5 ms·

An Homage to 90s –/Public_HTML Hosting

42 points by gpi 11mo ago

baubino 11mo ago
This is just a static html site, no? Using build packs or npm for a static page doesn’t even make sense. While I appreciate the throw back design, there’s nothing retro about sticking html files in the public folder; it’s just the correct way to deploy simple static pages (I’ve got a half dozen sites deployed exactly in that way).
tricknik 11mo ago
The retro part is encouraging beginers to learn to edit html on their own computer, and quickly have a personal space.
- accrual 11mo ago
  Yes, I think that's an important part of the experience. One can edit some text, some CSS/JS if desired (optional), and immediately see the effect. Publish it and now your changes are global.
snorbleck 11mo ago
needs more blink tags ;)
pflenker 11mo ago
It’s a well done homage - but no one should believe for one second the actual average page back then looked _that good_!
- doubled112 11mo ago
  It's well done and looks good, but there aren't nearly enough table elements. Do marquees not scroll anymore?
rts_cts 11mo ago
> Last updated: Monday, September 11761, 1993 Very, very nice.
- ktpsns 11mo ago
  Eternal September. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
  - rossant 11mo ago
    Thanks for this! I wasn't aware of this reference.
nelsonfigueroa 11mo ago
It would be cool if there's was a public "explore" page to see the sites that currently exist, similar to Neocities.
- tricknik 11mo ago
  Might add something like that, but curated. Don't want it to be a spam vector.
zkmon 11mo ago
What has changed now? I still upload my static web content to my ~/public_html folder on live website, using sftp. Anything wrong with that? Why people coming up with this kind of news? The other day someone was saying scripting the HTML Table element using DOM API is gone. Check internic.net landing page. Not changed in decades. You don't need to be so desperate for change.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- c-hendricks 11mo ago
  > Please note: You are viewing archival ICANN material. Links and information may be outdated or incorrect. Visit ICANN's main website for current information. On internic.net I was only able to find one link that linked to internic.net, and that was in big bold letters at the top.
  - zkmon 11mo ago
    I was mentioning landing page. Not child pages.
HellsMaddy 11mo ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8432703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8432703
GaryBluto 11mo ago
This is an homage to the 90s only in the sense that public HTML hosting was more popular in the 90s. Everything about this seems like a modern project (in both design and ideals) with a very inaccurate "retro" coat of paint. - Site makes use of HTML5 and modern JS. Why bemoan modern frameworks and then use modern, bloated elements? - Why is there a completely modern register/sign in section in the middle of the home page? Why do young people think every website used to have a marquee? Why does it look like a facsimile of a borderless Windows 95 window? Why the emojis everywhere? Why is there a text shadow effect done with CSS when the 90s way would be to use an image of the text with the effect already replied, with ALT text for text browsers? So many odd design decisions. - Long content moderation policy talking about how the site is for "Marxist, Communist, Anarchist, Feminist, Postcolonial, Abolitionist, Racial Justice, Queer, Hacker, and Pirate cultures." and how things the site owner doesn't like will be removed. - The about page looks written with ChatGPT. "That's it. No webpack. No npm install. No 'building for production.', Just HTML. Just vibes." It then goes on to say that they only have "Passwordless authentication (because it's 2025, not 1995)" This looks to be yet another project fawning over a time and place that the creator didn't experience or have any significant understanding of whatsoever. It's one thing to look at the past with rose tinted glasses, it's another to have a completely fictionalized view of a past you have no knowledge of and then build a service around it.
- rounce 11mo ago
  It feels very contrived, as if someone has seen a handful of screenshots and tried to describe it to someone else, rather than a clear (or just well researched) memory of what the mindset, trends and limitations really were around web design 30 years ago.
  - tricknik 11mo ago
    You can find many of my actual pages from the 90s here: https://archive.groovy.net https://archive.groovy.net, so yeah, I was there. And yeah, it is definitely a fun parody/homage, not a recreation, so yeah, it for sure is contrived. I guess I never once used Comic Sans in the actual 90s, and was not a big user of the marquee tag or gifs. It is intended to provide easy hosting, which many people need, and to encourage people to work on their own computer, rather than use web based tools, so it will have upload/validation, etc, but never editing or change your html in any way.
werds 11mo ago
nice project! reminded me about https://tilde.club/ https://tilde.club/ in the same vein
dusted 11mo ago
> Last updated: Monday, September 11761, 1993 I absolutely LOVE that detail!!
johnxie 11mo ago
I kinda smile seeing this growing up in the real public_html days… Xanga, Geocities, Angelfire, copying HTML from those old Scholastic books to make my first little interactive Pokemon map to hosting WoW guild sites, DKP boards, CS 1.6 servers. Feels like we’re back again with vibe-coding, app builders, v0, bolt, lovable, all of it. The AI infra even feels familiar. End users getting back the kind of control we had in the public_html days via cPanel shared-hosting, VPS era. And for backend, it’s Supabase or Neon / Postgres now instead of phpMyAdmin and MySQL. Full circle~
lysace 11mo ago
Gotta love the creator's personal pitch: https://public.monster/~dmytri/ https://public.monster/~dmytri/ Paraphrased: I'm so old my age is negative in Unix time.
ibejoeb 11mo ago
BETA tag is pretty slick. The U+1F6A7 under construction U+1F6A7 banner is more like it...
- croisillon 11mo ago
  but BETA tags started around 2005, not the 90s
  - ibejoeb 11mo ago
    Yeah I mean kinda slick for the '90s. I mean look at that rotation. That some SGI stuff...
ibejoeb 11mo ago
If you like this kind of stuff, check out https://midnight.pub/ https://midnight.pub/
- ErroneousBosh 11mo ago
  For similar reasons, a while ago I created a forum and registered https://rangerovers.pub https://rangerovers.pub - it's about Range Rovers, and we thought about doing it while we were in a pub. The Bon Accord in Glasgow, to be specific, after a lot of very fine curry in the Koh-I-Noor (gone now, sadly). Gosh, now I look, it's ten years old in December. It's a pub. Where you talk about crappy old Landrovers and their ailments. It's also an oldschool forum, and although I'm not really a fan of forums I'd far rather see those back over endless Discourse/Discord/reddit/facebook etc. Host it yourself on a VPS that costs a tenner. Own all your own data. If a couple hundred a year to run it is too much, ask your friends to chip in. Take the Internet back.
  - ctippett 11mo ago
    I'll raise a pint to that (bringing back old-school forums over Discord/Discourse)!
ctippett 11mo ago
Cool site, what software do you use? I like Frontpage 2000, but I'm hearing good things about Dreamweaver. Can anyone recommend a good WYSIWYG editor that creates conformant HTML 4.01?
throw0101a 11mo ago
macOS had (has?) a ~/Sites/ folder as well: * https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/474243/what-is-the-sites-folder-in-my-macos-home-directory https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/474243/what-is-the... * https://superuser.com/questions/225346/how-do-i-setup-a-localhost-using-the-sites-folder-on-my-mac https://superuser.com/questions/225346/how-do-i-setup-a-loca...

