3 ms·

> In the early days of websites people often just had articles organized by topic on their website that interested readers could peruse. I remember it differen

by kibwen 4y ago

> In the early days of websites people often just had articles organized by topic on their website that interested readers could peruse. I remember it differently. Personal websites of the day were structured much like blogs would be, with a single index page listing all the articles in reverse-chronological order (or for the lazy/unconcerned with bandwidth, a big honking text file with new entries appended to the top). What you're describing wasn't the blog precursors, but the wiki precursors, with pages nicely organized according to topic (with copious links to the related sites in your webring). I agree that one of the biggest original draws of the "blog" concept was the convenient comments section, but in retrospect comments aren't at all necessary to the concept of "blogging", especially since the term now encompasses the pre-blog activity that was previously just "throwing up random articles on your own personal domain". As for the view count trap, we all prominently displayed our "N people have viewed this page" widgets on Geocities. :P

bnralt 4y ago
> Personal websites of the day were structured much like blogs would be, with a single index page listing all the articles in reverse-chronological order (or for the lazy/unconcerned with bandwidth, a big honking text file with new entries appended to the top). I don't think that was the norm at all outside of news sites. Like I said, there might be a what's new page, but I remember sites mostly organizing articles by topic, and updating them inside the article. See, for instance, the Marathon Story Page[1]. All of the articles are there on the side bar, organized by topic. There is a "What's New" section, but it's not useful for reaching the bulk of the site. It contains updates, not the content. The blog movement flipped this. You can see this shift in action by looking at the site superdickery.com. If you look at early versions of the site[2], it's nicely organized based on topic. Then at some point the join the ongoing trend and turn it into a blog[3], and almost all the content becomes obscure and difficult to find. [1] https://marathon.bungie.org/story/ https://marathon.bungie.org/story/ [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20070829035629/http://www.superdickery.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070829035629/http://www.superd... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20150831061840/http://www.superdickery.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150831061840/http://www.superd...

by kibwen 4y ago

bnralt 4y ago

> Personal websites of the day were structured much like blogs would be, with a single index page listing all the articles in reverse-chronological order (or for the lazy/unconcerned with bandwidth, a big honking text file with new entries appended to the top). I don't think that was the norm at all outside of news sites. Like I said, there might be a what's new page, but I remember sites mostly organizing articles by topic, and updating them inside the article. See, for instance, the Marathon Story Page[1]. All of the articles are there on the side bar, organized by topic. There is a "What's New" section, but it's not useful for reaching the bulk of the site. It contains updates, not the content. The blog movement flipped this. You can see this shift in action by looking at the site superdickery.com. If you look at early versions of the site[2], it's nicely organized based on topic. Then at some point the join the ongoing trend and turn it into a blog[3], and almost all the content becomes obscure and difficult to find. [1] https://marathon.bungie.org/story/ https://marathon.bungie.org/story/ [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20070829035629/http://www.superdickery.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070829035629/http://www.superd... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20150831061840/http://www.superdickery.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150831061840/http://www.superd...