sam
@sam@cablespaghetti.dev
791 following, 717 followers
https://cablespaghetti.dev/hosting-a-fediverse-instance-on-an-original-raspberry-pi.html
@sam this was fun!
I spotted a typo: `apk install acme.sh`
Should be `apk add…`.
I also wonder if the periodic script actually runs with the .sh suffix? If my memory serves me correctly you may need to drop the .sh suffix or it will now run.
@sam MUST - RESIST - URGE - TO - BOOST. 😁
Also, very inspired domain name for a Homelab. 😂
If you’re on Linux, there’s a good chance you use GNOME: it’s the default experience across Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora Workstation, Endless OS, and more. If you’re on another desktop, you still likely use components developed by GNOME contributors—or maybe you get apps from Flathub.
Want to become more than just a user? How about… a friend? 🥺 Become a Friend of GNOME to support GNOME, Flathub, and the work we do!
@cassidy I'm happy to say that I don't use gnome and never have. :)
but good luck to any of you who is or have used it.
@cassidy Very happy to support GNOME. It's become my favorite Desktop and is incredibly reliable.
Donate to Gnome, NEVER WILL.
Ever heard of IBM RHEl and the gnome Foundation, let them fund the lumbering memory hogging monstrosity they created.
I tried Gnome once, the experience was interesting, customizing made as difficult as possible.
Over 1 GB of memory usage on a blank desktop. Ever heard of efficiency.
@cassidy The way GNOME does theming hindering with GTK4 Libadwaita is just doing harm for Linux. Users using distros will wonder why their themes are all wonky and that's because GNOME's devs thinking that everyone should be same as they are. Also GNOME devs did a lot of hindering with Wayland adoption. It's no wonder that their funding has plummeted cause they mostly seem to do more harm to Linux than good.
@cassidy I'll consider befriending Gnome when it lets me use a password manager. Currently pinentry-gnome3 is desktop-modal, so whenever I want to switch to my password manager, the whole screen is locked by the password entry dialog and I can't do anything. The "experience" is shit.
(There is an open bug for this issue, but no one has looked at it in years.)
( • )( • )
@sam @catsalad@lgbtqia.space The forbidden calculator number!
A reminder that according to the Ministry of defence VPNs allow users to bypass state-imposed censorship. #VPN #Censorship
i just pulled this macbook air out of my project box and mamma mia i don't want to know what my past self was smoking
I'm off backpacking and need a new small/light laptop since the death of my beloved 11" Macbook Air.
Requirements:
* Decent keyboard
* An OS I can write code on (Not Windows)
* 512gb+ storage
* Cheap enough I won't be precious about it (it's going to get a beating)
Current frontrunner is the Chuwi Minibook X N150. Any other suggestions?
@jonty I too pine for my 11" MBA. Apple could clearly make a smaller laptop, the logic board is tiny, but I don't think there's any chance they will. 😢
@WillFlux Seriously tempted to just buy a used last-gen one, swap the battery, and install linux on it. Not sure I could handle that screen resolution now though.
@jonty I have an older model of this which is nice and light and still going strong after several years
https://starlabs.systems/products/starbook?variant=55228727558524
@jonty 13” m2 macbook Air is an excellent machine. Size and weight is good.
@gavoir Bit too pricy for the environments I'll be subjecting it to, and also larger than I'd like - we have one kicking around the house already!
@jonty I bought a late 2010 11" MBA for £90 from eBay recently and installed Debian on it. Just used it for a recent bike tour/train trip around Europe and it was absolutely great!
I replaced the battery from iFixit. There is a bit of a fiddle to get the FaceTime camera and wifi working but not a major issue.
I'd say the only real menace are memory hungry modern web apps like Teams (which I need to use for work) but with a fair size swap partition this was workable.
Screen (non-"Retina") was a bit of an adaptation but you get used to it quickly.
@millerdl The screen is the one thing that makes me a bit nervous, not sure I can go back to a resolution that low!
@jonty I think it was the size of the bezel that was most jarring for me initially, I get it.
I was able to edit both code and a fairly long LyX document for a paper review with much less pain that I expected and without having to resort to wearing my glasses!
If I did it again, I might opt for the MacBook from an era later with a Retina screen that's about the same size (a bit squarer?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12%2Dinch_MacBook
@jonty https://frame.work/pt/en/laptop12 12” Framework, if you can wait for preordering?
