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How to Create a Personal Website — But It's 1999
With the next stage, in this blog you can read how to create a personal homepage in 1999.
Creating a personal website today can be as simple as opening a website builder, choosing a template, changing a few pictures and clicking Publish. But let's forget about all of that for a moment.
Imagine it is 1999.
You have a Windows 98 computer, a CRT monitor, a dial-up modem, a copy of Internet Explorer, and perhaps Netscape Navigator installed alongside it. You have decided that you want your own little corner of the World Wide Web.
There is no WordPress.
There is no modern website builder.
There is no Bootstrap.
There is no GitHub Pages.
There is no drag-and-drop editor.
You have to make the website yourself.
And that's exactly what we're going to do.
Website writing tools
I could go classic and choose MS Notepad to write all the code for my website. That would certainly be authentic. Notepad is already sitting there on Windows, and there is nothing stopping me from writing every <HTML>, <TABLE>, <IMG> and <A HREF> tag by hand.
But let's make it a bit more professional and get some real code editor.
My first thought was Notepad++, but since it was released in 2003, it doesn't exist in 1999.
So that option is out.
I had in my mind the Polish code editor called Pajączek (Spidey), available since 1996. It seems like a very appropriate choice for this experiment, although it was primarily aimed at the Polish market and wasn't the obvious free English-language choice I was looking for.
After a few minutes of searching on Google and Wikipedia, I found Arachnophilia.
Arachnophilia was released in 1996, it was free, it was available in English, and its name was related to spiders.
Perfect.
This will do.
Screenshot of Pajączek 2000 made on Windows 98.
Pajączek 2000 v4.8.1 by Cream Software.
My Windows 98 came with Internet Explorer preinstalled. In this case it was Internet Explorer 5.0. But if I'm trying to recreate the experience of the late 1990s properly, I also need to get some other software.
Netscape Navigator.
And Arachnophilia.
Naturally, both have to be versions that were actually available at the time.
Looking for old software isn't always easy. Websites disappear, download links stop working and old versions are replaced by modern ones. A website that used to host hundreds of old programs may itself eventually disappear.
OldVersion.com is usually a good place to start. Unfortunately, when I was trying to get there, it was down for a couple of days, and I was pretty sure it was gone for good.
However, as I type these words, it seems to be back online.
Nevertheless, I had to search elsewhere.
It took me some time, because typing something like:
netscape 4.5 download
into Google isn't necessarily going to give you a satisfying result on the first page.
Sometimes it won't get you any satisfying results at all.
So I had to dig around.
Eventually, the Internet Archive gave me what I needed: an old APC Mag CD disk image from May 1999, which included both applications I was looking for — Netscape Navigator 4.51 and Arachnophilia 3.9.
That's much better.
Now I have software that actually belongs to the period I'm trying to recreate.
List of programs on the APC Mag CD, May 1999.
The software problem
My initial ambitious plan involved using a local server and running my website on localhost.
I even found an old article about installing Apache and PHP on Windows 98.
That sounds wonderfully complicated.
It would certainly be interesting to recreate a complete late-90s development environment with a local web server, PHP, CGI and perhaps an old database.
But for a project of this scale, it felt a bit overwhelming.
So in the end, I dropped that idea.
Perhaps one day I'll go with a more advanced retro web project that actually requires backend logic.
For now, let's focus only on the frontend.
And honestly, that's probably the most interesting part anyway.
The HTML.
The tables.
The images.
The colours.
The buttons.
The GIFs.
The layout.
The tiny details that made a personal homepage look like somebody's personal homepage.
Arachnophilia
Let's shortly talk about the code editor of my choice.
Arachnophilia may have been considered quite good back then, but when using it today, it feels a little cheap.
Still, it's considerably more than regular MS Notepad can offer.
It has basic HTML syntax highlighting and a preview feature.
You can click a button and Arachnophilia saves the current HTML code into a temporary file and opens it in Internet Explorer for preview.
It even claims that it can reload the page after every save.
Unfortunately, that particular feature didn't work for me.
Still, the basic preview functionality is useful.
And the program itself feels appropriately old.
Arachnophilia gives some Tips about life.
The editor doesn't really understand the modern separation between HTML, JavaScript and CSS in the way a modern IDE does. But that's not necessarily a problem for this project.
You can create files with .js or .css extensions and simply write the code there.
That's enough.
When you choose to create a new HTML file, a prompt window appears and allows you to set things such as the page title and text and link colours.
Based on the information entered, Arachnophilia generates some initial HTML code.
The title goes into the <HEAD> section, while text and link styles are added as attributes to the <BODY> tag.
I'm not going to keep it that way.
