7 ms·

Geocities Backgrounds

163 points by marcodiego 1y ago

https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles

486sx33 1y ago
Geocities was pretty darn cool. My very first website was there but just figuring the place out, the neighborhoods and the depth of the place was like a new adventure at the time. I chose area51
- bityard 1y ago
  Geocities hosted my second website, my first one was somewhere on CompuServe I think? I had a GeoCities site for quite a few years, somewhere at the top level of SiliconValley. I can't remember the 4-digit number and I've never been able to find it in any of the archives just by searching for it. (I likely deleted it some time in the early 2000's.)
  - sejje 1y ago
    I lost my first website, it was on angel fire. Frames layout, goldeneye fanboy page. They have a lot of the old sites, but not mine.
Gualdrapo 1y ago
As a person that loves tiled desktop wallpaper backgrounds, thank you
- medstrom 1y ago
  Just found that GNOME seems to have lost support for tiled wallpapers... Unfixed for years https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/1473 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/1473
chromehearts 1y ago
Wish I found this sooner; my first website I made many years ago contains 2 or 3 background images which I also found on various neocity sites (yungztrunks.de)
righthand 1y ago
Can’t tap tiles to change background on Firefox iOS.
- medstrom 1y ago
  Long-press and download the image?
  - righthand 1y ago
    Analog browsing, wouldn’t that just download the thumbnail not the actual gif?
    - inanutshellus 1y ago
      Those ain' thumbnails, whippersnapper. Them's the whole image.
      - righthand 1y ago
        Interesting. From the mobile view it appears the page has a right side menu with preview options of all the backgrounds with the space background set as the default tile but I guess I’m misinterpreting the page UI.
        nemomarx 1y ago
        The preview is probably just one imagine that would be tiled to create a full background. Isn't that how all backgrounds and wallpapers used to work?
        righthand 1y ago
        With the animation on the space background and how the page was previously squished on mobile it looked like preview thumbs for animated backgrounds.
        inanutshellus 1y ago
biofox 1y ago
They also make for great retro PowerPoint backgrounds :)
luc_ 1y ago
bless this mess
giancarlostoro 1y ago
Page doesn't load correctly for me, they seem to be hosting the images in a sketchy looking domain (I'm sure its not actually sketchy), corporate firewall is ruining my retro nostalgic experience.
- PixelMoondust 1y ago
  Oh, I'm sorry to hear it's not loading properly for you :c I host my images through filegarden and I certainly hope it's not sketchy because it's the best file hosting service I can find since I no longer use Imgur.
marcodiego 1y ago
Actually, the correct index is this one: https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles/backgroundsindex https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles/b...
- jihadjihad 1y ago
  @dang can we update the post's URL to this one? It seems more relevant and usable.
  - medstrom 1y ago
    I found it much less striking. The original link is perfect -- and subjectively, I find it more "usable" that it puts everything on a single page.
    - dang 1y ago
      Ok, I've put that link in the top text so people can access both.
- sp0rk 1y ago
  This page only contains links to about half of the backgrounds present on the page that is linked currently.
- dang 1y ago
  Changed from https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles. Thanks!
SpecialistK 1y ago
I love these - I wonder if anyone has put them together in an archive to download all at once?
- medstrom 1y ago
  In the spirit of "analog browsing", there is always https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall
luckystarr 1y ago
That page can't be very old because it doesn't use any frames!
jaynate 1y ago
Geocities and Angelfire are how I learned to program for the web. Amazing how much of the fundamentals of the web are still exactly the same as they were back then (90s). Just with a lot more layers of libraries today.
- giantrobot 1y ago
  A great thing about the Web is it can still be programmed just like it was thirty years ago. Unless you actually need an application a lot of web tooling and libraries are a waste of time. It's a great medium for actual documents.
  - spennant 1y ago
    What? No love for Perl scripts in cgi-bin/ ?
