While most bloggers are using the new year to look ahead, I am not quite ready to make promises to the year of 2007. In fact, I am more inclined to looking at the past thanks to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
I'd like to challenge anyone who has designed a web page to find the oldest site in the archive that they authored and post the Wayback Machine link in the comment section of this post. There are no prizes being awarded in this "contest" but I promise you can have some space for bragging rights. Feel free to include any history on the page that you feel is necessary to tell your story.
The archive contains archived web pages from 1996 to the near present. The oldest web pages I could find that I authored was from 1997 for the National Weather Service's forecast office in Sioux Falls, SD.
The above site actually originated in March 1996, but this 1997 image is the earliest I could find in the archive. Not very impressive is it? However, you have to remember that I was authoring with HTML 1.x and worried that Netscape's introduction of the blink element was pushing the envelope further than I wanted to go.
Back in 1996 I used an HPUX system, a text editor, as well as the Mosaic browser and a beta version of Netscape to design the site. By 1997, I had use of Microsoft's Frontpage to design and manage the site.
So again, what was the first Web page that you authored for the Internet? What was the first site that you authored with a content management system? Inquiring minds at CMSReport.com want to know!
Comments
1995
The first site I did was behind the firewall. It was an intranet site in early 1995. The oldest wayback link I can find is for December 1996 for World Drug Store: http://web.archive.org/web/19961223014316/http://worlddrug.com/ . There's a couple of older public sites, too, but they're not in the archive.
My first page
the wayback machine has a snapshot of a bio page I originally made on CNN.com's intranet in late 95 or early 96 - their snapshot is from 98. http://web.archive.org/web/20001017231013/way.nu/Jonathan/index.html I kept it as a bio page on way.nu for several years after than, while I was maintaining IT with manual HTML coding of the content section with navigation maintained with a set of nested server side includes.
The manual HTML part was replaced by Blogger at the end of 1999 http://web.archive.org/web/20010720070539/http://way.nu/ and later by MovableType and then WordPress
How about forum / newsgroup postings?!
Quite by chance I posted a similar challenge on my blog earlier today. In my case, I also focused upon comments in forums and news groups in addition to web pages … August 2, 1994 for me. Click upon my name/homepage to see the posting. Amazingly, I was commenting about the high price of a technical course, “Strategic Business Use of the Internet”! I learned of this posting via Gadgetopia.
Background Image
What ever made you decide to use that hideous image you call a background? Did anyone ever complain about the background?
The female touch
By 1998, the hideous background was removed, but don't look at me for this smart move. In 1998 the Webmaster became a team between myself and a female coworker. That coworker helped introduced me to the need of paying attention to more than just content, but also design and color.
Just look at the current design for CMS Report (yuck) and you can tell, I still have a lot to learn. My talents have always been more as system admin guy than a designer or developer...
Oldest Site
November 1996 - site was on about a year earlier: www.maus.de (archive.org link)
Jurassic Punk circa 1996
Back in 1996, my site Jurassic Punk, was still hosted on GeoCities, because I couldn't afford a domain name and a real host back then...
I managed to dig up this two versions of the homepage from 1996 and 1997.
This is actually the site's second design, I couldn't find the original one from earlier in 1996.
The earliest design I can find from the JurassicPunk.com domain on the machine is from 1998 - the site's third design.
Infotech is my first site
The first site I created was Infotech back in June 1997.
http://web.archive.org/web/1997060104561...
If I recall correctly, I created it using Microsoft Word.
My first online bookstore went online last December 1998.
http://web.archive.org/web/1998120512340...
I remember scanning the books one by one typing their description. I was using a 386 PC that has a paper white monitor.
The first time I used a CMS was for DigitalFilipino that went live back in 1999.
http://web.archive.org/web/2000022910552...
This was done with the help of Integrated Technologies who was building a CMS then and needed a site that can be used to test the design. It took 9 months to fully develop it. What I missed about it are features like glossary, keywords tracking in search engine, among others.
HTMLHelp.com - 12/1996
It's certainly not the oldest site I did, but I think it's old enough to qualify for purposes of discussion here; plus the site is still active and growing today. ;-)
Although HTMLHelp.com went live earlier than this, the oldest reference I can find is December, 1996.
In 1996 we had around 300,000 visitors as we were one of the only sites out there actually teaching others how to create Web pages. A decade later we expect to end 2006 with somewhere in the neighborhood of > 25 million visitors.
My how times change. :-)
John P.
1 of 300,000
Hey John, I recognize your site. I recognize at least the early versions of it, but I don't recall visiting it in recent years. I'd also bet I found your site on Webcrawler which was the search engine at the time. Of course it wasn't long after that for Yahoo to come and grab the spotlight.
dibbs this one
i put this castle on the web for the first time in aug 97 (its all in the saurce!) - they were very interested to get in on this new "world wide web" thing but castles were never built for internet access and the techy's i worked with had a fun time installing their dial up's without leaving trip wires all over.
i remember having a load of fun with the supersleuth page amimated gifs (photoshop ruled even then - even without layers)... and wow ...amazingly they are still there - nice one wayback machine!
it got into the searches with little effort - couple of submissions and spattering of title and meta tags(try that now - frames too!). they got a hefty wedding booking from palo alto ca in their first weeks (pre dot com days) it was quite a coup for a north of england venue! they were majorly impressed ... i acted way cool ...but fwiw i was gobsmacked too ... but dont tell ;)
Just A Lil' Toy Store
Wow, I just love the history of the internet. I started Just A Lil' Toy Store in 1994 and was online September 1995. We originally were located on microweb.com. The earliest dated page of September 25, 1995..I can find is a guest book link located from this great poem I posted on my nature & science website for the toy store. I must say my pages are so....basic funky html to say the least.