6 Sites to Browse Old Web Designs and Discover Retro Internet

Since its creation in 1989, the world wide web has evolved into a completely different beast. The most noticeable aspect for the layperson is the change in website design. And there are some cool websites today that offer a glimpse at how the internet looked in its early days.

If you lived through the era, these are trips down memory lane to look at the era of Geocities pages and animations everywhere. If you haven’t experienced these before, then it’s a cool dive into the history of the world wide web; and who knows, if you’re a designer yourself, you might find some inspiration.

1. OldWeb.Today (Web): Old Versions of Any Website, in Old Browser Emulations

You probably know about the Internet Archive, which saves a copy of almost every web page in the history of the internet. Well, several websites offer easier and more fun ways to access that database to view old versions of websites, such as OldWeb.Today. And not only does it give you old web pages, but also lets you view them in old browsers.

Enter any URL in OldWeb.Today and you can choose to see its live version as well as an archive. First, you will have to choose from a variety of classic web browsers, many of which are defunct today, such as NCSA Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, or even old versions of Firefox and Opera. Then, input the date and time that you want to see the archived version.

Of course, you can also use the site to see how one of today’s pages would look in an old browser. OldWeb.Today takes a substantial amount of time to load the browser and page, so you’ll need to be patient. But it’s worth the wait for that peek at history. Think back to historical events and try inputting those dates and times.

2. Web Design Museum (Web): Curated Experiences to Learn Web Design History

Web Design Museum is a project to collect, analyze, and showcase web design trends from the first website created in 1991 to pages from the mid-2000s. And the curators do a fantastic job of making interactive or guided experiences to take you through the evolution of how the web looked.

In Timelines, you can explore the changing looks of several popular websites like Apple, Google, or YouTube. Considering Apple has always had a unique focus on design and has been a technology leader in that space, it’s especially interesting to explore that timeline. Similarly, the team at Web Design Museum also curates exhibitions, which are guided image galleries on topics such as Y2K aesthetic in web design, pixel art, or search engines in the 90s.

There’s a whole Gallery section where you can browse early websites, web design in the 90s, how CSS layouts changed the look of the web, and more. And while Flash is dead now, it played a huge part in web design for years, which you can explore in the section on Flash websites. It’s an incredible celebration of retro internet and a must-visit for anyone interested in technology.

3. 404PageFound (Web): Collection of Active Sites That Haven’t Been Updated

404PageFound, a clever take on the 404 “Page Not Found” error, aims to find dated websites that are still active but haven’t been updated in years. And ironically, 404PageFound itself hasn’t had a new post since 2014. Nonetheless, its collection is a cool trip back in time.

As they say in the About section, the purpose isn’t to ridicule the dated design of these dormant websites. In fact, it’s often the opposite: to see a fully functional website in a modern browser that incorporates the designs of an era gone by. From personal websites and blogs to corporate pages and even old movie promotional sites, 404PageFound is like opening a time capsule.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to sort the entries, so you will simply have to browse the collection by looking at thumbnails to decide what you want to click on.

4. Neocities (Web): Relive the Geocities Experience and Create Your Own Site

A big part of the early web was Geocities, a network of personal websites that had a unique design language full of animated GIFs, multi-colored text and logos, stats counters for how many people visited that page, and even guestbooks for visitors to sign. You can get all of that and more at Neocities, a project to recreate the mad world of Geocities.

Neocities is a web hosting company which was originally created as a way for people to port and save their Geocities websites when the service shut in 2009. But since then, it’s taken a life of its own, with people creating original websites on Neocities that incorporate all those old-school design elements. And there are a surprising amount of sites by young people who weren’t around in the Geocities era, but want to use that retro design for their pages.

There is a simple way to browse the 600,000+ sites on Neocities, with options to sort them by most followed, most supporters, most hits, oldest, newest, random, etc. You can also filter them by tags to find the kind of content you’re interested in. And it’s free to create a Neocities page, if you want to take a crack at making your own retro website.

5. Cameron’s World (Web): Curated Geocities Links From Internet Archives

If you really want the old-school experience of browsing Geocities pages, you need to head to Cameron’s World. Web designer Cameron Askin crawled through thousands of Geocities pages stored on the Internet Archive for interesting material and sources GIFs, MIDI sounds, pixel graphics, and hyperlinks from them. Then he put them all into a weird and wonderful collage that gloriously recreates the mess of old Geocities pages.

Hover your cursor across different elements, and whenever you see it change, you can click that element to be taken to a page from the Internet Archives. It’s a crazy fun experience of surfing the web. As Cameron himself puts it, “In an age where we interact primarily with branded and marketed web content, Cameron’s World is a tribute to the lost days of unrefined self-expression on the Internet. This project recalls the visual aesthetics from an era when it was expected that personal spaces would always be under construction.”

6. Wiby (Web): Search and Stumble Upon Old Web Pages

Wiby is trying to be an alternative search engine to find what Google can’t, specifically focusing on old web pages and sites. As the makers put it, the purpose is to discover pages made by “hobbyists, academics, and computer savvy people about subjects they were personally interested in.” That was largely the case in the early internet, but modern SEO rankings and commercial pages push these down the order when you search for them on Google.

The database is made of active websites that haven’t been updated in a long time, so you can expect retro design elements from the 90s and early 2000s. The search results are also not keyword-focused to give you exactly what you’re looking for; they almost challenge you to consider other points of view.

On the main page, you can also click the Surprise Me button to travel to a random web page from Wiby’s database. It acts like a StumbleUpon for retro sites. If you want to keep doing that without hitting the Back button each time, copy and paste “https://wiby.me/surprise/” into your address bar whenever you’re ready to jump to the next random website.

Why We Love Old Technology

With so many different ways to revisit the old internet, you have to ask, why do humans have a hard time letting go of old technology? You might think it’s simply about nostalgia, but there’s actually more to it. Read about the irresistible appeal of old technology to know more.