people often say they can find this kind of thing via my employer, Mojeek: https://www.mojeek.com/
How is it that 2 days after this posted no one has said “Craigslist.”
It's not obscure, but, for me, Wikipedia is the ultimate example of the old internet that still persists today.
Free to use, no account required, ad free, non-corporate, multilingual, heavily biased toward text, simple and utilitarian design. Hyperlinks concatenate relevant pieces of information, which serve as the means to navigate the site. The code is very simple (seriously, view the page source of a wikipiedia article). It's based on the human desire to learn and share knowledge with others, and has remained resilient to corruption by commercial interests that pervert that desire for monetary gain. It's a beautiful thing.
Lookup brutalist websites or the gemini protocol.
4-ch.net (not to be confused with 4chan) is a 90s BBS that is still online and occasionally active. It's neat to see posts from the 90s still on the front page.
wow nobody mentioned https://www.lingscars.com/
https://www.spacejam.com/1996/jam.html
I’m pretty sure spacejam.com showed that page up until the sequel supplanted it.
Really awesome old school sites. Crazy gifs, web rings, etc.
textfiles.com still looks like the 90s. It has stories, jokes, essays, and generally interesting stuff.
Kernel.org, home of the Linux kernel, hasn't changed much.
Kernel.org today:
Kernel.org in 1998:
https://web.archive.org/web/19980130085039/https://kernel.org/
And pretty much the rest of the FSF and GNU websites.
Florida’s unemployment website
https://celeryman.alexmeub.com/
(Not really mobile friendly, which holds true to the old school Internet)
If you want one that isn't actually from that time, just feels like it, I'd say https://tildes.net/
Not a website, but since you mention BBSes...one thing that would look pretty familiar to a 1990s Internet user would be most of the text-based MUDs, the ancestor of MMORPGs, that are around.
The MUD Connector is still around, and still has a list of active MUDs.
While I suspect that most dedicated MUDders use dedicated clients, the base protocol is still normally telnet, and you can use a plain old telnet client to play...a protocol that predates Internet Protocol itself.
Not the original, but...
Sites that have old forums. There aren't many anymore, but ones I've seen that have been very helpful of late include car sites, a timeshare forum, and the Fantasy Grounds forum (my virtual tabletop of choice).
I'm sure there are others out there, but it's definitely more rare than it used to be. Is Something Awful still around?
Your way back search engine https://wiby.me It even comes a surprise me button
Some examples that I remember are:
- The Berkshire Hathaway's website (https://berkshirehathaway.com/)
- The UNIX website (https://unix.org/version4/)
- Xorg Project website (https://www.x.org/wiki/)
- Marginalia Web Search (https://search.marginalia.nu/)
- W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) pages containing Standards (e.g.: https://www.w3.org/TR/controller-document/)
- Pd (Puredata) Project Website (https://puredata.info/)
Extremely useful website for collectors of dead media formats (LD, D-VHS, HD-DVD, CED, VHD, etc.) Still has an old style interface with priority given to function and utility over styling. Also has a storefront where you can buy and sell discs.
https://everything2.com/node/e2node/An Introduction to Everything2 - massively interlinked information site
https://www.dieselsweeties.com/ - robots and people comic
https://realultimatepower.net/ - ninjas
https://search.marginalia.nu/ is a search engine for non-commercial content and is pretty great regarding the old-school factor :-)
My healthcare services websites. Their website and mobile app require separate logins. The website logs in then redirects to a completely different website.
They have a tax-free “store” that feels like a completely different website.
Everything is laid out using what seems like the idea of middle management and not modern design philosophy.
gradients, animated GIFs, "best browsed on", and a frame once you click enter. Only thing it's missing is an index page.
No JavaScript sites on onionland
They are trying to be 90s, but I love it. I thought they had a site counter at some point, but maybe I am misremembering and it was just the guest book.
I'm on a couple forum sites still (both phpbb I think). I still read fark.com but rarely if ever comment anymore.
I get most of the stills for my Star Trek memes from trekcore.com which has a pretty old-web feel to it.
most private trackers
telnet bbs.lunduke.comjwz.org/blog, for obvious reasons.
https://www.vernoncoleman.com/
Feels very home made.
Hubski
https://bobistheoilguy.com/ and the oil forums.
It's pretty niche, but https://alternativess.com (sport archery retailer)
