzahut.co.za for me. I didn't even know there was a Pizza Hut in South Africa.
- qxfys 7y ago
  I've got redirected to pizzahut.se
- p4bl0 7y ago
  pizzahut.fr for me. Could someone rehost thevpage somewhere else so people outside the US can see it?
- jamil7 7y ago
  pizzahut.de for me with a broken back button so you can't leave again and have to close the tab...
  - anoncake 7y ago
    Try long-pressing or right clicking the back button to get a menu of past locations. This used to be a visible and discoverabledrop down menu in most browsers but (insert rant about modern UI design here).
    - jamil7 7y ago
      Thanks for the tip.
segfaultbuserr 7y ago
I got a 403 forbidden message, but archive.org works. * https://web.archive.org/web/20140123215657/https://www.pizzahut.com/assets/pizzanet/home.html https://web.archive.org/web/20140123215657/https://www.pizza... > PizzaNet is Pizza Hut's Electronic Storefront and is brought to you by Pizza Hut® and The Santa Cruz Operation® What, the original SCO, THE Unix company, built the website for Pizza Hut? The original SCO dissolved in 2001, so it must be earlier?
- caf 7y ago
  archive.org has that main page archived as far back as December 1996: https://web.archive.org/web/19961219205128/http://www.pizzahut.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19961219205128/http://www.pizzah...
  - kalleboo 7y ago
    There's a gorgeous HTML comment in there, referring to a 1994 creation date **************************************************************************** * * * PIZZA HUT INC. * * * * PHI proprietary information: the enclosed materials contain * * proprietary information of Pizza Hut Inc. and shall * * not be disclosed in whole or in any part to any third party * * or used by any person for any purpose, without written consent * * of PHI. Duplication of any portion of these materials shall * * include this legend. * * * **************************************************************************** ** ** HTML index.html ** ** DESCRIPTION Home Page. ** ** REVISIONS ** Date Who Comments ** ---- --- -------- ** 08/18/94 SCO created. **
    - pjc50 7y ago
      "Shall not be disclosed to anyone" on a public facing web page. It took a long time to train people out of that one. Remember email signature disclaimers? Still some of those around.
xs83 7y ago
What was the actual date on this? I assume it was wayyyy before 2014 haha. Imagine telling them back then that someone could fill out all the details on the website, choose their pizza and customise toppings AND have it delivered by a robot. They'd think you were high!
- rachelbythebay 7y ago
  I remember it like that in 1994. I checked some old chat logs, and sure enough, it was “unchanged for 3 years” in 1997.
- Stratoscope 7y ago
  If you actually pulled that off, you could be the lucky recipient of a $375 million investment from SoftBank! https://www.google.com/search?q=softbank+zume+pizza https://www.google.com/search?q=softbank+zume+pizza (Full disclosure: I tried the pizza. It was... not very good. Amici's next time!)
- aflag 7y ago
  You could already select the toppings. Drone technology was not prevalent back then, but no one would think you were high. They were living the dot-com bubble. They would probably invest in that idea if anyone pitched it the right way.
nodesocket 7y ago
Who is The Santa Cruz Operation®?
- belltaco 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Operation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Operation
  - QualityReboot 7y ago
    See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes
    - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
      It's important to clarify that the SCO Group in the Linux disputes was not the original Santa Cruz Operation, Santa Cruz Operation sold all Unix business to Caldera Systems in 2001, and it was Caldera Systems's CEO who started a bunch of lawsuits, suing everyone, Red Hat, and various Linux users, they even sued Novell for the Unix trademark, and obviously got a notorious reputation and turned SCO into a dirty world. And of course, it almost lost all cases and turned SCO as a company into an utter piece of garbage. Seriously, what was the CEO thinking about?! I guess Caldera Systems purchased SCO and they suddenly found the days of commercial proprietary Unix were ending and the purchase was a mistake, and this is how they started its assaults. Unlike the SCO Group, the original SCO didn't have such a bad reputation. Quite a few hackers in the Unix world worked with the original SCO. Also it used to hold a Unix conference, speakers included Linus Torvalds.