    - giantrobot 1y ago
      In today's world of stupidly fast CPUs and IO a CGI program can be surprisingly performant and effective.
  - soneil 1y ago
    The part that really feels different to me, is that I'm not sure that a 12yo equivalent of myself would get far with View Source anymore. I think that was my single greatest resource, and on a huge majority of sites it won't get you far anymore.
    - camcil 1y ago
      Being able to paste source into early version of Dreamweaver really made things "click" for me. Image maps, IFrames, and SSI really set you apart. Ah, thems were the days.
simoneau 1y ago
I think I recognize some of these as coming from a tiled background pack I used back in the 90s. Maybe associated with the Enlightenment Window Manager project?
p3rls 1y ago
yeahhh, but did you have a cool cjb.net redirect to show your friends in the progs channel?
tsumnia 1y ago
Dear Web Developers: THIS is what I want for surfing the World Wide Web. Simple UI, maybe some tiled gifs, and that's it! Stop all the corpo-brutalist nonsense and give me back my flame gifs!
- reaperducer 1y ago
  I once rebuilt an internal employee directory tool, and added the ability for people to add an emoji below their name. Before that, hardly anyone used the internal directory, which is probably why I inherited it (I was the stig). After the feature was added, people went nuts and used it all the time. I feel bad for the guy who runs it now, as I understand he is bombarded with feature requests from the employees.
  - cluckindan 1y ago
    Making things a little bit fun and personal yields engagement, who would have thought.
- rjh29 1y ago
  Obligatory mention of Hypnospace Outlaw, a game where you play a moderator of a 1990s AOL-style internet (right down to the tiled backgrounds and flame gifs) and uncover a mystery.
standardUser 1y ago
I miss having my own little website. It wasn't a blog or even a weblog because those words didn't exist yet. I especially miss the mix of icons and widgets I'd curate at the bottom of the page, the most important of which was the counter (which was mostly counting my own visit to my own page). This was probably around 1994 when I was 12 or 13.
- konfusinomicon 1y ago
  i recall the glorious day the linkexchange counter on my site hit 10k. still waiting on my check for $176 from featuring cyberthrills casino banner ads though.
gopher2000 1y ago
Is there a way to dig up old GeoCities pages? My only thought is to remember the URL and get it from internet archive but I can't remember my 4 digit number. I think I was in the "Baja" area.
- PixelMoondust 1y ago
  There definitely is!!! There's a few GeoCities archives projects out there, but these ones specifically let's you search through the areas: https://geocities.restorativland.org/Baja/ https://geocities.restorativland.org/Baja/ https://www.oocities.org/baja/ https://www.oocities.org/baja/ If you can find your site here (you may not be able to because I'm sure these sites don't have every single site archived), then you could try to find it through the Internet Archive, or through geocities.ws!
miffe 1y ago
Anyone remember a software to generate images such as these? I think it was called something like Terralogic Texture Maker (ttm.exe) and I've been looking for it for years.
- 127 1y ago
  I would recommend https://rodzilla.itch.io/material-maker https://rodzilla.itch.io/material-maker It's free and fabulous.
- Lammy 1y ago
  It was TeraLogic; one ‘r’ :) DOS ver 0.95: https://www.geocities.ws/freewin3/textrev.html https://www.geocities.ws/freewin3/textrev.html Win32 ver 1.1: https://www.jazz2online.com/tilesets/stuff/TTM32.zip https://www.jazz2online.com/tilesets/stuff/TTM32.zip Win32 ver 2.0: https://web.archive.org/web/20240213195823/https://www.sac.sk/download/graph/ttm32_20.zip https://web.archive.org/web/20240213195823/https://www.sac.s... Both Win32 versions worked for me in Wine just now: https://i.imgur.com/nRan0Z0.png https://i.imgur.com/nRan0Z0.png (1.1) https://i.imgur.com/976wzwh.png https://i.imgur.com/976wzwh.png (2.0)
  - miffe 1y ago
    Thank you!
nonhaver 1y ago
dont forget blinkies! https://adriansblinkiecollection.neocities.org/ https://adriansblinkiecollection.neocities.org/
PixelMoondust 1y ago
Oh, hey, that's my archive!!! I noticed a sudden jump in activity to my neocities and through a little bit of sleuthing (a single search on Twitter) I found a post, and through that post I found this website...kinda wild to see my little archive being noticed anywhere, but I am definitely flattered!