@jonty my 12" Surface Laptop Go seems to run Linux quite well. Only item that doesn't work is the fingerprint reader.
@jonty I know it's a bit larger but the 13" MacBook Air will have like 3 times the battery life, a screen twice as bright, much better performance; and is only slightly heavier at ~1240g vs the 920g of the MiniBook.
@thomasfuchs It is also a *lot* more expensive and a requirement I didn't state (but will now edit in) is that i expect this thing to take a beating and I don't want to be too precious about it!
@jonty I mean fair. Maybe a used MacBook Air? :)
I recently found my 11" (from 2010!!), it still works and I could upgrade to an unsupported version of macOS with OpenCore Legacy Patcher. :D
@thomasfuchs Yeah this is one of the options - I've got a feeling I might have a 2015 model in storage that just needs a new battery. Never did try linux on it, so that might be worth a go.
https://uk.webuy.com/search?stext=Minibook+x&availability=In+Stock+Online
@jonty Was going to suggest look at ex enterprise kit but not sure how good the battery will be on one of those.
@jonty School-chromebook-tier machines come to mind. They often have Windows equivalents with upgradable m.2 storage, are cheap, and are very rugged, although 768p is unfortunately standard. I used to use a Thinkpad 11e, which was an absolute tank, and can be had for sub-$100 USD on eBay often.
@jonty I got myself an old Thinkpad Carbon (reconditioned). It was just cheap enough to sling in my bag for EMF, basically.
@jonty I have a Dell XPS 13 9310 which is my "beater" laptop for travel. Not substantially larger than an 11" MacBook Air but modern enough to charge from USB C etc. They can be had on eBay for around £200 and was available pre installed with Ubuntu, but mine is still running Windows because WSL works okay for my needs.
@plett Ouch my back.
@jamesb Hah, indeed. Also, not for £200, but versions are available with 3200x1800 QHD screens instead of the standard 1080p
@plett I will stick with my LG Gram 17" at 1.1kg. I did prefer the 16" at 1kg though but I spilt beer on it and fucked it.
I could do with a 12" disposable lightboi to carry around though.
Oh wow. The UK government has finally grown about 1/1000000000th of a pair.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cdrkj810plvt
@tdp_org we'll do the right thing unless Israel stops bombing the crap out of a civilian population? In the unlikely event that Israel complies with our "threat" what happens next? I feel you may have missed several 0's off your denominator!
Eldest starts high school in the fall, and they're supposed to have their own laptop, which will be a first. I have them convinced to go Linux, since mostly what they need for school is access to web stuff, they're fairly used to it from our computers at home, and there's no real reason to be tied to Windows.
Now I just have to decide what distro to give them😀
Curious to know what you'll decide.
I'm close to recommending aurora (ublue KDE Plasma) for noobs, but I haven't tried it myself yet.
Kubuntu is ok, but slightly disappointing. OpenSuSE is powerful, but needs an an experienced user to help you set it up properly.
Debian is kinda perfect, but lacks minor flourishes like a flicker-free boot.
@rl_dane I suspect I'll end up with something Debian based, mainly because most of the stuff I use at home is some flavor of Debian or another.
What are you thinking for debian-based? Something also not Ubuntu-based, or no?
#SparkyLinux seems neat, I should check them out. Almost feel bad for calling them out publicly on Fedi for having an X account link prominently displayed on their webpage. XD
Why do they have such different distros just for different desktops? Is it because the immutability aspect of things has to be treated differently between Gnome and KDE?
I'd imagine there are a lot of things in the KDE System Settings utility that has to be tweaked or just simply might not work at all on an immutable distro, as it's somewhat exhaustive in what you can tweak.
The idea of Bluefin and Aurora (and Bazzite, the gaming focused one) is that they take the atomic fedora base and make an opinionated “just works” out of the box experience on top of it. Obviously that kind of customisation is going to be quite different between the different desktops.
Bluefin has received the most attention as it is the focus of the overall project, and Aurora is an offshoot with a smaller team. Both are really good though to be honest.
‘Death Of A #Forum: How The UK’s #OnlineSafetyAct Is Killing #Communities.’
Riddle me this.