      - bborud 7y ago
        Ah, the poetry of naming a company after a hole in the ground.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
belltaco 7y ago
Pizzanet was started in August 1994, and was hosted at Pizza Hut Headquarters in Wichita, Kansas. https://web.archive.org/web/20120609100313/http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199408/msg00057.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120609100313/http://www.intere...
harikb 7y ago
I wonder if they will be forced to add a GDPR notice for an unlisted subpage :) Oh they have Google Analytics and a link to a now-404-ed JS https://www.pizzahut.com/akam/11/6df12bd5 https://www.pizzahut.com/akam/11/6df12bd5 . It is like they tried to maintain/upgrade at some point.
dawnerd 7y ago
Didn't know they had Google Analytics back then.
- raywu 7y ago
  Good tip to check the console.
- mekane8 7y ago
  Came here to say that I bet that wasn't part of the original site!
p0cc 7y ago
This is not strictly Pizza Hut's first website. Pizza Hut's first website was built in 1994 [1]. This webpage has Javascript (1995) [2] running Google Tag Manager (2012) [3]. The article about Pizza Hut's first website [1] provides more context than just the webpage. [1]: https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/postscript/pizzanet/ https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/postscript/pizzanet/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#History [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Advertising_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Advert...
- tgtweak 7y ago
  Amusingly, the date on this article and the fact it still loads today. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-08-25-fi-31168-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-08-25-fi-31168-...
  - jeffwass 7y ago
    Wow, very prescient amazing article! Quote near beginning to put things in context of where we were back in 1994 : “ To participate in the pilot, hungry Santa Cruzers need computers with Internet access and a version of an Internet interface program called Mosaic.” But other interesting predictions: “Instead of simply letting people order a pizza, why not let them design it as well? Instead of showing an ordinary menu with a list of toppings, show a picture of a pizza with the toppings clustered on the side.” And then : “Why not customized T-shirts? Log on to the Internet and browse through assorted logos and designs. Mix, match and modify them to suit your interest. Then superimpose them onto the virtual T-shirt on the screen. Hit the right key and within 48 hours your new shirt is Fed-Exed to the desired address. Of course, this network designability concept easily extends to bouquets of flowers, boxes of chocolates, fruit baskets and the $6.85-billion annual market in mail-order clothes shopping. It would be perfect for all kinds of gift giving.”
    - CamperBob2 7y ago
      “Instead of simply letting people order a pizza, why not let them design it as well? Instead of showing an ordinary menu with a list of toppings, show a picture of a pizza with the toppings clustered on the side.” Whoever does this for Mongolian BBQ delivery will be the next Bill Gates.
bobbygoodlatte 7y ago
"Y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music, movies, microcode (software), and high-speed pizza delivery." —Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson
- Iv 7y ago
  "2020 was the year that would decide between two pizza deliveries techniques. Amazon-Google drone-based delivery or the MIT's supersonic pizza railgun"
  - yk 7y ago
    An hypersonic railgun could cook the pizza using air friction. Also, it would be faster.
    - Iv 7y ago
      But more expensive. However engineers estimate that an appropriate rail gun would have 10 times the range of an average drone so would cover a wider area.
    - lioeters 7y ago
      Hmm, pretty brilliant point, to cook it during transport to be ready on arrival.
    - theandrewbailey 7y ago
      In the future, we can make uncooked pizzas durable enough to survive that and still be edible.
axaxs 7y ago
