Sunday, July 26, 2026
A website from over 20 years ago is preserved in a folder of text files
While looking for something else, I came across a folder on my Mac called “free for X”. In it were a bunch of plain text HTML files which together made up a Mac freeware website that was the predecessor to thriftmac.
So I uploaded it to a server, opened the home page and sure enough there it was — an entire website from over 20 years ago still fully functional. The links to outside websites mostly don’t work, but that’s on them.
So, yes, proof that plain text not tied to an app does stand the test of time. This is especially true if you keep the files safe and sound on your own computer.
Looking back on it, the main thing I would have done differently today would be to use server-side includes for the head section and the navigation. On the other hand, I was using BBEdit, which has multi-file search and replace, so I might have been content with that method.
I don’t think I knew about Emmet back then, but it definitely would have come in handy for marking up lists and paragraphs.
I notice that I also availed myself of a third-party service for search. All I had to do was sign up and paste in the provided script. Somehow this survivor from a bygone era — Free Find — is still in business.
This points to a big advantage of hand coding — lots of flexibility. I used an editor called FeedMe to create my own XML for an RSS feed.
What we now know as static site generators didn’t exist back then. If the site had grown much larger with lots of linking, an SSG might have been helpful. For a site this size, though, it would have been overkill.
Markdown would have been fairly new at the time, although similar systems have existed since the early ’90s. I’m pretty sure my attitude then, as now, would have been that I don’t need it.
The HTML, as you can see by clicking on the badge in the sidebar, validates with only two errors. The images don’t have an alt. I’m not sure why I didn’t put them in, considering they would have been required even in those days. It seems to have taken me a while to come around to the idea that they are indeed useful.
The button for the validator contains the site’s former URL, which was free space provided by Shaw, my internet service provider at the time. I didn’t have to pay anything extra to have my own website — a big incentive for me to get started on learning to code for the web.
The CSS for the site shows some interesting choices. To create a two-column layout, I made the left div 67% wide and floated it to the left. The leftover space was the right column. For desktop this was fine. I didn’t worry about phones back then.
The navigation is a bulleted list with the bullets removed and replaced by a 1 em border on the left, highlighted as yellow if it is the active page.
At the bottom of the style sheet is a class called “greek”. I can’t find any reference to it in the HTML, and so it will forever remain a mystery.
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