this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024

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What should I add to my '90s website? (aus.social)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by ajsadauskas@aus.social to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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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?

UPDATE: Thanks for all the feedback! I've added more annoying GIFs, a guestbook, a links page, and a cyber cat hangout.

UPDATE 2: And added even more gifs, an amazing Amiga demo, and a ton of links.

@asklemmy #tech #webdev #neocities #technology

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[–] tokenwizard@social.tandj-homelab.dev 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

@ajsadauskas@aus.social @asklemmy@lemmy.ml I think I actually have a few of my 90s-era sites archived. One of them should have an auto play midi for the background music. I'll see if I can dig it up!

[–] tokenwizard@social.tandj-homelab.dev 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

@ajsadauskas@aus.social @asklemmy@lemmy.ml I actually started down this path a little while back and have since gotten sidetracked.

https://weblike99.com/

[–] bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think that maybe not knowing how to make the embedded midi auto-play is more authentic!

But I used to use Autostart=true in the Embed tag.

[–] tokenwizard@social.tandj-homelab.dev 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

@bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world I was trying this with the HTML5 audio tag but not having any luck. It may be client browser specific.

[–] bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

Ah, sorry, I was only looking at what I did in the 90s!

Looking at the page, there's a console error that says something about "invoke Tone.start()" so I wonder if it needs some javascript to do that, maybe

<script type="text/javascript">Tone.start();</script>

I think that it's including this player code?

https://www.npmjs.com/package/midi-player-js

But the docs there describe creating a new MidiPlayer object and calling play() instead of start(), so I'm probably not helping.

I don't work with javascript, so this is all pure guesswork.

[–] ajsadauskas@aus.social 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

@tokenwizard @asklemmy I'm thinking of eventually doing three websites.

One that's a '90s pastiche (that one), a minimalist personal website that takes some elements of the '90s web but tones them down a notch, and a blog.

[–] tokenwizard@social.tandj-homelab.dev 1 points 8 months ago

@ajsadauskas@aus.social @asklemmy@lemmy.ml I was thinking an old forum like Simple Machines or something.