What's got 4 doors, can hold 2 adults, 3 kids, and a weeks worth of luggage for a road trip, fits on a ferry boat, gets 40 something mpg and can still pull a u-turn in the middle of a city....
With 221,000 miles?
A 2010 Honda Fit, of course!
@codemonkeymike I so wish they were still making it!!
@stephanie I know. Blows me away they don't make it anymore. It seemed so successful
@sam @stephanie stupid America. Can't handle small sensible cars
@sam I mean crossovers are fine, but they dont replace these fantastic hatchbacks...
Oh humans..
@codemonkeymike we still have an '05 Toyota Echo hatchback. I love that little thing.
@hugo the Eco.. now theres a name I haven't heard in a while
@codemonkeymike Congratulations, Mike. All things considered, this is probably the most environmentally sound choice you could have made. It looks fabulous!
@mikesax thanks. Yeah it was just supposed to be a cheap second car. Cost $5k and done. It's been great
Pen-pineapple-apple-pen
Odin says good morning #dog #dogs #dogsofmastodon
In some ways I am impressed. On the other hand I wish it didn’t take so long for him to admit it and give the money back…
🤣 senior devs or sysadmins on the weekend be like …
Would it be very childish of me to find this incredibly, incredibly funny?
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/25/home_office_antiencryption_campaign_website/
Mechboards.co.uk are having a Dutch auction for all the random stuff they need to get rid of. I scored a Keychron V6 Max for £80 which I’m pretty happy with!
Here’s the link if you want to do some shopping yourself: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1ufXOf61idIShPMEnA9FUXJj0m7J4pmNiFCszuZkWLRE
Ooh YouTube are removing the monetization option from ai voiced videos. Heaven be praised.
I don't use YouTube but I'm pleased to see a slight pushback against ai .
YouTube to demonetize AI-generated videos starting July 15 - Tech Startups
Here’s a summary of the policy changes starting July 15:
No AI-generated voiceovers
No Low-effort slideshows
No recycled or repurposed videos
No mass-produced reaction content
No copy-paste or minimally edited uploads
If your channel leans on AI voiceovers, repurposed clips, or low-effort uploads, this update could hit your bottom line fast. YouTube is tightening the rules with one message in mind: real people, real content, or no payout.
https://techstartups.com/2025/07/09/youtube-to-demonetize-ai-generated-videos-starting-july-15/
@Tattooed_Mummy how does this square with, for example, them plugging Veo3 into Shorts? https://www.theverge.com/news/689474/youtube-veo-3-ai-videos-shorts
Very confusing
I thought big tech like Google loved AI slop! I guess they only like AI when they are using it to get rich quick.
@Tattooed_Mummy This is good. YT is drowning in AI generated content now and it's awful.
@BonehouseWasps it's awful. They even just make up entire 'true crime' now. My husband was telling me about one so I researched, it never happened.
@Tattooed_Mummy Wow. Not heard of that one. I've seen lots of entirely made up music videos though, with both the music and visuals AI generated. Neither bears much scrutiny, of course. And the way VO mispronounces names - often several different ways in one vid, can be unintentionally hilarious.
@Tattooed_Mummy YouTube clearly doesn't believe AI has any value but yet the owner of YouTube seems to be jamming Gemini in every open orifice it can find, seems a little like mixed messaging to me...
@Vonskinnback I'm hoping its the beginning of an awakening
@Tattooed_Mummy I doubt it, just money & techbros trying to have its cake and eat it...
@Tattooed_Mummy they have too much invested in AI...
@Vonskinnback how much money will they throw into the sinking ship before they realise they are just wasting more and more I wonder.
@Tattooed_Mummy when the bubble goes it's going to take a lot of us with it, just like the.com bubble and the property/subprime mortgage bubble, not to mention the over leveraging of crypto assets within the American financial system, that also relies heavily on GPU powered processing, honestly I can't even imagine what would happen if AI crypto assets went down at the same time, but they are linked, so it is a conceivable risk...
@Tattooed_Mummy This is Google. I am suspicious. If anyone's thinking Kindness of their Hearts, they ARE mistaken.
@bewilderbeast23 oh I don't think it's kindness. I'm just hoping they're starting to realise that people don't want AI. Therefore it won't pay
But will they stop running their ads on that "content" and stop surfacing it above "higher effort" content for the views?
