[HN Gopher] Geocities Backgrounds
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Geocities Backgrounds
https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles
Author : marcodiego
Score : 139 points
Date : 2025-07-21 01:42 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (pixelmoondust.neocities.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (pixelmoondust.neocities.org)
| 486sx33 wrote:
| Geocities was pretty darn cool. My very first website was there
| but just figuring the place out, the neighborhoods and the depth
| of the place was like a new adventure at the time. I chose area51
| bityard wrote:
| Geocities hosted my second website, my first one was somewhere
| on CompuServe I think? I had a GeoCities site for quite a few
| years, somewhere at the top level of SiliconValley. I can't
| remember the 4-digit number and I've never been able to find it
| in any of the archives just by searching for it. (I likely
| deleted it some time in the early 2000's.)
| sejje wrote:
| I lost my first website, it was on angel fire.
|
| Frames layout, goldeneye fanboy page.
|
| They have a lot of the old sites, but not mine.
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| As a person that loves tiled desktop wallpaper backgrounds, thank
| you
| medstrom wrote:
| Just found that GNOME seems to have lost support for tiled
| wallpapers...
|
| Unfixed for years
| https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/1473
| chromehearts wrote:
| Wish I found this sooner; my first website I made many years ago
| contains 2 or 3 background images which I also found on various
| neocity sites (yungztrunks.de)
| righthand wrote:
| Can't tap tiles to change background on Firefox iOS.
| medstrom wrote:
| Long-press and download the image?
| righthand wrote:
| Analog browsing, wouldn't that just download the thumbnail
| not the actual gif?
| inanutshellus wrote:
| Those ain' thumbnails, whippersnapper. Them's the whole
| image.
| righthand wrote:
| Interesting. From the mobile view it appears the page has
| a right side menu with preview options of all the
| backgrounds with the space background set as the default
| tile but I guess I'm misinterpreting the page UI.
| nemomarx wrote:
| The preview is probably just one imagine that would be
| tiled to create a full background. Isn't that how all
| backgrounds and wallpapers used to work?
| inanutshellus wrote:
| Correct, you're thinking with modern-UI brain.
|
| It's just a page template and the content of the
| particular page is a long list of images. No javascript
| to do fancy stuff. Just a collection of backgrounds the
| dude found.
|
| Actually, this page is already "advanced" for a Geocities
| site, because the starry night pattern is for the left-
| gutter next to the site's content, and then there's an
| easy-on-the-eyes background behind the real content.
| Normal Geocities would just have one super duper
| beautiful and impossible-to-read-on background.
|
| (Oh, and you wouldn't /also/ do that cool background on
| the right side too because... "who knows how to figure
| out a floating left side border image?! that's basically
| impossible.") ;)
| crtasm wrote:
| if you can access the console, this adds that functionality:
| document.body.addEventListener('click', function(e) { if
| (e.target.nodeName == 'IMG') {
| document.body.style.backgroundImage = `url("${e.target.src}")`;
| document.body.style.backgroundRepeat = 'repeat'; } });
| p1mrx wrote:
| If you're using a mouse, change 'click' to 'mouseover' for
| easier browsing.
| biofox wrote:
| They also make for great retro PowerPoint backgrounds :)
| luc_ wrote:
| bless this mess
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Page doesn't load correctly for me, they seem to be hosting the
| images in a sketchy looking domain (I'm sure its not actually
| sketchy), corporate firewall is ruining my retro nostalgic
| experience.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Actually, the correct index is this one:
| https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles/b...
| jihadjihad wrote:
| @dang can we update the post's URL to this one? It seems more
| relevant and usable.
| medstrom wrote:
| I found it much less striking. The original link is perfect
| -- and subjectively, I find it more "usable" that it puts
| everything on a single page.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, I've put that link in the top text so people can access
| both.
| sp0rk wrote:
| This page only contains links to about half of the backgrounds
| present on the page that is linked currently.
| dang wrote:
| Changed from
| https://pixelmoondust.neocities.org/archives/archivedtiles.
| Thanks!
| luckystarr wrote:
| That page can't be very old because it doesn't use any frames!
| SpecialistK wrote:
| I love these - I wonder if anyone has put them together in an
| archive to download all at once?
| medstrom wrote:
| In the spirit of "analog browsing", there is always
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall
| jaynate wrote:
| Geocities and Angelfire are how I learned to program for the web.
| Amazing how much of the fundamentals of the web are still exactly
| the same as they were back then (90s). Just with a lot more
| layers of libraries today.
| giantrobot wrote:
| A great thing about the Web is it can still be programmed just
| like it was thirty years ago. Unless you actually need an
| _application_ a lot of web tooling and libraries are a waste of
| time. It 's a great medium for actual documents.
| spennant wrote:
| What? No love for Perl scripts in cgi-bin/ ?
| giantrobot wrote:
| In today's world of stupidly fast CPUs and IO a CGI program
| can be surprisingly performant and effective.
| soneil wrote:
| The part that really feels different to me, is that I'm not
| sure that a 12yo equivalent of myself would get far with View
| Source anymore.
|
| I think that was my single greatest resource, and on a huge
| majority of sites it won't get you far anymore.
| simoneau wrote:
| I think I recognize some of these as coming from a tiled
| background pack I used back in the 90s. Maybe associated with the
| Enlightenment Window Manager project?
| p3rls wrote:
| yeahhh, but did you have a cool cjb.net redirect to show your
| friends in the progs channel?
| tsumnia wrote:
| Dear Web Developers: THIS is what I want for surfing the World
| Wide Web. Simple UI, maybe some tiled gifs, and that's it!
|
| Stop all the corpo-brutalist nonsense and give me back my flame
| gifs!
| reaperducer wrote:
| I once rebuilt an internal employee directory tool, and added
| the ability for people to add an emoji below their name.
|
| Before that, hardly anyone used the internal directory, which
| is probably why I inherited it (I was the stig). After the
| feature was added, people went nuts and used it all the time. I
| feel bad for the guy who runs it now, as I understand he is
| bombarded with feature requests from the employees.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Obligatory mention of Hypnospace Outlaw, a game where you play
| a moderator of a 1990s AOL-style internet (right down to the
| tiled backgrounds and flame gifs) and uncover a mystery.
| standardUser wrote:
| I miss having my own little website. It wasn't a blog or even a
| weblog because those words didn't exist yet. I especially miss
| the mix of icons and widgets I'd curate at the bottom of the
| page, the most important of which was the counter (which was
| mostly counting my own visit to my own page). This was probably
| around 1994 when I was 12 or 13.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| i recall the glorious day the linkexchange counter on my site
| hit 10k. still waiting on my check for $176 from featuring
| cyberthrills casino banner ads though.
| gopher2000 wrote:
| Is there a way to dig up old GeoCities pages? My only thought is
| to remember the URL and get it from internet archive but I can't
| remember my 4 digit number. I think I was in the "Baja" area.
| miffe wrote:
| Anyone remember a software to generate images such as these?
|
| I think it was called something like Terralogic Texture Maker
| (ttm.exe) and I've been looking for it for years.
| 127 wrote:
| I would recommend https://rodzilla.itch.io/material-maker
|
| It's free and fabulous.
| nonhaver wrote:
| dont forget blinkies!
|
| https://adriansblinkiecollection.neocities.org/
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(page generated 2025-07-23 23:01 UTC)