Back in time

Sooo. Rewind the web to 7 years ago, when 640x480 screen resolutions were the most popular, Netscape 3.0 was the browser of choice, a proper domain name was second priority, and broadband was a dream. When educating potential clients on what the acronym WWW stands for, and asking them to report broken links on your site, were more important then winning their business. When there were no standard banner ad dimensions, animated GIFs were still cool, and placing cheap awards on your website made you look & feel accomplished. Over 2 years before Google, this is when it all began.

Presenting for the first time since April 1997: Orbit Webdesign.

Warren and myself's Internet Startup, offering everything from full websites to free banner ad creation. Warren sent me this original site in a zip file last weekend and we spent hours laughing at our efforts. There are so many nostalgic, sometimes hidden gems across the site. One of my favourites is the bizarre concept for the 'company' name itself:

Orbit Webdesign, as many visitors to our site would not have guessed, does not refer to the path or trajectory of a body through space. It is in fact another way of saying "Orb It".

Orb refers to a common garden spider, found throughout South Africa, called the 'Orb-Web spider' or 'Wawielwebspinnekoppe'. What this small (3,5 cm) spider does, is spin a golden wagon-wheel web across the gaps between bushes and trees.

What we at Orbit Webdesign do, is similar to what this spider of bright yellow and black (sometimes also silver) does in a bushy countryside. It creates a web between two sources. Likewise, we create sites which when on the WWW (World Wide Web) form a link between two people. Namely, the visitor to the site and the owner of the site.

We then proceeded to link to a full page containing more information on this "interesting" spider, containing everything from size and colour to sexual habits, instead of directing attention to our services.

Another favourite is on the contact page, where we listed our home addresses and the following hours for Phone contact:

Monday - Friday: 15:00 - 21:00
Saturday, Sunday: All hours

ie. call us when we're not still at school, but before 9pm, when uhh, it's just too damn late?

And then of course, our services page, where among the default offering, we included as optional extras "Multiple fonts (As many as 5 different fonts)", "Background music/sound (Midi music; event sounds)", etc. And for FREE we offered to host your site with Geocities and attach a free visitor counter and guestbook.

Thinking back, it was hardly a serious venture. I remember receiving one call on a Sunday morning after we'd somehow successfully gotten our URL into the Technology column of the weekend paper. I wasn't prepared for it, to say the least... I had no idea how to handle the situation, and we lost the business. And then there was that family-related textile job which never saw the light of day. So our clients page never linked to anything other than our personal projects, of which most of them are still online today including Warren aka. Stampy's Christmas Page, and my first ever website...

... Kites and Kite Flying.
The first version, as far as I can tell, went live in late 1996 which you can still view (via The Wayback Machine). I was very proud of this site; today it's still the top result in Google when you search for "kite flying". The free Guestbook is remarkably, still active, and contains 127 pages of visitor feedback, most of whom don't realise that the site was last updated 7 years ago. Some of my favourite comments:

"this sux
hahahahahahahaha"

"this was the biggest piece of crap and waste of time ever, eat shit you ass raping dog molesterors fuck off"

"very good but you need to check some of your links. They have been changed."

"hi you big fat yellow belly"

"Brill Site."

"your website just made me get an A+ on my project of kites."

"holy crap who cares"

"Just wanted to thank you guys for getting such an informative site. Excelent graphic photoshop designed and easy to navigate. Your site is indeed a wonderful and i bookmarked it ."

"dude, this sight fucking blows. who would wanna see a website about kites. get a life man."

"It didn't tell me the recommended shapes for kites!"

"Ignore all 9 previous messages made by my chidish friend. He meant nothing of it. Plaease do not sue him, he's only six(6) years old."

" i like kites BUT I like sex better....if any woman is interested in possible real life meeting (discreet) send me an email"

"This site was not as informative as I would have liked but the creator has done a good job of presenting the information."

It apparently gets a ton of hits too. So incidentally, if you know how to regain control of an old GeoCities web account which has since fallen under Yahoo!'s control, please let me know.

I also uploaded some of my other late 90's-era stuff for interest sake:
void phase 3, binary rape, statix, old SAMD design.