@Tattooed_Mummy Good. Hope it's more than words. I also hope they don't use it as a way to squeeze real creators harder.
This means nothing if that content continues to be highlighted by the algorithm.
The problem is that it's eating up all the views and it is nonsense with no value.
@Tattooed_Mummy But they're also adding a feature to generate videos with AI! These are very mixed messages.
@Tattooed_Mummy This is such great news! I was horrified to find my parents watching YouTubes that were basically AI slop.
But this will prevent Google from being able to monetize their own AI on the creation as well as the consumption side, so maybe they'll allow it once again if the numbers don't look good.
@Tattooed_Mummy I use Youtube constantly and I never interact with AI content *unless* it's ads. I wish more people would only watch videos from their Subscriptions tab and not Recommended like most people seem to do. In fact, I turn off the tracking of my watch history so I can't even use the Recommended tab.
The next step is to heavily police the recommendations in the recommendations below a video. In addition to AI garbage there's a whole world of hate and fear content on Youtube to avoid.
@Tattooed_Mummy interestingly one of the most common AI slop videos I've encountered are "instrumental" music, so no AI-generated voices. I wonder if they'll demonetize those too. I must have blocked a hundred different channels which kept popping into my suggestions
@Tattooed_Mummy huge sigh of relief. YouTube has become almost unusable for a lot of stuff, because of all the AI garbage. I'm surprised they're willing to admit there's no good use of AI for YouTube videos, though, which is what this sounds like they're saying (and I agree).
@Tattooed_Mummy If this is true... It may end up being the beginning of the end of AI. It won't go away, but people not making money that way, will mean they will stop doing it. I can't imagine a lot of "fun" comes from creating those videos. I could well be mistaken that it will make any impact.
@Tattooed_Mummy Not a decision that I'd expect from a Google company. Huh. It'll be a decision taken with profits in mind, so I wonder if it's something to do with people using AI to produce large quantities of crap videos clogging up YouTube servers, or maybe they know from the stats that people don't watch or engage with AI driven content anywhere near as much as they do human content.
in our efforts to make the linux desktop more gay, i'm pleased to announce that we're probably moving wayback to freedesktop.org imminently
@sam sounds like the theoretically unlikely* situation of two independent devices trying to use the same v6 address.
*Unlikely given the depth and breadth of the namespace, but...
Have you set a static address on this one?
@sam
While it's in faulty state, can you run tcpdump to see if traffic is actually getting to it?
Via a v4 connection, obviously! Something like this:
tcpdump -n -i eth0 '(tcp and port 22) or icmp'
Make an SSH connection and see if the inbound SYN packet reaches the interface, or the interface itself responds with an RST or ICMP port/host unreachable.
No packets? Provider.
Packets and ICMP? Your problem!
@WiteWulf
One slightly weird thing I had is that inbound #ipv6 traffic on both SSH and HTTPS was returning a "connection reset by peer" for a while. It seems to be working now, but if some IPv6 folks can check https://cablespaghetti.dev loads properly over v6 for them now, it would put my mind at rest.
@sam Works for me.
@sam
Are you telling me that your mastodon server was on a pi?
In preparation we’ve been doing a lot of cleaning and purging of junk. The number of bags of stuff that has come out of this house is truly spectacular! I wish I could say we’re finished but the work will continue next week.
I really need to start selling some computer stuff as well. If anyone in the UK happens to be after a AMD Ryzen 3900XT based workstation/gaming PC let me know…
If you’re a UK resident and/or a UK citizen, please make sure you sign this petition. It’s at almost 80k signatures and it’s got 3 weeks left to get to 100k.
‘Legally enshrine the right of adults to physically transition using NHS services’
I've boosted this toot. Will they do anything besides discuss this in the parliament?
p.s.: you'all will need more than 100,000 votes to counteract any invalid ones. From 14,000 to 40,000 extra votes.
@clacksee Dont remember signing that one but it says I have (mentioning just in case its a problem and other people are getting the same message)
@RavenLuni
It was the same for me.
@clacksee possible problem with the site then - that would stop it getting signatures
@clacksee Seems to work.
Now at 78951 signatures
Or " 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 , 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 5 4 3 2 1 0 1 0 signatures" as copy/paste would have it.
@clacksee wait, did it mean anybody will be able to do a transition for free? Cool.