But it's interesting to see how the editor approaches HTML.
The generated HTML also has capitalized tag names.
I actually quite like that.
It gives the source code a very old-school appearance, so I'm going to try to follow it.
For example:
<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>My Personal Homepage</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <H1>Welcome to my homepage!</H1> <P>Hello and welcome to my little corner of the Internet.</P> </BODY> </HTML>
There is no automatic indentation.
There is no intelligent code completion.
There is no modern error checking.
There is no framework generating hundreds of files for me.
It's just HTML.
And somehow, that's part of the fun.
Building the homepage
Now that we have our editor, we need to decide what the actual website will look like.
The first rule is:
Keep it simple.
A personal homepage in 1999 doesn't need to behave like a modern web application.
I need a title.
I need some navigation.
I need some text.
I need a few images.
And I probably need some GIFs.
A very basic structure might look something like this:
<TABLE BORDER="1" WIDTH="600"> <TR> <TD COLSPAN="2"> <H1>MY HOMEPAGE</H1> </TD> </TR> <TR> <TD WIDTH="150"> <A HREF="index.html">HOME</A><BR> <A HREF="about.html">ABOUT ME</A><BR> <A HREF="links.html">LINKS</A><BR> <A HREF="guestbook.html">GUESTBOOK</A><BR> </TD> <TD> <H2>Welcome!</H2> <P> Welcome to my personal homepage! </P> </TD> </TR> </TABLE>
And there we have it.
A website.
No JavaScript application.
No build process.
No package manager.
No dependency installation.
Just an HTML file.
Tables everywhere
Tables were one of the most useful tools for old-school web design.
Today, using a <TABLE> simply to arrange the entire page may look strange.
In 1999, it was normal.
A table could divide the page into columns and rows.
+---------------------------------------+ | MY HOMEPAGE | +-------------+-------------------------+ | | | | MENU | CONTENT | | | | | LINKS | TEXT | | | | +-------------+-------------------------+ | FOOTER | +---------------------------------------+
You could put a logo in one cell, navigation buttons in another, an article in another, and advertisements or webrings at the bottom.
Tables also made it possible to create borders, coloured sections and little boxes.
And because browser rendering was less standardized, tables were a practical way of getting some control over where things appeared.
Images
The next thing I need is graphics.
A website without images can work perfectly well, but personal homepages loved graphics.
I might create a logo:
<IMG SRC="logo.gif" ALT="My Homepage">
Then perhaps a small photograph:
<IMG SRC="me.jpg" WIDTH="160" HEIGHT="120" ALT="Me">
The important thing is to keep the files reasonably small.
Remember the modem.
A visitor shouldn't have to wait five minutes just because I decided to put a gigantic photograph on the front page.
JPEG is useful for photographs.
GIF is useful for small graphics.
And animated GIFs are useful for making absolutely unnecessary things move.
Which brings us to one of my favourite parts.
GIFs
You need some GIFs.
Not hundreds.
Just enough.
An arrow next to a link.
A small animated logo.
A construction sign.
Maybe a spinning globe.
Maybe an e-mail icon.
Maybe something blinking for absolutely no reason.
For example:
<IMG SRC="gif/arrow.gif" ALT="-"> <A HREF="guestbook.html">Guestbook</A>
That's enough to make a link feel like a 1999 web link.
And if I find an excellent animated GIF, I'm probably going to use it.
Because this is 1999.
Nobody can stop me.
Buttons
Then come the buttons.
The classic Web was full of tiny graphical buttons.
[ HOME ] [ ABOUT ] [ LINKS ] [ EMAIL ]
could actually be four individual GIF images.
You could make a button say:
Best viewed with Netscape Navigator
or:
This site is under construction
or:
You are visitor number 000123
And of course, every personal homepage needs a little 88x31 button that other people can put on their own websites.
That is how you spread your homepage around the Web.
Someone visits your site.
They like it.
They copy your button.
They put it on their homepage.
You visit their homepage.
You find another interesting site.
And suddenly you have discovered five more corners of the Internet.
Guestbook
Next, I need a guestbook.
A guestbook is one of the simplest ways to make a static website feel alive.
Instead of someone visiting the site and leaving without a trace, they can write:
Hi! Nice homepage!
Visit mine too!
Then they leave their homepage address.
The webmaster checks the guestbook later and discovers another personal website.
It's primitive compared with modern social media.
But that's exactly what makes it interesting.
Chat and forums
If I want to go further, I can add chat.
A chat room lets visitors talk to one another in real time.
A forum works differently. Messages stay there so people can return later and continue the conversation.
These were important parts of the growing online community.
The Internet wasn't just a collection of pages.
It was becoming a collection of people.
