Updates 2016
12-31-16 Old-Site of the Day: Doesgodexist.org, September/October 1995 Issue Christian apologetics in a magazine format. Running since at least the 80's. This is their first online issue.
Bible Verse of the Day: Lamentations 3:21-23
Visitors today: 132; Unique: 73
12-30-16 Sorry, No Update Today. Visitors to WebSiteRing Today: 8; Unique: 8
12-29-16 Old-Site of the Day: Pojo.com I first heard of this site when browsing Bulbapedia's list of Pokemon sites. It's a gaming portal, with a focus on collectible games. Most of the articles appear to be fan-contributed. Not unusual, even for an older site; most of Pokemon Village's content was contributed by fans; Super Mario HQ had several volunteer editors, and I shouldn't even have to mention GameFAQs or IMDb. Still updated; it got it's current layout in 2004. I like 2003's layout a bit better.
Here's what it looked like in 2000, when it was a pure Pokemon site.
Before then it was a...golf site. Ok.Bible Verse of the Day: Romans 8:35-39
Visitors to WebSiteRing Today: 182; Unique: 78
12-28-16 Old-site of the Day: MicKinley.com in 1997 It's hard to find information on Magellan, a mid-90's search engine that was bought by Excite. If you try to look it up on Wikipedia you're redirected to Excite's article. Nevertheless, there is some information out there. Here's what I've found: Magellan was not at Magellan.com; it was at McKinley.com. Magellan, like Excite, was designed to take queries in plain English. It also had a directory which provided site reviews, like Excite. The search engine did have one unique feature: you could choose to search the web, the directory, or special, editor approved family-friendly "green light" sites. I haven't found any saved searches from this engine, so I can't say how well it worked. The home page is cleaner than Excite's tho. Here's an article about Excite Buying Magellan. And here's Wikipedia articles on Magellan's co-founders: Christine and Isabel Maxwell Wikipedia's editors should really link those to Excite's page...Bible Verse of the Day: Proverbs 4:14-15
Visits today: 148; Unique: 57
12-27-16 No Update Today Visits: 2; Unique: 2
12-26-16 No Update Today Visits: 4; Unique: 4
12-25-16 No Update Today Visits: 3; Unique: 1
12-24-16 No Update Today Visits: 1; Unique: 1
12-23-16 No Update Today Visits: 5; Unique: 5
12-22-16 Old-Site of the Day: Excite.com, in 1996 Excite was a search engine which used statistical data to try to match web documents to user queries, even if the documents didn't use the exact same words as the users. Also offered "subject grouping," which sounds like clustering, tho I haven't seen an example of it in any saved searches. Bought several other engines, including Magellan and WebCrawler, garnered massive amounts of debt, and merged with an early broadband provider named @home before going bankrupt. You know what engine they didn't buy? Google. After the bankruptcy, their technology was sold to Infospace, who shelved it in favor of metasearching, and their website was sold to a lesser-known company which eventually merged with AskJeeves. Excite also had a web directory. Instead of just listening good sites they'd list anything and they'd give it a review. A good review was a mark of quality; the backlink was not. Here's an example search, for "arts," from 1999. Here's another, for "computers," also from '99.
Bible Verse of the Day: Luke 2:22-32
I probably won't be able to update over the holidays. Sorry.
12-21-16 Old-Site of the Day: VGF.com VGF can stand for Video Gamers First, Video Games Forever, or Video Game Forums. Currently, their main page redirects to their forums, but when exploring SMBHQ yesterday I found a link to VGF's old 404 error page, from when VGF was a gaming portal instead of a fourm. From there you can find links to other abandoned, but working, parts of the site. That's today's link; have fun exploring the old reviews, articles, and cheat code indices.-->
Bible Verse of the Day: Psalm 1:1
Visits to WebSiteRing Today: 115; Unique: 58
12-20-16 Old-Site of the Day: Super Mario Bros. Headquarters Another old favorite of mine. This one's never been off line, as far as I know. The web master did add some annoying in-line text adds, tho. This site isn't well organized, but you can find some cool things by searching. Here's an ancient article, debating if "Super Mario Bros: the Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach" exists. (The authors got a email asking about it; the email called it the Grand Mission to Rescue Princess Peach.) Here's a "Not-So-Secret Page." Hadn't seen that one before. Here's a comic about "neglected" Mario characters. It includes Luigi, Toad, and a bunch of characters invented by the comic's creator. I once thought those characters were official characters made by Nintendo!
