5 ms·

No ads I don't know what "Old Web" the author is remembering but when I was first paid to make a website in 1997, it had banner ads on it.

davey48016 1y ago
Banner ads, pop up ads, pop under ads...If browsers added a feature, then websites used it to show you ads.
- M95D 1y ago
  I prefer those ads to today's ads. At least they didn't track anyone.
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    Pretty sure they did. Ad networks have been around a long time and they've never been "nice".
  - alisonatwork 1y ago
    Every time I get on my tracking and internet privacy soapbox, and I lament how little people care about it these days, I need to cast my mind back to when I was a teenager and everyone wanted a counter on their homepage. Not all hosts provided a counter script in their cgi-bin so various third-party websites offered counter image links that you could add into your page. Of course when you clicked through you could see all the different countries of your site's visitors and it was the coolest thing ever. I was thrilled when I hit 1000 visitors at some point! But looking back, even if a few of those third-party counter providers were just benevolent sysadmins offering a public service, I have no doubt some of them turned into the data mining giants of today. To be fair, Geocities did get done by the FTC for secretly selling users' PII to third-party advertisers almost 30 years ago, so it wasn't just our own faults. But I think rather than the FTC actually putting a stop to the behavior, the outcome was just that websites had be more honest in their EULA that users would be giving up their privacy rights, so here we are.
- amatecha 1y ago
  I remember when I saw less bullshit ads because I used a Mac and my browser literally didn't support the JavaScript features used to display pop-under ads. All my friends on Windows were plagued by this crap and the only effect I had was that I would get empty windows appearing sometimes, or pages just wouldn't work properly or would take forever to load. Way less ads. Sweet!
NetOpWibby 1y ago
My first website was on Homestead (.com or .net?) was HEAVILY banner ad supported
- doublerabbit 1y ago
  It kind of had to be. How else could they host people for free?
2THFairy 1y ago
So, obviously, ads were the norm back in the day. The author had to be wearing several rose tinted glasses when writing that. But the author isn't entirely wrong. There were/are a lot of websites that simply did not run ads. Hosted not for money, but "for love of the game". This is something that was lost with the shift to exclusively platform-based hosting. A facebook page or subreddit simply is never going to be ad-free in the way that a lot of former or legacy forums were and are.
- reactordev 1y ago
  They all wish they had the viewership for ads. They definitely were a thing all the way back to the first browsers. Banners, side banners, buttons, applets, most web advertising size standards are derivative of these initial placements. What you’re talking about was geocities or aol’s members sites that anyone could build a site with. Anyone running CGI wishes for that sweet ad revenue to pay for the Sun servers…
  - krapp 1y ago
    Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod and the like all had banner ads. I think you could pay not to have them but for free accounts they were mandatory.
    - alisonatwork 1y ago
      That wasn't the case in the beginning, on Geocities at least. It was a pretty big deal when they started introducing popups and mandatory banner ads.
      - crtasm 1y ago
        Yes, I had some pages on geocities around 1996/97 and to the best of my memory they had no ads. I must have stopped using the site entirely by the point they got added. edit: Wikipedia claims that happened in May 1997.
      - amatecha 1y ago
FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
It's like the nostalgia about the "Summer of Love" and the 1960's... it really only lasted a single summer and only in one or two little areas. Same thing with the "old web." It was about the very early 90s before Netscape Navigator (the Mosaic days) and when everyone was just throwing up a single HTML page with a bunch of links... that's the "old web". The modern WWW kicked off with the ability to make credit card transactions online (1994). That... and porn (1995). For "old web" sites that still exist, check out wiby https://wiby.org/ https://wiby.org/
- Fluorescence 1y ago
  > it really only lasted a single summer "The Summer of Love" literally refers to one summer in 1967 not the whole of 60's counter-culture. Even Woodstock was in '69. In terms of the various cultural strands then of course they lasted longer with many roots in 50's beatnick culture (bohemianism, poetry, LSD, Buddhism) to today where bands that played Monterey '67 and Woodstock are still touring and a "definitely not a hippy" in San Francisco might live in a polycule, micro-dose psychedelics while using a meditation app before writing a blog about effective altruism.
corytheboyd 1y ago
CONGRATULATIONS, YOU WON!
CIPHERSTONE 1y ago
"No ads" is possible. It's a choice really. Too many bloggers also want to make money and think ads are the way to do it. That's certainly their right, but it doesn't have to be that way. Want no ads, start browsing gopher sites. No ads there. Or find people making blogs just because they want to. They exist. Github + Jekyll is a great option for free static blogging if your willing to spend a little time getting it setup and learning something new.
sumtechguy 1y ago
The 94/95 web had no banners. Because most of it was hosted on university servers or some random guy/company just wanted to bear the cost. I remember the big decision on if adverts should even be allowed... Well here we are. Users get free things. Advertisers pick up most of the bill. The second that model doesnt work sites pack it up. The 'before time' could be there but servers/bandwidth/people are not free. You can minimize those but in the end someone needs to pay the electric bill.
- philipkglass 1y ago
  I have been running my own web site for 20+ years without ads. The server and bandwidth costs are minute. I use a basic VPS. I started it when I was still a poor grad student. This is cheaper now than shared hosting was back in the early 2000s and it's easier too. But it's not cheaper than "free" and it's significantly more administrative work than just using a social network. The "people" costs (including my own time fiddling with software configurations) is the biggest barrier.
  - amatecha 1y ago
    Same yo, matecha.net live and ad-free since 2004. Not that I have ever had a ton of content, but I have my little slice of the old-school web and always will as long as I'm alive (and as long as the web is around, I guess!)

davey48016 1y ago

Banner ads, pop up ads, pop under ads...If browsers added a feature, then websites used it to show you ads.

