On Finding My Vintage Website On Marginalia Search
I've spent quite a bit of time over the past week or so exploring the indie web. Instead of doom scrolling on Facebook, I've had a much more enjoyable time wandering through Neocities, the Discover page here on Bear Blog, and poking around on Marginalia Search.
I was quite surprised to find my OLD website come up in the search results (on the vintage tab.)
I launched the X-Project Magazine way back in 1997, spun off from a section of my Geocities home page (in the /Area51/Lair/ neighborhood, of course!)
I was an 18-year old kid back then, fresh out of high school, and absolutely enamored by the opportunities that the internet provided. You know—back in the day when the web was a fun, exciting place to be.
From 1997 until 2004, I wrote quite a few articles on a variety of paranormal topics, and posted a good number of contributed articles from guest authors. The website was a community, linking paranormal enthusiasts and skeptics alike through balanced content and a thriving message board.
I sold the website back in 2004 as my interest shifted toward filmmaking. However, the website is still online, unchanged from when I sold it off back in 2004—still hand-coded in html (no CSS, and a layout built completely with table tags—this was pre-DIV era). =D
Unfortunately, nothing has been done to the website in all this time. Many of the images are broken, the forum links don't work anymore. But it is a nice time capsule showcasing the passion I had for the subject way back then—as well as my much less sophisticated writing at the time.
Finding my old website on Marginalia brought a huge smile to my face, and reminded me why I started creating things on the web nearly three decades ago. For the joy of it. For the fun of it. Without any expectation of large audiences, likes, followers, or monetization. I spun off The X-Project Magazine from my Geocities page because I had fun doing it, not because I was chasing the influencer lifestyle (which wasn't yet a thing back then.)
(By August 1998, Yahoo Weekly Picks featured my Bunyip article in a celebrity gossip post about Australian actor Paul Hogan, and that was the point my little paranormal home page grew to become the third most popular paranormal website on the web at the time, behind Fortean Times and AOL's Parascope website.)
Fast forward to today, I'm starting to reconnect to my joy of creating for the web like I did 28 years ago. I've retired from "content creation" and have a completely different business now. But I am actively working through dismantling the content-creator brain that is making it difficult at times (and it's why I've gone a full 8 days since my last blog post as I keep trying to figure out what the "point" of this blog and these posts should be.)
I'm writing a serial fiction series which I plan to launch later this week. And I'm creating a more visual, immersive experience that I hope to launch on Neocities next month (just refreshing my html/css skills after years of using nothing but Wordpress.)
I'm having fun doing it. I'm excited and inspired. I'm slowly starting to lean into and embrace that feeling I felt so many years ago when I shared what I was passionate for on the web without a single thought about algorithms, follower count, CTAs, or turning it into a monetizable brand.
I'm enjoying the indie web as a place to explore and experiment with creative ideas, and to reconnect to a fun hobby. Finding my old website was a good reminder of why I started writing online in the first place so many years ago.