@nikhotmsk
I mean, they can. The problem right now is that the wait list is multiple years long. This is just to ensure that the government doesn’t remove that right.
@clacksee Extremely sad that whoever made this petition felt they had to compromise by including "aged 18 and over", but I guess sometimes one step at a time is the correct approach.
@mcc
Yeah, one step at a time. I think this was set up in response to Streeting announcing kids couldn’t transition. So it’s very much, ‘Please don’t take the right from the rest of us.’ But yes, it should include kids.
I may have to move it to slightly more powerful hardware for my own sanity…
@sam Is the entire OS dying or won't your init system handle the restarts?
Folks who had websites in the year 2000, how/where were you building websites then? Someone I know is writing a book and the protagonist (non-techie type) builds a website. I was thinking Geocities/Angelfire/Tripod, but maybe that's more late-90s? (I def had a GeoCities site, but I can't remember if it was in 2000)
@sophie I had a GeoCities site in the 90s. In the 2000s, my ISP (Comcast) offered free space for a personal website, so I had it hosted there. I want to say that ended in the mid 2010s, but TBH I just can’t remember.
@sophie I was teaching computers to teenagers in 2000 and we did a mix of HTML, CSS & MS Frontpage
@sophie That was peak Myspace. That was probably the last time the most popular social media platform expected or allowed people direct access to the HTML.
@mistersql In 2000? Myspace didn't launch til 2003
@sophie Ah, thought you meant the decade. 2000 exactly, final days of FrontPage. Lots of tiny webhosters that let you upload html to an ftp site.
@sophie I clearly remember making a geocities site in 1999. I think I got MS FrontPage in 2000, possibly 2001 though. I would say that some people were still using notepad, typing in code from books at this point.
@sophie Local ISP offered hosting under tilde dirs, so put text-edited html there for a while. Think I got my own domain around then and quite possibly ran the site off a linux box at home? Geocities was definitely still a thing tho
@sophie mine was basically all static html, hand-rolled like some feral woodland creature
@beep In notepad, I trust?
@sophie Same as Ethan, though when I discovered PHP and includes it felt like magic. 🤯
Originally in Notepad, monochrome...but Notepad++ came along with syntax highlighting! This was 2003/2004 for me I think, if that helps!
@sophie @beep May '98, me with notepad + my colleague with Photoshop 4 = first web site for the company we worked for back then. Once I showed it can work and there's no black magic in web design, I got back to Borland C++ Builder 3 and some video programming that was my real job and the crew quickly dove into Macromedia.
@sophie @beep I dunno what's going on, but I like it. And to answer this question. Jekyll + GitHub CI/CD + Oracle FOREVER FREE instance regularly pull and pin the dist repo on IPFS + Cloudflare Pages for Web2 + Fleek.co (Web3 GitHub CI/CD + Oracle pinning + private gateway) + IPNS update for DNS Link. Good thing I didn't spend $120 for a WorldWideWeb.box dunno-web2-or-web3-vanity-thing. I wrote half of 130k+ words and no one bothered. Nuked my cloudflare account last week. I will be fine.
@sophie definitely built my first website using Microsoft Front Page and Tripod.com in maybe even as late as 2001 :D So Tripod definitely tracks.
@sophie Text editor (!Edit on my RISC PC at the time) and then upload it via FTP to my ISP's provided free 100Mb web space.
@sophie My ISP was Albatross, in Norwich, and they gave customers a bit of webspace. As for writing it... hand authored, angle bracket by angle bracket, in whichever text editor I was using at the time (either BBEdit if I had the old Mac IIci then, or FTE if my machine was Linux; can't remember) and then uploaded either by command line FTP or with Fetch. But I was a techie type even back then, so I suspect this isn't necessarily normal :)
https://archive.org/details/archiveteam-btinternet?sort=-date
@sophie Geocities and Livejournal in 2000, plus work for first clients on basic hosting, but prior in 98/99 was handcoded HTML on my university server.
@sophie Some Microsoft Front Page definitely, then an early version of dreamweaver. Before eventually just using notepad to edit stuff.
@sophie Geocities aside pre-2000, some dude I knew from IRC (EfNet?) had a web server and gave me some space in return for some (fledgling) design/dev work - I've had the same domain since June 2000 (25 years!). Homesite / PhotoShop / FTP were the weapons of choice.
