The Birth of the Web

How the web was born

WWW, for World, Wide, Web

The web was launched in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, a European nuclear research agency. It was originally developed to let universities and research center share and exchange information, research papers and data.

Screenshot of the first website ever made, still online.The blue links and serif font became the web’s default and iconic styling.
Screenshot of the first website ever made, still online.The blue links and serif font became the web’s default and iconic styling.

Geocities and the rise of personal webpages

Although the web was originally for academia, it soon democratised. In 1994, a US company started offering free hosting on their platform called Geo-cities. It meant that any one could create their personal, custom webpage and make it public for any online user. In Geocities, websites were organised in cities: computer themes pages had an address in Silicon Valley, while pages about cinemas or movie star were in Hollywood. Viewers could navigate all pages and check whether they had changed. Although the site was closed on in 2009, people managed to download and the personal page before they were deleted.

Screenshot of a neocities homepage.
Screenshot of a neocities homepage.
Each page was personal and everything could be customized: layout, GIFs, fonts, etc.
People shared their personal images, just like on Instagram nowadays.
…And even other type of content, like food recipes!

At this time there was no search engine to search for websites and get a list, so people had other strategies:

  • Friends section were a place to list your friend’s pages.
  • Webrings would connect webpage one after the other so you could click through them.
  • Guestbooks were the precursor of comments, a way to leave a message
Screenshot of geocities page
On your personal page you could have a Friends section, where you put a link to other sites.
Screenshot of a Magic-themed webring
A webring is a banner you put an a website, which links to a website before and one after yours. People could sign up and be added to this giant ring of sites. It’s a bit like scrolling sites
Samengesteld beeld; paper prototyping DDS, screenshot DDS plattegrond. DDS (CC-BY-SA-NC). In The Netherlands DDS was formed in 1994.
Samengesteld beeld; paper prototyping DDS, screenshot DDS plattegrond. DDS (CC-BY-SA-NC). In The Netherlands DDS was formed in 1994.

Going further ?

The Gallery of Evolution

The Gallery of Evolution