Your Favourite "Dead" Sites

[Guest]

I didn't see this topic already, and it's one I've been thinking of so I thought I'd ask.

What old sites that are now offline do you remember fondly? If they're on Archive.org, can you provide a link?

Here are a few of mine to get the ball rolling.


ForceAcademy.com (https://web.archive.org/web/19991012180951/http://forceacademy.com/) - A Star Wars fan site that took the Force semi-seriously, mixing it with new age philosophy and spiritualism to create a community of "Jedi". Edit: I just remembered that I was actually in charge of the fan fiction section for a while.


PlanetNamek.com (https://web.archive.org/web/20020121172634/http://planetnamek.com/) - The first DBZ fan site I ever found. It had a huge encyclopedia of characters, episodes and everything else. I read about characters and plotlines that I wouldn't see on TV until years later when Funimation got around to dubbing the episodes.


AfterEarth.com - Not the Will Smith movie, but Titan A.E. This was a promotional site but also an online game. I don't remember all the details, but you'd basically create or join a ship and there was some ranking based on largest crew or something. The site is on Archive.org, but requires Flash and Shockwave so may as well not be.


TBSSuperStation.com/mortalkombat (https://web.archive.org/web/20001109180300/http://tbssuperstation.com/mortalkombat/) - This site was to promote the network TV premiere of the first Mortal Kombat movie. Most of the archived site looks broken, but you can still sorta access Cage's Challenge which was a Mad Lib-style game that I spent too much time playing as a kid.

[WiiMiiSwitch]

https://www.thewantedmusic.com/
I'm a big fan of this band and the website they had use to have a chat platform and news platform for fans, that's gone now

[yungwake0]

https://janus.astro.umd.edu/

I used to mess with the Java widgets on this website all the time as a small child Technically it's not that dead, since an update was made in 2021 to "deprecate" the Java and Flash features. But besides that the last update was in 2015, and even then it had slowed down quite a bit.

[beating hearts bby]

Lissa Explains It All, which is a 90s website for teaching kids to make websites. I have learned a lot from here, and I just really like revisiting it to either refresh my memory on something or to learn something new.

Looks like it hasn't been updated since 2016, and there's a few dead links, but I just have really fond memories of this site. 

[brisray]

I learned everything I know about web design from WebTek Rocks.

The Internet Archive wasn't too kind to it when it saved it. Perhaps it was and I'd simply forgotten how tacky it was   

When I have a little time I like poking around really old websites. One way of finding them is to type a word, any word, into a search engine, especially Google, and follow it with the word webring. There's loads of old sites still around from places ike Lycos Tripod and Angelfire.

[Uneuclid]

Deviantart

i still kinda use it and honestly if i had a "move all artists off insta/twitter to DA" button id press it. its so weird thinking about how it used to have such a big thriving community and then Eclipse just nuked it all and now its a ghost town. people still use it sure, but its nowhere near what it was, theres no real community or life anymore.

I really wish i couldve been there for the peak days of DA. theres no real BIG site quite like what it was nowadays

[OneMillionFurries]

Deviantart

i still kinda use it and honestly if i had a "move all artists off insta/twitter to DA" button id press it. its so weird thinking about how it used to have such a big thriving community and then Eclipse just nuked it all and now its a ghost town. people still use it sure, but its nowhere near what it was, theres no real community or life anymore.

I really wish i couldve been there for the peak days of DA. theres no real BIG site quite like what it was nowadays

I was actually gonna say DeviantArt as a half-joke until I saw this reply :P

I was there during it's peak. From 2010-2014 or so it was my online home. I made a loooot of friends there that I never talk to anymore but remember really fondly to this day. And honestly yeah, looking back at it it's so depressing seeing the site in the state that it is in now.

The closest thing to it that I'm on nowadays is FurAffinity in terms of an art gallery site but... It really doesn't have that same level of community to it. Not to the same extent that DA did.