163 points by marcodiego 1y ago

https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles

Geocities was pretty darn cool. My very first website was there but just figuring the place out, the neighborhoods and the depth of the place was like a new adventure at the time. I chose area51

bityard 1y ago
Geocities hosted my second website, my first one was somewhere on CompuServe I think? I had a GeoCities site for quite a few years, somewhere at the top level of SiliconValley. I can't remember the 4-digit number and I've never been able to find it in any of the archives just by searching for it. (I likely deleted it some time in the early 2000's.)
- sejje 1y ago
  I lost my first website, it was on angel fire. Frames layout, goldeneye fanboy page. They have a lot of the old sites, but not mine.

Gualdrapo 1y ago

As a person that loves tiled desktop wallpaper backgrounds, thank you

medstrom 1y ago
Just found that GNOME seems to have lost support for tiled wallpapers... Unfixed for years https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/1473 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/1473

chromehearts 1y ago

Wish I found this sooner; my first website I made many years ago contains 2 or 3 background images which I also found on various neocity sites (yungztrunks.de)

righthand 1y ago

Can’t tap tiles to change background on Firefox iOS.

medstrom 1y ago
Long-press and download the image?
- righthand 1y ago
  Analog browsing, wouldn’t that just download the thumbnail not the actual gif?
  - inanutshellus 1y ago
    Those ain' thumbnails, whippersnapper. Them's the whole image.
    - righthand 1y ago
      Interesting. From the mobile view it appears the page has a right side menu with preview options of all the backgrounds with the space background set as the default tile but I guess I’m misinterpreting the page UI.
      - nemomarx 1y ago
        The preview is probably just one imagine that would be tiled to create a full background. Isn't that how all backgrounds and wallpapers used to work?
        righthand 1y ago
        With the animation on the space background and how the page was previously squished on mobile it looked like preview thumbs for animated backgrounds.
      - inanutshellus 1y ago

biofox 1y ago

They also make for great retro PowerPoint backgrounds :)

luc_ 1y ago

bless this mess

giancarlostoro 1y ago

Page doesn't load correctly for me, they seem to be hosting the images in a sketchy looking domain (I'm sure its not actually sketchy), corporate firewall is ruining my retro nostalgic experience.

PixelMoondust 1y ago
Oh, I'm sorry to hear it's not loading properly for you :c I host my images through filegarden and I certainly hope it's not sketchy because it's the best file hosting service I can find since I no longer use Imgur.

marcodiego 1y ago

Actually, the correct index is this one: https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles/backgroundsindex https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles/b...

jihadjihad 1y ago
@dang can we update the post's URL to this one? It seems more relevant and usable.
- medstrom 1y ago
  I found it much less striking. The original link is perfect -- and subjectively, I find it more "usable" that it puts everything on a single page.
  - dang 1y ago
    Ok, I've put that link in the top text so people can access both.
sp0rk 1y ago
This page only contains links to about half of the backgrounds present on the page that is linked currently.
dang 1y ago
Changed from https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles. Thanks!

SpecialistK 1y ago

I love these - I wonder if anyone has put them together in an archive to download all at once?

medstrom 1y ago
In the spirit of "analog browsing", there is always https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall

luckystarr 1y ago

That page can't be very old because it doesn't use any frames!

jaynate 1y ago

Geocities and Angelfire are how I learned to program for the web. Amazing how much of the fundamentals of the web are still exactly the same as they were back then (90s). Just with a lot more layers of libraries today.

giantrobot 1y ago
A great thing about the Web is it can still be programmed just like it was thirty years ago. Unless you actually need an application a lot of web tooling and libraries are a waste of time. It's a great medium for actual documents.
- spennant 1y ago
  What? No love for Perl scripts in cgi-bin/ ?
  - giantrobot 1y ago
    In today's world of stupidly fast CPUs and IO a CGI program can be surprisingly performant and effective.
- soneil 1y ago
  The part that really feels different to me, is that I'm not sure that a 12yo equivalent of myself would get far with View Source anymore. I think that was my single greatest resource, and on a huge majority of sites it won't get you far anymore.
  - camcil 1y ago
    Being able to paste source into early version of Dreamweaver really made things "click" for me. Image maps, IFrames, and SSI really set you apart. Ah, thems were the days.