42 points by gpi 11mo ago

This is just a static html site, no? Using build packs or npm for a static page doesn’t even make sense. While I appreciate the throw back design, there’s nothing retro about sticking html files in the public folder; it’s just the correct way to deploy simple static pages (I’ve got a half dozen sites deployed exactly in that way).

tricknik 11mo ago

The retro part is encouraging beginers to learn to edit html on their own computer, and quickly have a personal space.

accrual 11mo ago
Yes, I think that's an important part of the experience. One can edit some text, some CSS/JS if desired (optional), and immediately see the effect. Publish it and now your changes are global.

snorbleck 11mo ago

needs more blink tags ;)

pflenker 11mo ago

It’s a well done homage - but no one should believe for one second the actual average page back then looked _that good_!

doubled112 11mo ago
It's well done and looks good, but there aren't nearly enough table elements. Do marquees not scroll anymore?

rts_cts 11mo ago

> Last updated: Monday, September 11761, 1993 Very, very nice.

ktpsns 11mo ago
Eternal September. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
- rossant 11mo ago
  Thanks for this! I wasn't aware of this reference.

nelsonfigueroa 11mo ago

It would be cool if there's was a public "explore" page to see the sites that currently exist, similar to Neocities.

tricknik 11mo ago
Might add something like that, but curated. Don't want it to be a spam vector.

zkmon 11mo ago

What has changed now? I still upload my static web content to my ~/public_html folder on live website, using sftp. Anything wrong with that? Why people coming up with this kind of news? The other day someone was saying scripting the HTML Table element using DOM API is gone. Check internic.net landing page. Not changed in decades. You don't need to be so desperate for change.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
c-hendricks 11mo ago
> Please note: You are viewing archival ICANN material. Links and information may be outdated or incorrect. Visit ICANN's main website for current information. On internic.net I was only able to find one link that linked to internic.net, and that was in big bold letters at the top.
- zkmon 11mo ago
  I was mentioning landing page. Not child pages.