@sophie by 1999/2000 I had moved on from writing table layouts in notepad on Geocities/Anglefore/Fortunecities etc to subdomains on cPanel shared hosting or my own domain on cPanel shared hosting and writing table layouts with rounded corner gifs in CuteHTML, transferring files with CuteFTP. CPanel hosting opened up the world of server side includes and eventually php includes 🙌
Sounds like a sweeet project!
@sophie hand-built using Joe, the Linux command line editor. Running on Apache on my own machine. Dynamic stuff was Perl as CGIs (programs you hooked into the web server that received the request and output the html, which got sent back to the browser.)
@sophie I had a Geocities site in 2002, as did some of my classmates. Angelfire and Lycos were still in use too IIRC 😊
@sophie Static site generator that was a bunch of hand written Ruby scripts, and a LiveJournal to post emo poetry to.
@sophie Geocities, both using the web portal and FTP.
I was working on a project in sixth form in ~2001 to create a website for AS-Level Computing. Geocities’ portal stopped working for some reason, so I learned to use FTP on the Windows 2000 command line.
I watched the VNC server switch on, and the head of IT spying on me. He came down to the library to ask me what I was doing 😄
@sophie I too used the space provided by our ISP. I still have the page, iframes and all 😍
(I had it on Tripod as well, for some reason. Not sure which I considered the main.) Anyway, that’s what I used 1998-2002.
@sophie Hand-rolled in emacs and possibly hosted on Demon, or maybe I’d sorted out an actual server at that point. I wish past me had actually made a note of these things.
@sophie, static HTML mishandled in Dreamweaver or HomeSite FTPed to shared hosting hooked up to a free domain from NameZero, or some such.
@sophie I bought a domain name and maybe 50mb space from a UK host in 1998, that I was still running in 2000. I hadn’t got to grips with any server side language, so I was just uploading HTML files I was writing in Notepad along with images I was making in Paint Shop Pro.
@sophie I started building in 2000 and it was mainly on Geocities. I also tried Angelfire and maybe Tripod more briefly but I didn't learn html right away so wysiwig was easier for me.
A couple to several years later I'd learned enough html that I got away from Geocities and was always looking for free hosts that didn't force a giant banner ad. I remember using Awardspace, might've used HostRocket, and I think there were others I don't remember. Much later (2015?) I used Jolly Leaf for a bit.
@sophie ISP offered a massive 10MB hosting; everything coded in SimpleText.
Later migrated to PHP, BBEdit, and… probably F2S (c 2001)
@sophie By then? By hand with light automation. My GeoCities site was ca. 1996/1997. By 2000 I was writing it in Emacs and using html-helper-mode. Found a snapshot of my old about page:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010210181003/http://www.cstone.net/~mphall/tools.html
@sophie by hand, but less technical people were using Microsoft Frontpage or similar and ftping them to a hosting provider
@sophie your ISP account usually provided space for a website and an email account.
Your username was used in the directory of your site. For instance http://cantv.net/user/~goliath
And your email would be goliath@cantv.net
@sophie I've hosted my own with my own (crappy code) since 2002. I did run a little Web agency with some others, so had my own hosting.
@sophie mostly FrontPage Express and uploading via FTP.
I had some space on my university's server and then, later, on a shared space run by a friend.
@sophie universities would actually allow all CS students to just have these domain.something/~username/ folders open to the world where we could place the HTML that we wrote on a text editor like emacs, vim and the like (and we’d barely bother with CSS) and nobody bothered to consider there was any reputational risk in that
cc'ing @StefanMuenz, who wrote the most popular german language HTML tutorial/reference around that time
@sophie I had a site on Tripod from about '98, then on Geocities from '00-02. Static HTML written in Notepad (admittedly I learned HTML mostly by "view source" and ripping off bits of other sites that I liked).
@sophie
My first website was hosted on the university's servers. They set it up so computer science students could create a directory in their home directory and add the html there.
@sophie Definitely angelfire and writing plain HTML in notepad. Would get HTML books from flea markets for cheap as reference.
@sophie for me it was handcoded html in notepad and ftp'ed it to freeserve webspace that came with my dad's ISP. Might be a bit tech rather than non techie... Live journal was kicking off in '99 which might be more appropriate for the protagonist?
