History.
How my webpage was born
During the last year I was exploring Neocities itself and surfing around that site to observe various people showing off their passion. That site consists of various artists showing off variety of genres on what they are interested. Such as gardening, video games, movies, music (like rock, metal or jazz) or blogging. And from the name of it, it suppose to be alternative of old defunct "Geocities", which it used to hosting provider back in the 90s. And it was used in various formats such as clans for specific games, design, passion and apparently some conspiracy theory about government tracking on their computers? Must be a wild time for 90s back then. So I spend in the category "2000s" and "90s" to explore them, because that's what I find this category fascinating to see how others showing their perspective of their interpretations. And here I asked myself, what if I want to show my own version of nostalgia? What if I want also participate in my own quest to maintain design of 90s? And here it is. "Nostalgic Emulation". That was the name of my webpage I gave during concept phase. I couldn't come up with anything basic but here it is. A small dedicated mini blog with archive as honor to the old era that I wanted to experience as adult. Even though, there's like a tiny amount of "archive" you might have checked in "Other sites". It's because I didn't bought subscription yet to expand my page's capabilities, like downloading my files I've uploaded and show my own archive. Before this page was born, I had to explore various websites thanks to "Internet Archive" feature named "Web Archive" to use them as reference, research their design and as well gather various materials anything related to late 90s and early 2000s to fit in the aesthetics. This was the tool I used to review design of the clans for specific games, forums, companies like Microsoft. Studying and trying to replicate it's design, while not trying to blatantly one-by-one copy them. Of course, not only that but the quality. Shapes, geometry and passion. I used Photoshop to draw blueprint and using it as plan that I wanted to make it as reality. While figuring out purpose for them.
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The concept itself. |
Example on selected page. |
This is the rough concept I created in the Photoshop as how I wanted to construct as you can see. Some scribbles with explanation on how I wanted to make, side bar as navigation buttons and description about it. Also, on what happened if you'll press on the specific navigation button to know. Besides just making as blog, I originally wanted to use my site as semi-archive. Like I wanted to share things such as demos where I played various servers in Quake 3. Plus I gathered sounds, pictures and some CGI pictures from 90s and early 2000s. So that I could share them to get some sense of nostalgia. Like as mods for instant messengers. And my sort of library of old stuff I've gathered with not so very obscure ones. Right before I started to use "Microsoft Frontpage 2003", I asked help in Neocities reddit group about how to build website. And they gave me with not really helpful advice. Although from the user "GusBusDraws" gave me a neat website builder named "mmm.page", which is looks neat. I added in my list while I was looking for alternatives. And I used for a brief moment the "Layout generator" from sadgirl.online.
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Sadgirl's layout builder itself. Not the useful advice I ever got to "study". |
When I looked inside it took me hard time understand what are they
suppose to mean. After reading the HTML code it made me confusing so I
ignored it a bit. Drew my own navigation buttons in Photoshop so that I
could create when reading various pages on my quest. And I thought "do I have to learn anything from HTML
from online lessons? Just spend time to study web design and coding on
the site?". Shortly after that, I registered myself in Neocities and barely passed the tutorial (which is crap, by the way.
Even if you do excatly correct on what's explained) and I used the
layout builder. Some quick swaps like text and that's it. I stopped at
this thought when I was in the dead end and giving the option to study
HTML language. I began to look for other ways to build your website
without literal knowledge or experience of HTML. I took some tinkering
and editing on the page "mmm.page" and it already left me bored cuz not
much options I had. Then I took one of the old programs suppose to be
"WYSIWYG" and it's KompoZer.
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Kompozer itself. Approximately how it looks like and I briefly used it. |
That's where I thought I found the web builder. But it's not. I started
to build my own page and adding stuff I've scavenged on Neocities and on
Internet Archive like buttons, wallpapers, badges. So that I could at
least show my own on what to add. And I was
stuck in there, thinking how am I gonna accelerate process to build. So
I started to look in the Google and Yandex on how to make my own page.
Despite that it's considered as "WYSIWYG", I couldn't even find options
to place some templates as basic and dug deeper to find more ways to
build and decided to use YouTube. Unfortunately, not many tutorials are
in there and some were scarce. Not even can be found on old forgotten
forums. Until some time later, I took a glimpse of the video from
Michael MJD on YouTube. That one program made me interested. Video was
about him trying out the "Microsoft Frontpage 98", which it was
fascinating to see him building his own site. While watching his video I
examined of the features that Frontpage provided such as template to
select and background for the page. As well frame templates which is
interesting!
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Michael MJD's video "Making a '90s Style Website With Microsoft FrontPage 98!" |
So I started to look for that program and wondered if it's even updated
to latest. Somewhat, it was updated. Only to 2003, which was the last
version ever updated. I took glimpse if there's features carried over
from the 1998 and made me reassured to try. So I tried to look for that
program in Internet Archive and I felt a bit stuck, yet again asked for
group Neocities on Reddit to find "Microsoft Frontpage 2003". And after
some passed hours. I finally got the Frontpage 2003! When I tried it on
my main PC it was fascinating and I tried to figure out on how to use
it. Slowly getting used to features this program has and fueling up my
desire to build own page. Results were incredible.
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The experiment of my created site on 18th of november. |
Prototype when selecting "Home" navigation of my site. |
And here you see outcome of my progress and thanks to Frontpage 2003,
that I was able to make my webpage homely. Almost every month I updated
and added various stuff to my page, expanding and writing down every
possible moment in my life. Even in amateur quality, I can feel like
it's already began to feel cozier. This is the conclusion and
anniversary of my webpage. So it's pretty much that's all.
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2024 - 2025