HellsMaddy 11mo ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8432703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8432703

GaryBluto 11mo ago

This is an homage to the 90s only in the sense that public HTML hosting was more popular in the 90s. Everything about this seems like a modern project (in both design and ideals) with a very inaccurate "retro" coat of paint. - Site makes use of HTML5 and modern JS. Why bemoan modern frameworks and then use modern, bloated elements? - Why is there a completely modern register/sign in section in the middle of the home page? Why do young people think every website used to have a marquee? Why does it look like a facsimile of a borderless Windows 95 window? Why the emojis everywhere? Why is there a text shadow effect done with CSS when the 90s way would be to use an image of the text with the effect already replied, with ALT text for text browsers? So many odd design decisions. - Long content moderation policy talking about how the site is for "Marxist, Communist, Anarchist, Feminist, Postcolonial, Abolitionist, Racial Justice, Queer, Hacker, and Pirate cultures." and how things the site owner doesn't like will be removed. - The about page looks written with ChatGPT. "That's it. No webpack. No npm install. No 'building for production.', Just HTML. Just vibes." It then goes on to say that they only have "Passwordless authentication (because it's 2025, not 1995)" This looks to be yet another project fawning over a time and place that the creator didn't experience or have any significant understanding of whatsoever. It's one thing to look at the past with rose tinted glasses, it's another to have a completely fictionalized view of a past you have no knowledge of and then build a service around it.

rounce 11mo ago
It feels very contrived, as if someone has seen a handful of screenshots and tried to describe it to someone else, rather than a clear (or just well researched) memory of what the mindset, trends and limitations really were around web design 30 years ago.
- tricknik 11mo ago
  You can find many of my actual pages from the 90s here: https://archive.groovy.net https://archive.groovy.net, so yeah, I was there. And yeah, it is definitely a fun parody/homage, not a recreation, so yeah, it for sure is contrived. I guess I never once used Comic Sans in the actual 90s, and was not a big user of the marquee tag or gifs. It is intended to provide easy hosting, which many people need, and to encourage people to work on their own computer, rather than use web based tools, so it will have upload/validation, etc, but never editing or change your html in any way.

werds 11mo ago

nice project! reminded me about https://tilde.club/ https://tilde.club/ in the same vein

dusted 11mo ago

> Last updated: Monday, September 11761, 1993 I absolutely LOVE that detail!!

johnxie 11mo ago

I kinda smile seeing this growing up in the real public_html days… Xanga, Geocities, Angelfire, copying HTML from those old Scholastic books to make my first little interactive Pokemon map to hosting WoW guild sites, DKP boards, CS 1.6 servers. Feels like we’re back again with vibe-coding, app builders, v0, bolt, lovable, all of it. The AI infra even feels familiar. End users getting back the kind of control we had in the public_html days via cPanel shared-hosting, VPS era. And for backend, it’s Supabase or Neon / Postgres now instead of phpMyAdmin and MySQL. Full circle~

lysace 11mo ago

Gotta love the creator's personal pitch: https://public.monster/~dmytri/ https://public.monster/~dmytri/ Paraphrased: I'm so old my age is negative in Unix time.

ibejoeb 11mo ago

BETA tag is pretty slick. The U+1F6A7 under construction U+1F6A7 banner is more like it...

croisillon 11mo ago
but BETA tags started around 2005, not the 90s
- ibejoeb 11mo ago
  Yeah I mean kinda slick for the '90s. I mean look at that rotation. That some SGI stuff...

ibejoeb 11mo ago

If you like this kind of stuff, check out https://midnight.pub/ https://midnight.pub/

ErroneousBosh 11mo ago
For similar reasons, a while ago I created a forum and registered https://rangerovers.pub https://rangerovers.pub - it's about Range Rovers, and we thought about doing it while we were in a pub. The Bon Accord in Glasgow, to be specific, after a lot of very fine curry in the Koh-I-Noor (gone now, sadly). Gosh, now I look, it's ten years old in December. It's a pub. Where you talk about crappy old Landrovers and their ailments. It's also an oldschool forum, and although I'm not really a fan of forums I'd far rather see those back over endless Discourse/Discord/reddit/facebook etc. Host it yourself on a VPS that costs a tenner. Own all your own data. If a couple hundred a year to run it is too much, ask your friends to chip in. Take the Internet back.
- ctippett 11mo ago
  I'll raise a pint to that (bringing back old-school forums over Discord/Discourse)!

ctippett 11mo ago

Cool site, what software do you use? I like Frontpage 2000, but I'm hearing good things about Dreamweaver. Can anyone recommend a good WYSIWYG editor that creates conformant HTML 4.01?

throw0101a 11mo ago

macOS had (has?) a ~/Sites/ folder as well: * https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/474243/what-is-the-sites-folder-in-my-macos-home-directory https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/474243/what-is-the... * https://superuser.com/questions/225346/how-do-i-setup-a-localhost-using-the-sites-folder-on-my-mac https://superuser.com/questions/225346/how-do-i-setup-a-loca...