I built sites in the 2000s. I stayed up late. I broke stuff. I fixed it. And you know what? I loved it, even when it made me want to yell at my screen. If you’re craving an even deeper nostalgia trip, check out my honest take on living through 2000s web design.
I still hear that dial-up shriek in my head. Mom would pick up the phone, and boom—offline. Good times.
The Look: Loud, shiny, and kind of sweet
The web felt homemade back then. It had heart. It also had glitter GIFs and auto-play music. We stacked pages with tables, frames, and spacer GIFs. We told people to set their screen to 800×600. We put “Best viewed in IE6” badges like it was a club. If you'd like to see how those early aesthetics fit into the broader history and future of web design, it's a fascinating ride.
I used Comic Sans and Verdana like they were the only two fonts on earth. And gradients? Oh yes. Glassy buttons. Big drop shadows. Big everything.
Real thing I built #1: My GeoCities fan page
I made a fan page on GeoCities in 2001. It had a tiled star background and a purple header I sliced in Photoshop. I added:
- A hit counter from Bravenet
- A guestbook link that said “Sign my guestbook!”
- A little web ring badge
- A tiny MIDI of the Zelda theme that played on load (sorry, headphones)
The nav sat in a frame on the left. If you clicked a link and it loaded wrong, it nested the whole site inside the right pane like a hall of mirrors. I learned real fast how weird frames could get.
It looked… busy. But I felt proud. I hit refresh on that counter like it was a slot machine.
Real thing I built #2: MySpace chaos (but make it cute)
My MySpace profile was my art class. I pasted CSS from Pimp-My-Profile. I hosted glitter PNGs on Photobucket. I set my song to play as soon as you opened the page. Top 8 drama? Oh, that was real.
I used a cursor sparkle script. I hid the default boxes. I made my headline blink. I even tried a background with tiny hearts. It was a lot. But it was me.
Side note: when Photobucket hit its bandwidth cap, my whole design broke. Big “bandwidth exceeded” images everywhere. Felt like a sign from above.
Real thing I built #3: A band site with Dreamweaver and Flash
I made a site for a local band in 2003. I lived inside Dreamweaver. I sliced a layout in Fireworks and dropped it into table cells. I used rollover buttons from the Behaviors panel. Clean? Not really. But it worked. That DIY approach later helped when I actually hired a web design team in Bedford and wanted to speak their language.
We had a Flash intro with a preloader that stuck at 98% on slow connections. There was a big “Skip Intro” link. Most folks clicked it. Still, the singer loved that sparkle animation. I drank soda at midnight and tweaked ActionScript 2.0 like it would change the world.
I stamped a “Best viewed in 1024×768, IE6” note in the footer. It felt almost polite.
The stuff that made me cry a little
Internet Explorer 6. That’s it. That’s the subheading.
Okay, more:
- PNG transparency was broken. I used the TwinHelix IEPNGFix. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it fried the layout.
- I used conditional comments to load extra CSS just for IE. My CSS looked like a burrito.
- Clearing floats? I used the clearfix hack. I pasted that class into everything like hot sauce.
- Suckerfish dropdowns were magic, until IE6 forgot how to hover.
- On dial-up, pages crawled. Every image felt like a brick.
Also, Flash sites had no back button. People got lost. “Mystery meat” nav (icons with no labels) was everywhere. We meant well. We just hid everything.
Meanwhile, a surprising chunk of my freelance gigs came from, shall we say, “grown-up” webcam portals that wanted the same glittery buttons but absolutely needed video to load on creaky connections. Those sites were eye-opening case studies in bandwidth budgeting, ad placement, and conversion psychology. If you’re curious about where that corner of the web has landed today—complete with cleaner UX, HD streaming, and safer payment flows—take a peek at this guide to the best sites to watch live sex, which breaks down the modern platforms that have replaced those buffering, pop-up-ridden relics and shows how far the design and tech have come.
Those same adult-industry lessons also pop up when I evaluate location-specific service directories that need to balance discretion with usability—think regional companion listings. If you’d like to see what a contemporary, mobile-friendly directory looks like in practice, head over to Blue Island escorts where a clean layout, quick filtering, and straightforward contact options demonstrate how current UX standards make booking simpler and more secure.
The tools that saved my brain (sort of)
Firefox with Firebug changed my life in 2006. I could edit CSS live. I used the Web Developer Toolbar to turn off images and check sizes. I learned from A List Apart and CSS Zen Garden. I copied tricks. I broke them. Then I made them mine.
jQuery came along. I used it to fade things in and out like I was a movie director. Lightbox for image pop-ups felt like magic. It was a softer kind of pop.
Real thing I built #4: My first “Web 2.0” app feel
In 2007, I skinned a WordPress 2.x blog for a friend. We started from Kubrick (that blue header!). I swapped in big rounded buttons and a glossy logo. We used tag clouds. We called everything “beta.” I added AJAX comments with jQuery. It felt fast. It also broke in IE until 3 a.m. That era sits right in the middle of the ultimate history of web design and shows how quickly conventions shift.
I used Eric Meyer’s CSS reset to calm down browser quirks. Then I added one too many gradients. Couldn’t help it.
What actually aged well
- Personality. Sites felt human. We posted blurbs that sounded like real people.
- View Source culture. We learned by peeking and sharing.
- Community. Forums, guestbooks, and side chat boxes (remember cbox?) kept folks talking.
- RSS. Bloglines and Google Reader made reading feel smooth.
Speaking of local vibes, I’ve also shared my real take on web design in Gloucester where community-driven design still thrives today.
What didn’t
- Auto-play anything. Music. Video. Please no.
- Flash intros. Pretty, but slow and stuck.
- Image-only text. No search. No screen readers. Not fair.
- Table layouts. They were heavy and hard to keep steady.
Tiny lesson I still follow
I keep the heart. I skip the noise. I design fast pages, but I add a little flair, like a friendly micro-copy line or a tiny custom icon. I use Grid and Flexbox now. No spacer.gif. No conditional comments. I still think about people on weak Wi-Fi. That old dial-up feeling never left.
For a look at how those hard-earned lessons translate to today’s best practices, swing by Bingo Web Design and see how lean code and a dash of personality still make magic.
So, should you miss it?
A little. It was messy, but it was alive. It taught me to ship, to tweak, and to care. It taught me that clarity beats a shiny intro, and that a site should work for everyone.
My score? 8/10 for charm. 3/10 for sanity. Would I build a MySpace theme again? Maybe on a rainy Sunday—no auto-play this time.