other people's cool personal sites
many of the links that were previously here have moved to the software megathread. also consult that for more.
- https://melankorin.net/: one of the prettiest sites i've ever had the pleasure of visiting. lots of images and animations, so it'll struggle on very old computers - be warned!
- https://gekk.info/: the personal site of a youtuber named cathode ray dude. available on very old computers over HTTP, if you want. full of old photography/videography stuff, as well as old computers (from the late 2000s back through the DOS era, and some even earlier stuff).
- https://crimsonphoneme.neocities.org/: an awesome site of a fellow frutiger forum user. i discovered several very useful old sites there, some of which made it onto this list - take a look at the "links" section for that!
- https://blitzw.in/: nune is an old acquaintance of mine. eir website is as simple as it gets - i frequently use it (as well as this site) to test the performance of different web browsers on very old computers.
- https://samsolarsystem.neocities.org/: a neat personal site that works on small screens. i enjoy looking around it on my older (pre-2010) computers :)
classic web sites
- http://wiby.org/: a search engine for the classic web. you can type in a query just like a normal search engine, and visit old sites from the 1990s and 2000s that are still up to this day. a great experience on older computers and for people who love the old net.
- http://oldavista.com/: does it really need an introduction? this is possibly the #1 definitive gateway to the old net, although it indexes internet archive snapshots instead of living websites, which makes it much slower than wiby. when using oldavista, don't just search in the search bar - look around the site! it has links to other, adjacent sites and software projects, as well as a directory search to look more generally at given topics.
- https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/: an archive of a large number of historical websites, curated, catalogued, and indexed by year and style. if you (like me) are fascinated by old web graphic design, this site is a treasure trove. you can filter by a specific year, specific types of site, and even filter by "good" and "bad" looking sites! (they do include some ugly and badly made sites on purpose.) interestingly, you can track a lot of sites year by year, all the way to the present (or to them shutting down).
- https://frutigeraeroarchive.org/: a large repository of art, wallpapers, music, and other resources to do with early 2000s graphics and software design. not so much dedicated to old computers as it is dedicated to the aesthetics of old computers. it runs... okay... in low-end web browsers i.e. netsurf, dillo, elinks, but you really want to use palemoon or a modern browser for the best experience, which means you need at least a gig of RAM and ideally more. it also has a cool forum, of which i am a member. :)
HTML/CSS tutorials
- https://johndecember.com/html/: a college professor's tutorial in HTML and CSS, dating back to the late 1990s and updated through 2023 at least. this was my main resource for learning HTML and CSS, it'll teach you everything you need to know to get started, and has lots of useful resources even if you already know what you're doing. the whole website's a relic, and i could comb through it for hours.
- https://webguide.neocities.org/: my second major resource when it came to learning HTML and CSS. this is a slightly less intimidating, step-by-step introduction to HTML and CSS, and if you're a complete beginner or very near to it, it probably wouldn't hurt to read this first, and then take from John December's guide anything you're still confused about. both of these sites will load quickly and correctly on low spec web browsers, so you can learn HTML and CSS even from a weak computer that struggles with modern websites.
- https://www.w3schools.com/htmlcss/: a very popular recommendation for beginners learning HTML and CSS. this site is much heavier than the other two, and will struggle on low-end computers, maybe not loading correctly or at all on low spec web browsers like netsurf, dillo, elinks. however, it is extremely comprehensive and can teach you virtually everything you would ever want to know. if your computer can open the site, i'd recommend it as a further supplement, if you can't find the answer you're looking for on the first two sites.