In a way, I miss the naive old web. Now you get popups, requests to have your location, prompts to sign in before you can get deals, etc. In many ways a simple web form asking for pizza is a better user experience.
- stockkid 7y ago
  I had a similar thought when I landed on the site. On the other hand, some features/trends of modern websites could improve some aspects of our user experience. For instance, automatically getting my location could be sometimes useful. Makes me think where the optimal middle ground is.
  - axaxs 7y ago
    When ready to order, I agree. However, when browsing for what's available, it's a frustrating experience. The last time I wanted to see prices from Papa Johns, I couldn't. They want you to sign in with your pizza profile, which I didn't have. Ok fine, enter your zip code, then pick delivery or pickup, then pick the store. Why do I need to do all of this to see prices? It more often than not just makes me skip it and move on to a competitor...
    - rasz 7y ago
      Because after all that typing you are already invested and its hard to let go all this work to waste, might as well just order and be done with it.
- genidoi 7y ago
  Imo, whatever annoying tradeoffs a commercialized web brought with it, it was wholly worth it for giving literally anybody the ability to learn anything they are curious about. 1080p Harvard compsci lectures[0] available for free would have been a pipe dream in 1995. [0] https://youtu.be/e9Eds2Rc_x8 https://youtu.be/e9Eds2Rc_x8
  - notzuck 7y ago
smacktoward 7y ago
And ten years later they were innovating online again with "slash-pizza": https://money.cnn.com/2005/02/17/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm?cnn=yes https://money.cnn.com/2005/02/17/commentary/game_over/column...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
geniium 7y ago
What I see is : "Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.pizzahut.com/assets/pizzanet/home.html" http://www.pizzahut.com/assets/pizzanet/home.html" on this server. Reference #18.8a0a1602.1571725900.474a5bfd" This could have been the old Pizza Hut web site, but I think this is just an error, maybe due to server load?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
quickthrower2 7y ago
Now THAT is a tech company!
darepublic 7y ago
Looking at this old site, I see the future of the web. This navbar + hero + a bunch of marketing fluff that nobody reads.. it's grandma/grandpa shit. It's like those walmart photograph frames with teddy bears on them. It seems cool now, you can make six figures making this shit, but it's ridiculous.
DonHopkins 7y ago
The Story of Sun Microsystems PizzaTool: How I accidentally ordered my first pizza over the internet. (Oct 1990) https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems-pizzatool-2a7992b4c797 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems...
mchaver 7y ago
Let's collect all the internet's historical pizza moments. I've collected a few from the comments here and added a few. - 1990, Don Hopkins uses the PizzaTool to fax a pizza order. - 1992, Snow Crash is published. Readers imagine interconnected virtual worlds and action packed pizza delivery. Often quoted book in regards to internet, MMORPGs and pizza. - 1994, Pizza Hut's Pizza Net allows users in Santa Cruz to order pizza. - May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz buys two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins (valued at around 30 USD at the time).
- welly 7y ago
  > May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz buys two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins (valued at around 30 USD at the time). 10,000 BTC = 63,317,800 GBP or 82,204,100 USD as of 2019-10-21 at 16:00 UTC A lot of pizza these days.
  - UserIsUnused 7y ago
    And bitcoin is very far from its historical max
  - auiya 7y ago
    I wonder if Pizza Hut still owns those 10k BTC they bought for the price of two pizzas?
    - _-___________-_ 7y ago
      IIRC, the transaction was between two people; Pizza Hut didn't touch any Bitcoin.
    - the137 7y ago
      If I remember correctly he traded the BTC to another user who then put the pizzas on his credit card
      - hople_ul 7y ago
        And it was Papa Johns, not Pizza Hut.
macintux 7y ago