-->Bible Verse of the Day: Proverbs 15:5
Visits to WebSiteRing Today: 239; Unique: 109
12-19-16 Old-site of the Day: GameStart.com, in 1999 Another subject-specific directory, this time about video games. Each subject appears to have had it's own domain name, probabally for SEO. Their GameWire news site has some interesting sounding articles. Sadly, they linked to an internal page which redirected users to the news articles. This scheme keeps Archive.org from archiving the links.-->
Bible Verse of the Day: Proverbs 16:3
Visits to WebSiteRing today: 203; Unique: 89
12-18-16 Sorry, no update today. Visits to WebSiteRing today: 5; Unique: 3
12-17-16 Old-Site of the Day: Search.com in 2001 I said subject-specific search services used to be popular; this site let you search over 800 of 'em. Sadly, the directory links to Search.com's advanced search page instead of a list of subject-specific directories. They do have a list of top searches, which is fun to browse.
Bible Verse of the Day: Proverbs 18:2
Visits to WebSiteRing today: 108; Unique: 47
12-16-16 Old-Site of the Day: Anipike.com, in 1997 A web directory of Anime-related web sites. Subject-specific directories were popular in the late 90's, when the web was rulled by small fan sites. Now, most have been replaced by large sites where fans can get all the info they need in one place. While today's site is the oldest version Archive.org has, it's not that useful; most of the links don't work. Here's a later version of Anipike, from 2000, with working links.-->
Bible Verse of the Day: Proverbs 10:1
Visits to WebSiteRing today: 173; Unique: 78
12-15-16 Old-Site of the Day: y-dreamland.co.jp Nara Dreamland was initally successful enough to warrant a more original sister park: Yokohama Dreamland. This park's long gone; it was closed in 2002, torn down in 2003. Here's the website from when it was open. I just translated the site's updates. (Well, technically Google did...) The last update is a goodbye notice: Read Yokohama Dreamland's last updates here.-->Bible Verse of the day: Proverbs 25:2
Visits to WebSiteRings today: 133 Unique: 57
12-14-16 Old-Site of the Day: The Atari Museum This was the first site I spent a great deal of time on; all the others were too complicated. Very little has changed. Each page has it's own layout, but that doesn't matter. It's well-organized, it's done with a sence of artistry, and the pages have a consistant feel. Also, I wish this was real: The Atari 8000 Mainframe.-->
Bible Verse of the Day: Proverbs 1:8-9
Visits to WebSiteRing today: 88 Unique: 44
12-13-16 Old-Site of the Day: PokemonVillage.com This was one of my favorite sites early in highschool. Then, one day, it was gone. Recently, while trying to find out what happened to it, I found out it was back! Sadly, most of the links are broken. I emailed the webmaster; apparently he's working on bringing it back, but it's harder than it looks. Here's a version from back-in-the-day: Pokemon Village in 2001
-->And here's some good news, Archive.org finally added a search feature to their web archive: Try the new, searchable Wayback website archive!
Bible Verse of the Day: Mark 3:25-16
Visits to WebSiteRings today: 247 Unique: 110
12-12-16 Wow, over 1,100 views. Thank You! Old site of the Day: Euro-Asia GameBoy. This was, at one time, hosted on IGN, back when they were a "network" of gaming-related sites. Has quite a few articles and reviews, but some are inaccessible; the forms used to search for them are broken. I wish I know this existed 10, 15 years ago; I could never find a good Gameboy fan site.-->
Bible Verse of the Day: Hebrews 11
Visits to WebSiteRings today: 214 Unique: 90
12-11-16 Sorry, No update today. Visits to WebSiteRings today: 9 Unique: 7
12-10-16 Old-Site of the Day: Nara-Dreamland.com Nara Dreamland was the early 1960's product of a failed licensing deal between a Japanese entertainment mogul and an American entertainment mogul. (Take a look at the pictures and guess who the American entertainer was.) The park closed in 2006; today's old site is from then. A real estate developer bought the park recently; they're tearing it down to make room for housing. A bit sad really.-->
Bible Verse of the Day: Genesis 2:23
Visits to WebSiteRings today: 251 Unique: 114
12-8-16 Sorry, No Update Today. Visits to WebSiteRings today: 13 Unique: 12
12-8-16 Archive.org This is what the Internet Archive looked like when it first launched! (or, at the very least, this is the earliest version of the Internet Archive in the Internet Archive.)