M95D 1y ago
I prefer those ads to today's ads. At least they didn't track anyone.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  Pretty sure they did. Ad networks have been around a long time and they've never been "nice".
- alisonatwork 1y ago
  Every time I get on my tracking and internet privacy soapbox, and I lament how little people care about it these days, I need to cast my mind back to when I was a teenager and everyone wanted a counter on their homepage. Not all hosts provided a counter script in their cgi-bin so various third-party websites offered counter image links that you could add into your page. Of course when you clicked through you could see all the different countries of your site's visitors and it was the coolest thing ever. I was thrilled when I hit 1000 visitors at some point! But looking back, even if a few of those third-party counter providers were just benevolent sysadmins offering a public service, I have no doubt some of them turned into the data mining giants of today. To be fair, Geocities did get done by the FTC for secretly selling users' PII to third-party advertisers almost 30 years ago, so it wasn't just our own faults. But I think rather than the FTC actually putting a stop to the behavior, the outcome was just that websites had be more honest in their EULA that users would be giving up their privacy rights, so here we are.
amatecha 1y ago
I remember when I saw less bullshit ads because I used a Mac and my browser literally didn't support the JavaScript features used to display pop-under ads. All my friends on Windows were plagued by this crap and the only effect I had was that I would get empty windows appearing sometimes, or pages just wouldn't work properly or would take forever to load. Way less ads. Sweet!

NetOpWibby 1y ago

My first website was on Homestead (.com or .net?) was HEAVILY banner ad supported

doublerabbit 1y ago
It kind of had to be. How else could they host people for free?

2THFairy 1y ago

So, obviously, ads were the norm back in the day. The author had to be wearing several rose tinted glasses when writing that. But the author isn't entirely wrong. There were/are a lot of websites that simply did not run ads. Hosted not for money, but "for love of the game". This is something that was lost with the shift to exclusively platform-based hosting. A facebook page or subreddit simply is never going to be ad-free in the way that a lot of former or legacy forums were and are.

reactordev 1y ago
They all wish they had the viewership for ads. They definitely were a thing all the way back to the first browsers. Banners, side banners, buttons, applets, most web advertising size standards are derivative of these initial placements. What you’re talking about was geocities or aol’s members sites that anyone could build a site with. Anyone running CGI wishes for that sweet ad revenue to pay for the Sun servers…
- krapp 1y ago
  Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod and the like all had banner ads. I think you could pay not to have them but for free accounts they were mandatory.
  - alisonatwork 1y ago
    That wasn't the case in the beginning, on Geocities at least. It was a pretty big deal when they started introducing popups and mandatory banner ads.
    - crtasm 1y ago
      Yes, I had some pages on geocities around 1996/97 and to the best of my memory they had no ads. I must have stopped using the site entirely by the point they got added. edit: Wikipedia claims that happened in May 1997.
    - amatecha 1y ago

FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago

It's like the nostalgia about the "Summer of Love" and the 1960's... it really only lasted a single summer and only in one or two little areas. Same thing with the "old web." It was about the very early 90s before Netscape Navigator (the Mosaic days) and when everyone was just throwing up a single HTML page with a bunch of links... that's the "old web". The modern WWW kicked off with the ability to make credit card transactions online (1994). That... and porn (1995). For "old web" sites that still exist, check out wiby https://wiby.org/ https://wiby.org/

Fluorescence 1y ago
> it really only lasted a single summer "The Summer of Love" literally refers to one summer in 1967 not the whole of 60's counter-culture. Even Woodstock was in '69. In terms of the various cultural strands then of course they lasted longer with many roots in 50's beatnick culture (bohemianism, poetry, LSD, Buddhism) to today where bands that played Monterey '67 and Woodstock are still touring and a "definitely not a hippy" in San Francisco might live in a polycule, micro-dose psychedelics while using a meditation app before writing a blog about effective altruism.

corytheboyd 1y ago

CONGRATULATIONS, YOU WON!

CIPHERSTONE 1y ago

"No ads" is possible. It's a choice really. Too many bloggers also want to make money and think ads are the way to do it. That's certainly their right, but it doesn't have to be that way. Want no ads, start browsing gopher sites. No ads there. Or find people making blogs just because they want to. They exist. Github + Jekyll is a great option for free static blogging if your willing to spend a little time getting it setup and learning something new.

sumtechguy 1y ago

The 94/95 web had no banners. Because most of it was hosted on university servers or some random guy/company just wanted to bear the cost. I remember the big decision on if adverts should even be allowed... Well here we are. Users get free things. Advertisers pick up most of the bill. The second that model doesnt work sites pack it up. The 'before time' could be there but servers/bandwidth/people are not free. You can minimize those but in the end someone needs to pay the electric bill.

philipkglass 1y ago
I have been running my own web site for 20+ years without ads. The server and bandwidth costs are minute. I use a basic VPS. I started it when I was still a poor grad student. This is cheaper now than shared hosting was back in the early 2000s and it's easier too. But it's not cheaper than "free" and it's significantly more administrative work than just using a social network. The "people" costs (including my own time fiddling with software configurations) is the biggest barrier.
- amatecha 1y ago
  Same yo, matecha.net live and ad-free since 2004. Not that I have ever had a ton of content, but I have my little slice of the old-school web and always will as long as I'm alive (and as long as the web is around, I guess!)