At my university, someone did a demo of what ordering a pizza would look like online, using Pizza Hut's site as an example, sometime in 1994-95. I remember thinking to myself that was a ridiculous idea, because all of the stores would have to be wired up to the Internet, and who would do that? That ignored, of course, the possibility that a central location could take the orders and communicate them to the individual stores (which is how it worked for phone ordering at one point, maybe even today), and I completely whiffed on the future ubiquity of the Internet. You could have made a fortune betting against my computer prognostications in the 90s.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  Most people don't see the future coming. That's why we're so amazed at the people who do (and they make a killing doing so). When they revealed the iPad I was in an industrial design class in college and we relentlessly mocked it, sure that it would be a flop.
- coldpie 7y ago
  > That ignored, of course, the possibility that a central location could take the orders and communicate them to the individual stores (which is how it worked for phone ordering at one point, maybe even today) Wait, really? I worked in several pizza restaurants around the early 2000s and we always took the phone calls directly. It was very common to get questions about stuff like directions and opening hours, or weird special requests, which I can't imagine working very well with a remote call center setup. I don't want to doubt your claim, I'm just surprised to hear it.
  - macintux 7y ago
    The sad part of my failed prognostication was that I had worked as a Pizza Hut delivery driver a few years previously and that’s exactly what they did. People called a central dispatch and we received printouts of the orders. We would call the office to let them know our current projected delivery times, but other questions they could already answer.
  - jedimastert 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ctdonath 7y ago
Ah, memories. The frustration was they wouldn’t deliver from CA to NY. Fascinating to watch technology go from world-changing bleeding-edge to archeological discovery.
arethuza 7y ago
The first time I saw anything on a computer related to pizza ordering was the Sun NeWS pizzatool: https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems-pizzatool-2a7992b4c797 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems...
NoblePublius 7y ago
My father was head of marcom at SCO went this went live and my 8 year old self was one of the first people to use this site!
jplayer01 7y ago
Apparently, the site automatically redirects me to the standard German site. Fantastic. My hate for the modern web continues to grow. You could replace the protagonists of I Have No Mouth with walking, talking websites and it'd roughly mirror what I'm feeling right now. The only way I could see what everybody was talking about was by checking out https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/postscript/pizzanet/ https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/postscript/pizzanet/ and the archive.org page which were linked by somebody else.
dougb5 7y ago
By comparison, the current pizzahut.com home page makes 92 network requests, including 34 potential trackers according to Privacy Badger.
whalesalad 7y ago
Wow, reminds me of the good ol' days of SCO Unix bashing.
devwastaken 7y ago
A few years back their site wouldn't work with some adblocker options, I believe their js didn't handle the circumstances of if their geoip analytics was blocks. I just emailed their support, gave them the details, and they fixed it and gave me a $20 card. Was a nice transaction.
shujito 7y ago
I got redirected to the MX site
blakespot 7y ago
Mozart's Ghost!
dpkonofa 7y ago
While probably not really Pizza Hut's first web site, I think this goes a long way to show how a lot of the internet has actually regressed. We've gone from this simple form that just asks "Who wants pizza and where can we call you?" and, instead of going to "Who wants pizza and where should we bring it?", we went to ads and pop-ups and to a place where, arguably, the process is way more complicated than it needs to be. Advertising kinda ruined the internet.
spilk 7y ago
I remember the pizza ordering scene in The Net (1995) seemed very futuristic at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUSqX7B5DXs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUSqX7B5DXs
dmitrygr 7y ago
It is ... glorious! <BODY BGCOLOR=#d0d0d0 TEXT=#000000 LINK=#0000ff VLINK=#5500cc ALINK=#ff0000">
d-sc 7y ago
It loads so fast!