Visitor counter
And finally, I need to know whether anyone is actually visiting.
So I add a counter.
You are visitor number: 000421
Maybe the number goes up.
Maybe it doesn't.
Either way, I'm going to check it.
And then check it again.
And again.
That's part of being a webmaster.
The counter isn't just a number.
It's proof that somebody somewhere opened your homepage.
Backgrounds and colours
Now we need to make the site look interesting.
Maybe the background is black.
Maybe dark blue.
Maybe it has a repeating GIF.
Maybe the text is yellow.
Maybe the links are bright blue.
Maybe the visited links turn purple.
There doesn't need to be a perfect colour palette.
In fact, a little bit of chaos is probably more authentic.
I can use HTML attributes:
<BODY BGCOLOR="#000000"
TEXT="#FFFFFF"
LINK="#0000FF"
VLINK="#800080">
Or use a stylesheet for the parts where CSS makes sense.
The result should feel like somebody designed it themselves rather than selecting a professional corporate template.
MIDI music
Now comes the controversial part.
Background music.
A MIDI file can play when the page opens.
<BGSOUND SRC="music.mid" LOOP="INFINITE">
can provide the soundtrack.
A Netscape-era page could use an embedded object as well.
The visitor opens the page.
And suddenly:
music.
This was one of the strangest and most memorable parts of old websites.
You could have a personal homepage with a completely unexpected MIDI playing in the background.
Sometimes it was a popular song.
Sometimes it was a classical tune.
Sometimes it was something the webmaster composed themselves.
And sometimes you immediately looked for the button to turn it off.
Flash
As the decade came to an end, Flash was becoming another way to make websites more interactive.
Instead of just HTML and GIFs, you could create animated introductions, interactive menus, games and other multimedia experiences.
A website could open with:
WELCOME TO MY HOMEPAGE
followed by an animated logo flying across the screen.
It was impressive.
But Flash wasn't necessary.
A simple HTML page could still be faster, easier to maintain and more compatible with older browsers.
And for this project, I'm more interested in the simple stuff.
The final website
After all of this, I don't actually need a complicated website.
My personal homepage could contain:
MY HOMEPAGE ------------ [ HOME ] [ ABOUT ] [ LINKS ] Welcome to my homepage! [PHOTO] About me My computer My hobbies My favourite links [animated GIF] Sign my guestbook! [ GUESTBOOK ] You are visitor number 001234 [88x31 WEB BUTTON] Best viewed with Netscape Navigator
And that's it.
It's small.
It's simple.
It loads over dial-up.
It works in an old browser.
It doesn't need a database.
It doesn't need a framework.
It doesn't need a JavaScript application.
It is just a homepage.
What makes it feel like 1999?
The interesting part isn't simply using old HTML tags.
It's the limitations.
The website should feel as though someone actually had to think about the visitor's computer.
An 800x600 monitor.
A 16-bit colour display.
A CRT screen.
A dial-up modem.
Netscape Navigator.
Internet Explorer.
A few megabytes of web space.
A folder full of GIF files.
An HTML editor.
And a lot of patience.
The limitations influenced the design.
Pages were compact.
Images were compressed.
Tables controlled layouts.
GIFs provided animation.
MIDI provided music.
Guestbooks provided interaction.
Counters provided statistics.
Chat and forums provided communities.
And HTML connected everything together.
Saving the experience
The most interesting thing about making a website like this today is that I'm not trying to pretend that modern web development never happened.
I'm trying to understand what creating a website felt like before the modern Web existed.
The late 1990s were a transition period.
The Internet was becoming mainstream, but it still felt personal.
You could create a homepage and actually feel like you owned a little piece of the Web.
There wasn't necessarily a company designing it for you.
There wasn't an algorithm deciding what visitors should see.
There wasn't a giant content-management system sitting behind every page.
You wrote the HTML.
You made the graphics.
You uploaded the files.
You waited for the modem.
And then you opened your browser and looked at your creation.
Maybe it wasn't perfect.
Maybe the table was slightly misaligned in Netscape.
Maybe the GIF was too large.
Maybe the MIDI was annoying.
Maybe the counter was still stuck at 000001.
But it was yours.
And that's what made the personal homepage special.
The end of the 90s didn't mean the end of the Web. It meant the beginning of a very different Web.
So instead of throwing away those old ideas, I'm going to save them.
The HTML.
The tables.
The GIFs.
The buttons.
The guestbook.
The counter.
The MIDI.
The little personal homepage.
The strange designs.
The old browsers.
The slow modem.
The 800x600 screen.
All of it.
This is what creating a personal website looked like in 1999.
And this little website is my attempt to keep that experience alive.
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