Bible Verse of The Day: Exodus 20Visits to WebSiteRings today: 5 Unique: 5
12-7-16 Old-site of the day: Northernlight.com Northernlight was an eary clustering search engine. Sites were pre-sorted into catagories. Also had exclusive articles, which users had to pay to access. Popular with advanced searchers, it never really caught on with the public in general. Somehow, it's survived, but it only indexes 1000 or so business news sites: Northernlight Today
Here are some example searches from back-in-the-day: Northernlight Movies Search Northernlight Computers Search Northernlight Programing Search
Bible Verse for Today: Luke 15:11-32
P.S. Today is Pearl Harbor Day. Show respect for veterans.
No Vistors Today :(
12-6-16 Old-site of the day: Yahoo.com, just before Christmas in 1996 Yahoo was a web directory at the time, and it was the most popular site on the world wide web. This was back in the day when ISP's gave their users webspace with their account. As such most sites listed don't have their own domain name; the url's look like this: http://www.someserver.net/~username/webpage.htmlBible Verse of the day: Ezra Chapter 3No Vistors Today :(
12-5-16 Old-site of the day: "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" Describes how Google works. You should at least skim this. Things I learned: Google's PageRank algorithm involves more than counting links pointing to a page; pages that are already popular (e.g. have many inbound links) carry greater weight than unpopular pages. Also, Google has a random factor; a sort-of guess that a user may stop clicking on links and enter a new address. This can be adjusted by IP addresses, so spammy sites can be targeted and deranked. My explanation is rather poor; I'd reccomend reading the actual paper. Here's another good article on PageRank: PageRank Article from WebWorkshop. The writer steps through the algorithm to show how it effects different pages' ranking. Here's a Bible Verse for today: Matthew 7:7Visits to WebSiteRings today: 24 Unique: 8
12-4-16 Sorry, no update for today. Visits to WebSiteRings today: 4 Unique: 2
12-3-16 Old-site of the day: Something.com in 1999. This is either the greatest page in the world, or the worst; I can't decide which. And, yes, it's still there: Something.com today. At the very least it's a fast site, possible the fastest site on the internet.Bible Verse of the day: Acts 17:23
12-2-16 Old-site of the Day: imdb.com/reviews. IMDB started off on Usenet. They still have an archive of old usenet posts, but I cannot find a link to it on their main page. I've provided a link to their index page, but most of the links on that page appear to be broken. Luckily, Google has a search feature that will let users limit their search to a specific directory on a site. Google may require you to enter a catchpa; don't ask me why. I can't see a spammer trying to track a specific directory on a webserver. Here's a review of Jurassic Park from 1993. Here's a surprisingle-positive review of Star Wars Episode I. And here's a mid-80's essay comparing the first Star Wars movie with Citizen Kane to see if Star Wars is truly "great."Here's a Bible Verse for today: Corinthians 13:1-13Visits to WebSiteRings today: 474 Unique: 203; over 800 total hits so far, Thank you!
12-1-16 Old-site of the Day: Zerx.com. This is an odd one. It's a search engine that started in 1999 or 2000. It's still alive, but has had few updates. Works fairly well for single word queries, but returns less relevant results for more specific searches. Here's the earliest version of Zerx the Internet Archive has, from May 10, 2000. Even today, it's still just "a prototype." When will it be ready?With that in mind, here's a Bible verse for today: Luke 14:28Wow...Over 500 views in 4 days. Thank You!Visits to WebSiteRings today: 454 Unique: 188
11-30-16 Old-site of the Day: DMOZ.org, in 1999. I like DMOZ, even today. Their catagories have links to major search engines, so you can see how well AltaVista, All-the-Web, Excite and other engines worked.Also, here's something newer, but very important: The FTC has a list of steps to help webmasters comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. A must read if you plan on staying around for awhile.With that in mind, here's a Bible verse for today: Luke 18:15-17Visits to WebSiteRings today: 156 Unique: 67
11-29-16: Old-site of the Day: Infoseek.com, in 1997. Never had a chance to use thier search engine, but the archived web directory is a good place to find old websites. Apparently includes both human edited and automatically added results.Visits to WebSiteRings today: 555 Unique: 251
11-28-16: Make a web-site-ring without scripting. I never really liked WebRings(R), but if you're in the mood to make one for nostalgia purposes, here's a germ of an idea to start with. Visits to WebSiteRings today: 369 Unique: 157
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