baxtr 7y ago

I thought I’d see a very old version, but I just see the current website... is that their first?!

okramcivokram 7y ago
Yeah, I'm getting redirected to the current website too. You can see the page archived here: http://archive.is/https://www.pizzahut.com/assets/pizzanet/home.html http://archive.is/https://www.pizzahut.com/assets/pizzanet/h...

wideasleep1 7y ago

Requests too much PII! Run away!

raywu 7y ago
internet was a safe place!
magashna 7y ago
Pizza Identifier Information

harshbutfair 7y ago

Redirects to the pizzahut.com.au main page for me.

nobrains 7y ago
Redirects to pizzahut.ae for me which sucks because this page should be a corporate website not linked to a region.
smnrchrds 7y ago
In Canada, it redirects to pizzahut.ca
- bch 7y ago
  With a bad cert, no less...
  - rosybox 7y ago
    The bad cert is for https://pizzahut.ca/ https://pizzahut.ca/ but https://www.pizzahut.ca/ https://www.pizzahut.ca/ is fine. The cert loaded on pizzahut.ca is for shortener.secureserver.net. The cert for www.pizzahut.ca is good for *.pizzahut.ca, but they're just not loading it for pizzahut.ca. :/
    - dubcanada 7y ago
      GoDaddy lol, why is PizzaHut using GoDaddy?
  - tgtweak 7y ago
    Easy solution, redirect to the proper fqdn (with www.) or request a multi domain certificate including both.
  - rconti 7y ago
    and a maple leaf in the logo, I'm sure
    - bch 7y ago
      Every pizza comes w automatic pineapple...
jve 7y ago
Yeah, looks like regional redirect. For me redirects to .lv which returns SERVER NOT FOUND error. Probably should have been PIZZA NOT FOUND error or PIZZA UNDELIVERABLE.
- fortyseven 7y ago
  FoRbIdDeN pIZzA
ollran 7y ago
pizzahut.fi for me
- ptaipale 7y ago
  Indeed. Too bad it doesn't redirect to pizza.hut.fi (which was a host at the Helsinki University of Technology, I think it was a Sun box).
kiwijamo 7y ago
Yep redirects to the .co.nz site for me.
sgt 7y ago
Redirects to pizzahut.co.za for me. I didn't even know there was a Pizza Hut in South Africa.
qxfys 7y ago
I've got redirected to pizzahut.se
p4bl0 7y ago
pizzahut.fr for me. Could someone rehost thevpage somewhere else so people outside the US can see it?
jamil7 7y ago
pizzahut.de for me with a broken back button so you can't leave again and have to close the tab...
- anoncake 7y ago
  Try long-pressing or right clicking the back button to get a menu of past locations. This used to be a visible and discoverabledrop down menu in most browsers but (insert rant about modern UI design here).
  - jamil7 7y ago
    Thanks for the tip.

segfaultbuserr 7y ago

I got a 403 forbidden message, but archive.org works. * https://web.archive.org/web/20140123215657/https://www.pizzahut.com/assets/pizzanet/home.html https://web.archive.org/web/20140123215657/https://www.pizza... > PizzaNet is Pizza Hut's Electronic Storefront and is brought to you by Pizza Hut® and The Santa Cruz Operation® What, the original SCO, THE Unix company, built the website for Pizza Hut? The original SCO dissolved in 2001, so it must be earlier?

caf 7y ago
archive.org has that main page archived as far back as December 1996: https://web.archive.org/web/19961219205128/http://www.pizzahut.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19961219205128/http://www.pizzah...
- kalleboo 7y ago
  There's a gorgeous HTML comment in there, referring to a 1994 creation date **************************************************************************** * * * PIZZA HUT INC. * * * * PHI proprietary information: the enclosed materials contain * * proprietary information of Pizza Hut Inc. and shall * * not be disclosed in whole or in any part to any third party * * or used by any person for any purpose, without written consent * * of PHI. Duplication of any portion of these materials shall * * include this legend. * * * **************************************************************************** ** ** HTML index.html ** ** DESCRIPTION Home Page. ** ** REVISIONS ** Date Who Comments ** ---- --- -------- ** 08/18/94 SCO created. **
  - pjc50 7y ago
    "Shall not be disclosed to anyone" on a public facing web page. It took a long time to train people out of that one. Remember email signature disclaimers? Still some of those around.

xs83 7y ago

What was the actual date on this? I assume it was wayyyy before 2014 haha. Imagine telling them back then that someone could fill out all the details on the website, choose their pizza and customise toppings AND have it delivered by a robot. They'd think you were high!

rachelbythebay 7y ago
I remember it like that in 1994. I checked some old chat logs, and sure enough, it was “unchanged for 3 years” in 1997.
Stratoscope 7y ago
If you actually pulled that off, you could be the lucky recipient of a $375 million investment from SoftBank! https://www.google.com/search?q=softbank+zume+pizza https://www.google.com/search?q=softbank+zume+pizza (Full disclosure: I tried the pizza. It was... not very good. Amici's next time!)
aflag 7y ago
You could already select the toppings. Drone technology was not prevalent back then, but no one would think you were high. They were living the dot-com bubble. They would probably invest in that idea if anyone pitched it the right way.