@sophie In 2006 my very first website/blog was built with RapidWeaver on my Mac and hosted on Aquaray. As soon as Apple released iWeb I started using it for my website/blog.
Then I switched on Wordpress for the blog and homemade landing page for the website.
@sophie Frontpage Express and then Macromedia DreamWeaver.
I myself wrote in Notepad and then Notepad++.
@sophie I think around then I was using Dreamweaver and its amazing templating and FTP sync. It was a hair past my Geocities/Tripod phase but I was still on dial-up and using shared LAMP stack hosting.
@sophie I think GeoCities was the go-to for non-techies until MySpace came around in '03. Aspiring techies would have been coding up home pages in HoTMetaL or HotDog (...or - ugh - MS FrontPage.)
(Circa 2000 I would have been moving from Macromedia Drumbeat & Dreamweaver to Allaire ColdFusion & HomeSite. Ahh, ColdFusion was the bees knees.)
@sophie
I used website builders like Dreamweaver, FrontPage, and early TYPO3 mainly as visual aids, but most work was hand-coded in HTML4. Layouts relied heavily on tables and frames. Video and interactive media were embedded using Flash (SWF) or Java applets. Full manual builds were the norm, since CMS tools were limited and dynamic content required custom back-end scripting—often with Perl. And honestly, we couldn’t care less about missing HTTPS or security in general back then!😎
@sophie I had several GeoCities sites in the mid-late 90s, as well as one hosted through my ISP (internet service provider) of the time, EarthLink.
In the early 2000s, I had a personal site on my university student web server. I also started using shared hosting services to host my own domains. I know MediaTemple was one of the big ones, but the name BlueHost (or something like that?) also seems familiar.
Many of those sites were static, but I did use some cgi scripts for managing parts.
@sophie did many sites 1993-2002 writing html in BBEdit text editor, uploading to server with good old Fetch for ftp (still use that). Lots of educators had Unix email which came with disk space what some call tilde spaces for the ~ before the username in a url
@sophie In the 2000's I think it was Geocities, Tripod and ISPs. Netscape Comunicator had an html editor.
@sophie building? Wasn’t ~2000 the years of Dreamweaver, GoLive and Frontpage? Then FTPing to a cheap hoster, who was responsible for domain and email services too…
@sophie I registered my first domain around '98 through Strato, a shared hoster here in Germany. Back then they offered a whopping 1MB webspace in their smallest plan called "Webvisitenkarte" (~online business card). That was enough to upload some HTML/CSS and a few asset images. For larger images I used free hosting at purespace, which was a free tier of Puretec, which was affiliated with 1&1. I had accounts on geocities, tripod, and such, but never really used them because of that domain.
@sophie I had a Geocities site around 1996 (I still remember the neighbourhood/number!), but by 2000 I was all PHP outputting HTML and Inlined CSS 😬 uploaded via FTP. No version control whatsoever.
@sophie ISPs typically let you have a web site by uploading it to the public_html directory in your home directory. It would then appear at http://someisp.com/~username/
I wrote in raw HTML.
@sophie another raised hand for Homesite here! I used the snippets feature often when I was coding static HTML, and it was helpful when I started learning PHP.
I had access to Dreamweaver but often switched to the HTML editor instead of the WYSIWYG editor -- although it was good with "onion skins" if your boss said something needed to be "pixel-perfect" and you were building with tables.
For my personal site, I moved from GeoCities to Dreamhost in the early aughts, and been there ever since.
@sophie I went though the Angelfire -> Tripod -> Icestorm pipeline to having a domain with Dreamhost in 99 or 2000 - can’t remember exactly when!
@sophie I was hosting on my ISP’s space I think at the time: BlueYonder domain (Virgin Media in the UK, maybe Northwest Telecom at the time?). At some point I moved to the Mixed Grill plan from Textdrive (later acquired by Joyent) but I think that was a few years later.
My first site was bright orange and blue: I still have the hex code for cornflower blue, 6495ed, burnt into my brain.
Good morning Fedi!!
It came with a driver CD-ROM! How retro is that! I have some old machines with optical drives, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the norm in 2025…
@sam mini CD-ROM no less :)
@sam Can the cartridges be loaded with marmalade, or would that make it jam?