jdd's Home Page

List o' Links (Recent additions)

A curated list of old-school, non-commercial, hand-made websites in the 90s vernacular. Survivors of the Web As It Once Was, and sites that preserve the spirit of it.

See the full List o' Links here. Now with tags and descriptions!

Here are the five most recent links:

RootsWeb Hosted Web Sites
A trove of old-school community web sites with a focus on local history and genealogy. Founded in 1996, hosted and supported by Ancestry.com. Hosted web sites went read-only in 2024, but most remain accessible for now.
date added: 2026-08-29

Toids' Underworld
Classic 1990s student homepage, somehow frozen in time on a server resident at the University at Buffalo. Features a collection of humorous writings, some of which might well offend contemporary sensibilties, culled from various mailing lists over a period of several years.
date added: 2026-01-31

The ACE Doubles (and Singles): Image Library
They don't make sites like this anymore! And we're all the poorer for it. A compendium of bibliographic data and cover images for the old ACE paperback novels we all remember from the 50s, 60s and 70s. Vintage 1997-style web design.
date added: 2026-01-23

Digital Museum of Plugs and Sockets
"Displaying an amazing variety of plugs and sockets from all over the world" ... a remarkably comprehensive and well organized collection, brought to you by retired geneticist Ouf Oud.
date added: 2025-12-06

Alan Wood's Web Site
Eclectic web site by a retired information scientist, covering topics such as pesticides, microscopes, character sets, and Unicode. On the web since 1996.
date added: 2025-08-25

See the full List o' Links here.

The ten most recent additions are available in a handy RSS format.

A few links have been removed since I started this project, see the List o' Broken Links for details.

Other People's Bookmark Lists, Etc.

 

• Marginalia - Search the Internet
  "This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed." Update, January 2025: Note new URL. And wow, this search engine keeps getting better all the time!
• Wiby
  Similar to Marginalia (not sure which came first), another search engine focussing on the academic, personal, hobbyist sites characteristic of the early web. Somewhat more limited in scope than Marginalia, due I think to more rigorous curatorial principles. Strongly favours sites with limited to no JS/CSS, excludes sites with intrusive ads.
• Ytoo!
  A portal site dedicated to "English content with a retro vibe". Looks oddly familiar, somehow ...
• Curlie
  The successor to/continuation of dmoz (see next entry) Curlie aspires to be the largest human-edited directory of the Web. It is run by volunteer editors.
• Open Directory Project
  An archive of the well-known community-sourced hierarchical DMOZ web directory. Begun (as GnuHoo) in 1998, it ceased operation in 2017 after some years of fairly minimal maintenance. Although many (most?) of the links are broken, you can still find some interesting things here.
• The Retro Network 
  A website dedicated to providing links and downloads for old computers. Limited bandwidth? Computer can't quite manage HTTPS? These links are for you.
• datagubbe.se
  A bookmark list maintained by Carl Svensson: "Most of the links are to pages interesting to people who, like me, are fascinated by vintage computing and also probably a bit grumpy."
• 404PageFound
  So, pretty much the same idea as my "List o' Links" here but begun twelve years earlier and with a much nicer gallery style presentation. Interestingly, a number of the sites are the same as the ones I've stumbled across while looking for links to add to my list. I'll keep updating the "List o' Links" though as 404PageFound does not seem to be actively maintained anymore.
• tekk.in directory
  Also the same idea as my "List o' Links". I'm beginning to think I'm not as original as all that. In any case, the tekk.in directory has links to a lot of great sites that have somehow eluded me up to now, so check it out!
• Gossip's Web the directory of handmade web pages
  Websites made by people
• Low Tech Webring Directory
  "This webring is for homepages of people who are interested in low tech, small game tools, and other forms of Web 1.0 inspired creativity". [UPDATE October 2025: The maintainer has announced this webring is no longer active].