nodesocket 7y ago

Who is The Santa Cruz Operation®?

belltaco 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Operation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Operation
- QualityReboot 7y ago
  See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes
  - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
    It's important to clarify that the SCO Group in the Linux disputes was not the original Santa Cruz Operation, Santa Cruz Operation sold all Unix business to Caldera Systems in 2001, and it was Caldera Systems's CEO who started a bunch of lawsuits, suing everyone, Red Hat, and various Linux users, they even sued Novell for the Unix trademark, and obviously got a notorious reputation and turned SCO into a dirty world. And of course, it almost lost all cases and turned SCO as a company into an utter piece of garbage. Seriously, what was the CEO thinking about?! I guess Caldera Systems purchased SCO and they suddenly found the days of commercial proprietary Unix were ending and the purchase was a mistake, and this is how they started its assaults. Unlike the SCO Group, the original SCO didn't have such a bad reputation. Quite a few hackers in the Unix world worked with the original SCO. Also it used to hold a Unix conference, speakers included Linus Torvalds.
    - bborud 7y ago
      Ah, the poetry of naming a company after a hole in the ground.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

belltaco 7y ago

Pizzanet was started in August 1994, and was hosted at Pizza Hut Headquarters in Wichita, Kansas. https://web.archive.org/web/20120609100313/http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199408/msg00057.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120609100313/http://www.intere...

harikb 7y ago

I wonder if they will be forced to add a GDPR notice for an unlisted subpage :) Oh they have Google Analytics and a link to a now-404-ed JS https://www.pizzahut.com/akam/11/6df12bd5 https://www.pizzahut.com/akam/11/6df12bd5 . It is like they tried to maintain/upgrade at some point.

dawnerd 7y ago

Didn't know they had Google Analytics back then.

raywu 7y ago
Good tip to check the console.
mekane8 7y ago
Came here to say that I bet that wasn't part of the original site!

p0cc 7y ago

This is not strictly Pizza Hut's first website. Pizza Hut's first website was built in 1994 [1]. This webpage has Javascript (1995) [2] running Google Tag Manager (2012) [3]. The article about Pizza Hut's first website [1] provides more context than just the webpage. [1]: https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/postscript/pizzanet/ https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/postscript/pizzanet/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#History [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Advertising_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Advert...

tgtweak 7y ago
Amusingly, the date on this article and the fact it still loads today. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-08-25-fi-31168-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-08-25-fi-31168-...
- jeffwass 7y ago
  Wow, very prescient amazing article! Quote near beginning to put things in context of where we were back in 1994 : “ To participate in the pilot, hungry Santa Cruzers need computers with Internet access and a version of an Internet interface program called Mosaic.” But other interesting predictions: “Instead of simply letting people order a pizza, why not let them design it as well? Instead of showing an ordinary menu with a list of toppings, show a picture of a pizza with the toppings clustered on the side.” And then : “Why not customized T-shirts? Log on to the Internet and browse through assorted logos and designs. Mix, match and modify them to suit your interest. Then superimpose them onto the virtual T-shirt on the screen. Hit the right key and within 48 hours your new shirt is Fed-Exed to the desired address. Of course, this network designability concept easily extends to bouquets of flowers, boxes of chocolates, fruit baskets and the $6.85-billion annual market in mail-order clothes shopping. It would be perfect for all kinds of gift giving.”
  - CamperBob2 7y ago
    “Instead of simply letting people order a pizza, why not let them design it as well? Instead of showing an ordinary menu with a list of toppings, show a picture of a pizza with the toppings clustered on the side.” Whoever does this for Mongolian BBQ delivery will be the next Bill Gates.

bobbygoodlatte 7y ago

"Y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music, movies, microcode (software), and high-speed pizza delivery." —Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson

