What should I add to my '90s website?
So I’m currently toying around with NeoCities, and decided to trial it by building your classic mid '90s Geocities/Tripod/Angelfire pastiche website.
Some of the most important elements are already in place.
Tile background? Large font? Heading in bright pink with a shadow? Unusual colour choices? Random cat gifs? Under construction gif? Check! Check! Check!
In the true spirit of the '90s DIY web, some more pages (including the links page) are coming soon.
(I’m thinking of adding a page dedicated to either Britney or a nu-metal band.)
You can see the page so far here: https://that90ssite.neocities.org/
There are a few things that I want to add to make it complete, and I’m looking for suggestions.
The first, is to embed a midi file that plays automatically. Any suggestions on the best way of doing this?
Second, it’s just not going to be complete without a guestbook.
Third, any webring suggestions?
Fourth, what’s the best way of adding a java chat room in 2024?
Finally, anything else that really needs to be a part of a great '90s website?
You need to offer something banal for download with a spinning stiffy disk gif.
Guestbook didn’t work, after recaptcha it just said POST failed. Oh and you need a visitor counter!
Don’t forget at least one banner ad across the top, flashing obnoxiously
The midi file doesn’t play automatically, but I see that’s a thing your working on.
Also need gifs of Bart Simpson saying “Don’t have a cow man”
Signed the guestbook :)
I think it could do with a very literal under construction image, with some sort of machinery- every website seemed under construction at the time!
there is a website for a pizza place in seattle whose website does this, maybe you can get some inspiration. dinos
It’s readable on mobile. You need to unfix that immediately. The font must not appear bigger than 5px. Responsive layout is forbidden.
Also, no popups, That’s both retro and not retro enough. (Or were those introduced for the first round in the early 2000’s? I don’t know, I’m too young)
That cat is way too high res
do you have a click counter at the bottom
Line by line loading images, maybe an error message saying the connection dropped with the modem sound playing to restart the page.
Your text is too readable, I think it needs to be aliased a lot more. It also wasn’t uncommon to see a black box around text. Your text looks good on the background, it shouldn’t. There should be something between the text and background.
Absolutely needs a hit counter.
Not one person suggested a marquee. Wow.
Granted, the HTML tag is deprecated in the spec, but you can easily set up a marquee using CSS.
Design is too mobile responsive
The great irony is: websites in the 90’s would have been made to cater to resolutions of 640x480. Fancy monitor resolutions went up to 1024x768.
So, viewing it on a mobile screen should be nicer than what a full computer in the 90’s could offer.
’90s websites would have had terrible touch target sizes
