Old’aVista is a fantastic portal into the past, allowing us to revisit classic personal websites from the early days of the Internet. As the site’s tagline says, it helps us “find the web pages you thought were gone forever.”
The site features an extensive index of sites once hosted on services like Geocities, Angelfire, Xoom, and others during the 1990s and early 2000s. It brings back the whimsical creativity and DIY ethos of that early internet era.
How Old’aVista Works
The data behind Old’aVista was compiled by scraping archived pages from the Internet Archive. Broken links were discarded to ensure only functioning sites remained in the index. The design pays homage to the old Altavista search engine from 1999, but Old’aVista is its unique creation focused solely on finding nostalgic personal sites.
Key Features
Some of my favorite parts of Old’aVista include:
- Top Searches: See the most popular search terms entered by other visitors. Get ideas for your searches!
- Highlights: Check out editorially selected particularly noteworthy sites. There are some real gems here.
- Cool Places: Browse through categories like “Dinosaur Pictures” or “Free Software” to uncover more cool sites.
- Directories: Access content from the old Yahoo directories, spanning 1996-2003. This is an amazing piece of internet history.
Preserving Internet Nostalgia
I love that Old’aVista and sites like it preserve this history of early internet culture. It’s not just about the sites themselves but about the creativity and community they represent. Be sure to explore all Old’aVista has to offer!
Let me know in the comments if you discover any favorites from your past internet wanderings. Happy searching!