Iv 7y ago
"2020 was the year that would decide between two pizza deliveries techniques. Amazon-Google drone-based delivery or the MIT's supersonic pizza railgun"
- yk 7y ago
  An hypersonic railgun could cook the pizza using air friction. Also, it would be faster.
  - Iv 7y ago
    But more expensive. However engineers estimate that an appropriate rail gun would have 10 times the range of an average drone so would cover a wider area.
  - lioeters 7y ago
    Hmm, pretty brilliant point, to cook it during transport to be ready on arrival.
  - theandrewbailey 7y ago
    In the future, we can make uncooked pizzas durable enough to survive that and still be edible.

axaxs 7y ago

In a way, I miss the naive old web. Now you get popups, requests to have your location, prompts to sign in before you can get deals, etc. In many ways a simple web form asking for pizza is a better user experience.

stockkid 7y ago
I had a similar thought when I landed on the site. On the other hand, some features/trends of modern websites could improve some aspects of our user experience. For instance, automatically getting my location could be sometimes useful. Makes me think where the optimal middle ground is.
- axaxs 7y ago
  When ready to order, I agree. However, when browsing for what's available, it's a frustrating experience. The last time I wanted to see prices from Papa Johns, I couldn't. They want you to sign in with your pizza profile, which I didn't have. Ok fine, enter your zip code, then pick delivery or pickup, then pick the store. Why do I need to do all of this to see prices? It more often than not just makes me skip it and move on to a competitor...
  - rasz 7y ago
    Because after all that typing you are already invested and its hard to let go all this work to waste, might as well just order and be done with it.
genidoi 7y ago
Imo, whatever annoying tradeoffs a commercialized web brought with it, it was wholly worth it for giving literally anybody the ability to learn anything they are curious about. 1080p Harvard compsci lectures[0] available for free would have been a pipe dream in 1995. [0] https://youtu.be/e9Eds2Rc_x8 https://youtu.be/e9Eds2Rc_x8
- notzuck 7y ago

smacktoward 7y ago

And ten years later they were innovating online again with "slash-pizza": https://money.cnn.com/2005/02/17/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm?cnn=yes https://money.cnn.com/2005/02/17/commentary/game_over/column...

deleted 7y ago

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geniium 7y ago

What I see is : "Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.pizzahut.com/assets/pizzanet/home.html" http://www.pizzahut.com/assets/pizzanet/home.html" on this server. Reference #18.8a0a1602.1571725900.474a5bfd" This could have been the old Pizza Hut web site, but I think this is just an error, maybe due to server load?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

quickthrower2 7y ago

Now THAT is a tech company!

darepublic 7y ago

Looking at this old site, I see the future of the web. This navbar + hero + a bunch of marketing fluff that nobody reads.. it's grandma/grandpa shit. It's like those walmart photograph frames with teddy bears on them. It seems cool now, you can make six figures making this shit, but it's ridiculous.

DonHopkins 7y ago

The Story of Sun Microsystems PizzaTool: How I accidentally ordered my first pizza over the internet. (Oct 1990) https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems-pizzatool-2a7992b4c797 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems...

mchaver 7y ago

Let's collect all the internet's historical pizza moments. I've collected a few from the comments here and added a few. - 1990, Don Hopkins uses the PizzaTool to fax a pizza order. - 1992, Snow Crash is published. Readers imagine interconnected virtual worlds and action packed pizza delivery. Often quoted book in regards to internet, MMORPGs and pizza. - 1994, Pizza Hut's Pizza Net allows users in Santa Cruz to order pizza. - May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz buys two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins (valued at around 30 USD at the time).

welly 7y ago
> May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz buys two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins (valued at around 30 USD at the time). 10,000 BTC = 63,317,800 GBP or 82,204,100 USD as of 2019-10-21 at 16:00 UTC A lot of pizza these days.
- UserIsUnused 7y ago
  And bitcoin is very far from its historical max
- auiya 7y ago
  I wonder if Pizza Hut still owns those 10k BTC they bought for the price of two pizzas?
  - _-___________-_ 7y ago
    IIRC, the transaction was between two people; Pizza Hut didn't touch any Bitcoin.
  - the137 7y ago
    If I remember correctly he traded the BTC to another user who then put the pizzas on his credit card
    - hople_ul 7y ago
      And it was Papa Johns, not Pizza Hut.