Now speaking of DeviantArt back in it's peak: Anyone remember iScribble? It was basically like Drawpile/Magma back in the day and a LOT of DA users used it to draw together. I miss it :(

[Uneuclid]

yeah, it feels so weird looking at old abandoned DA accounts from back in the day knowing what it was like and knowing that theyre now like in their 30s or close.its like looking at a snapshot of who these people used to be.its interesting comparing the top favorited posts on DA with posts from the past and seeing just how much lower the favorites are nowadays, and how featured art doesnt even have a little sub-description accompanying it anymore it sucks too knowing how easily the death of DA couldve been avoided, even with the DA cringe hate and all it couldve lived if they just listened and didnt roll out eclipse.

similar idea with tumblr honestly

honestly the internet just doesnt have as much in the way of community anymore, the closest thing to a big site that still has that community aspect is Newgrounds.

[brisray]

The Angel Harris Collection was a strange but interesting site that disappeared around 2005. The Internet Archive only managed to save a very small portion of the site.

The site was to "celebrate the material evidence that the combination of our consciousness and interaction with other individuals generates." and "to display the objects, ideas and tastes that make us the individuals we are - that make us real."

They used a very unusual method of getting people to write to them. They would leave business cards about the site in books, public places and on public transport. That meant they had quite an eclectic collection of images, stories, and poetry. A few of us were invited to write something for them but I couldn't think of much to say. Oddly enough what I wrote in 2001 was one of the few whole pages to get saved.

[brisray]

Bonsai Kitten (Internet Archive) had me absolutely incensed when I first found it. I was half-way through writing a nasty email to them when I realized what it actually was.

The site was infamous back in the day and generated tons of hate mail and petitions to get it taken offline.

[Thorn]

I used to spend so much time on PBSKids as a child, and while the website is still there a lot of the shows that used to run as web episodes for free online are no longer availible on the websites because they're on streaming services, and a lot of the games I used to play were taken down years ago to usher in more popular new series. One of my favorites was Dragonfly TV, which let you play a bunch of biology and engineering games on their site. There was also Between the Lions, Eekoworld, It's My Life, Zoom!, and Maya and Miguel (Which is archived on Scholastic).

[garystu]

  Pokemon Elite 2000. Like many Pokemon fansites, they had guides, news, and forums. They had a written guide (with screenshots) for performing what is now known as the mew glitch, which I followed back in the day and it worked for me. Otherwise, the appeal of a pokemon fansite is obvious. It had some shockwave games which I played too much, they were very simple.

also while i'm talking defunct pkmn sites, if you have a Flash player browser extension like Ruffle check out pikaflash.com

  Anime Visions was an anime fansite just full of promotional artwork from various animes. This kind of website is very... obsolete. It's very easy to find a bunch of anime art online nowadays, and this collection is scattered. I can't see the appeal any more, but i used too like it.

  The Turk Alliance is a Final Fantasy 7 fansite named for the antagonist group the Turks. The website's purpose is to debunk game rumours around FF7 on the PSX, and they boast over 100 rumours tested! The "if you are mean to tifa she will dive into sephiroth's sword and save aeris" variety of rumour. Didn't make that one up, btw. But is it true? You have to check The Turk Alliance to see...

Its got a links page which contains a lot its contemporaries too, if you like old web final fantasy.

[Guest]

I'm not sure if it's actually offline or if I've just lost the link forever, but as a kid I spent forever on this barbie website. It hosted SO MANY games relating to barbies and I would spend hours to traversing the site over and over again to play all the minigames. I can't seem to find them anywhere now...

[wygolvillage]

I miss the Bella Sara website, especially the top down flash adventure game. I would spend hours wandering around the game world, playing minigames, caring for horses, decorating my house, etc. The magical horse-girl vibes were immaculate and I miss it more than I can say. It was a sad casualty of the flash shutdown.

[glitterpigeon]

I love "I can eat glass" it's a very special webbed site to me.