simoneau 1y ago

I think I recognize some of these as coming from a tiled background pack I used back in the 90s. Maybe associated with the Enlightenment Window Manager project?

p3rls 1y ago

yeahhh, but did you have a cool cjb.net redirect to show your friends in the progs channel?

tsumnia 1y ago

Dear Web Developers: THIS is what I want for surfing the World Wide Web. Simple UI, maybe some tiled gifs, and that's it! Stop all the corpo-brutalist nonsense and give me back my flame gifs!

reaperducer 1y ago
I once rebuilt an internal employee directory tool, and added the ability for people to add an emoji below their name. Before that, hardly anyone used the internal directory, which is probably why I inherited it (I was the stig). After the feature was added, people went nuts and used it all the time. I feel bad for the guy who runs it now, as I understand he is bombarded with feature requests from the employees.
- cluckindan 1y ago
  Making things a little bit fun and personal yields engagement, who would have thought.
rjh29 1y ago
Obligatory mention of Hypnospace Outlaw, a game where you play a moderator of a 1990s AOL-style internet (right down to the tiled backgrounds and flame gifs) and uncover a mystery.

standardUser 1y ago

I miss having my own little website. It wasn't a blog or even a weblog because those words didn't exist yet. I especially miss the mix of icons and widgets I'd curate at the bottom of the page, the most important of which was the counter (which was mostly counting my own visit to my own page). This was probably around 1994 when I was 12 or 13.

konfusinomicon 1y ago
i recall the glorious day the linkexchange counter on my site hit 10k. still waiting on my check for $176 from featuring cyberthrills casino banner ads though.

gopher2000 1y ago

Is there a way to dig up old GeoCities pages? My only thought is to remember the URL and get it from internet archive but I can't remember my 4 digit number. I think I was in the "Baja" area.

PixelMoondust 1y ago
There definitely is!!! There's a few GeoCities archives projects out there, but these ones specifically let's you search through the areas: https://geocities.restorativland.org/Baja/ https://geocities.restorativland.org/Baja/ https://www.oocities.org/baja/ https://www.oocities.org/baja/ If you can find your site here (you may not be able to because I'm sure these sites don't have every single site archived), then you could try to find it through the Internet Archive, or through geocities.ws!

miffe 1y ago

Anyone remember a software to generate images such as these? I think it was called something like Terralogic Texture Maker (ttm.exe) and I've been looking for it for years.

127 1y ago
I would recommend https://rodzilla.itch.io/material-maker https://rodzilla.itch.io/material-maker It's free and fabulous.
Lammy 1y ago
It was TeraLogic; one ‘r’ :) DOS ver 0.95: https://www.geocities.ws/freewin3/textrev.html https://www.geocities.ws/freewin3/textrev.html Win32 ver 1.1: https://www.jazz2online.com/tilesets/stuff/TTM32.zip https://www.jazz2online.com/tilesets/stuff/TTM32.zip Win32 ver 2.0: https://web.archive.org/web/20240213195823/https://www.sac.sk/download/graph/ttm32_20.zip https://web.archive.org/web/20240213195823/https://www.sac.s... Both Win32 versions worked for me in Wine just now: https://i.imgur.com/nRan0Z0.png https://i.imgur.com/nRan0Z0.png (1.1) https://i.imgur.com/976wzwh.png https://i.imgur.com/976wzwh.png (2.0)
- miffe 1y ago
  Thank you!

nonhaver 1y ago

dont forget blinkies! https://adriansblinkiecollection.neocities.org/ https://adriansblinkiecollection.neocities.org/

PixelMoondust 1y ago

Oh, hey, that's my archive!!! I noticed a sudden jump in activity to my neocities and through a little bit of sleuthing (a single search on Twitter) I found a post, and through that post I found this website...kinda wild to see my little archive being noticed anywhere, but I am definitely flattered!