macintux 7y ago

At my university, someone did a demo of what ordering a pizza would look like online, using Pizza Hut's site as an example, sometime in 1994-95. I remember thinking to myself that was a ridiculous idea, because all of the stores would have to be wired up to the Internet, and who would do that? That ignored, of course, the possibility that a central location could take the orders and communicate them to the individual stores (which is how it worked for phone ordering at one point, maybe even today), and I completely whiffed on the future ubiquity of the Internet. You could have made a fortune betting against my computer prognostications in the 90s.

nkrisc 7y ago
Most people don't see the future coming. That's why we're so amazed at the people who do (and they make a killing doing so). When they revealed the iPad I was in an industrial design class in college and we relentlessly mocked it, sure that it would be a flop.
coldpie 7y ago
> That ignored, of course, the possibility that a central location could take the orders and communicate them to the individual stores (which is how it worked for phone ordering at one point, maybe even today) Wait, really? I worked in several pizza restaurants around the early 2000s and we always took the phone calls directly. It was very common to get questions about stuff like directions and opening hours, or weird special requests, which I can't imagine working very well with a remote call center setup. I don't want to doubt your claim, I'm just surprised to hear it.
- macintux 7y ago
  The sad part of my failed prognostication was that I had worked as a Pizza Hut delivery driver a few years previously and that’s exactly what they did. People called a central dispatch and we received printouts of the orders. We would call the office to let them know our current projected delivery times, but other questions they could already answer.
- jedimastert 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

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ctdonath 7y ago

Ah, memories. The frustration was they wouldn’t deliver from CA to NY. Fascinating to watch technology go from world-changing bleeding-edge to archeological discovery.

arethuza 7y ago

The first time I saw anything on a computer related to pizza ordering was the Sun NeWS pizzatool: https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems-pizzatool-2a7992b4c797 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems...

NoblePublius 7y ago

My father was head of marcom at SCO went this went live and my 8 year old self was one of the first people to use this site!

jplayer01 7y ago

Apparently, the site automatically redirects me to the standard German site. Fantastic. My hate for the modern web continues to grow. You could replace the protagonists of I Have No Mouth with walking, talking websites and it'd roughly mirror what I'm feeling right now. The only way I could see what everybody was talking about was by checking out https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/postscript/pizzanet/ https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/postscript/pizzanet/ and the archive.org page which were linked by somebody else.

dougb5 7y ago

By comparison, the current pizzahut.com home page makes 92 network requests, including 34 potential trackers according to Privacy Badger.

whalesalad 7y ago

Wow, reminds me of the good ol' days of SCO Unix bashing.

devwastaken 7y ago

A few years back their site wouldn't work with some adblocker options, I believe their js didn't handle the circumstances of if their geoip analytics was blocks. I just emailed their support, gave them the details, and they fixed it and gave me a $20 card. Was a nice transaction.

shujito 7y ago

I got redirected to the MX site

blakespot 7y ago

Mozart's Ghost!

dpkonofa 7y ago

While probably not really Pizza Hut's first web site, I think this goes a long way to show how a lot of the internet has actually regressed. We've gone from this simple form that just asks "Who wants pizza and where can we call you?" and, instead of going to "Who wants pizza and where should we bring it?", we went to ads and pop-ups and to a place where, arguably, the process is way more complicated than it needs to be. Advertising kinda ruined the internet.

spilk 7y ago

I remember the pizza ordering scene in The Net (1995) seemed very futuristic at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUSqX7B5DXs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUSqX7B5DXs

dmitrygr 7y ago

It is ... glorious! <BODY BGCOLOR=#d0d0d0 TEXT=#000000 LINK=#0000ff VLINK=#5500cc ALINK=#ff0000">

d-sc 7y ago

It loads so fast!