Works for me in Netscape 3.04! 😲
I think it's really cool that other people have interest in running these sorts of sites as well. I have been and will be continuing to experiment with a bunch of modern web technologies and seeing how well I can translate them to the retro space.
It's something that's been in the back of my mind for a long time. I have somewhat of an unhealthy obsession with trying to merge old and new technologies.
To that end I'm finally getting around to working on this for my Dimension95 project, which is both a PC build and a user "experience".
For the website site, it's a blog and basic CMS with a fully retro-compatible admin panel. If you've used WordPress or similar, it's like that.
The entire server side is completely modern. Written in PHP7 w/ Laravel framework and using MariaDB as my database. I don't want any of that Node.js or any other JavaScript backend nonsense people love these days. Just not a fan.
It has page and blog post templating, full blogging functionality, download link management, commenting, etc. But the thing that makes it special is how it handles the client side, and that's what I've been working on (slowly).
I've sketched out three basic templates which are functional but not yet had any sort of design added:
Modern
Your standard modern website. Clean and simple, utilising HTML5, jQuery, CSS3, all the usual. Not over the top, but it's simple and responsive for desktop or mobile viewing.
Oldschool
Fully compatible with IE3, early Netscape and such. What you'd expect to find online in the mid 90s but with some liberties. I'm doing all the graphics from scratch and designed using era-appropriate software in 95. I want to do the coolest thing I can that still renders properly and conforms to set standards on those older browsers. It'll likely have a "high graphics" and "low graphics" option which people may remember from back then.
This is the main template.
Plaintext
Self explanatory.
On top of that, I've added a nifty and fun little feature that chooses images in the content based on the template being presented to the user. Blog articles viewed on the modern template will have photos taken with a modern camera. The same article viewed on the oldschool template will have the same photo but taken with my old Sony Mavica camera (or whatever else I choose to use).
The template will automatically be selected and be delivered to the user based on their User Agent. If it is unknown, the oldschool template is presented by default.
As for content, it's all handled and written from my Windows 95 machine. Files are uploaded via FTP. Blog entries and pages are written in-browser using markdown for formatting and submitted using normal form methods. I avoided WYSIWYG for compatibility and expandability. The markdown is then translated into the appropriate HTML tags through PHP when loaded based on the template used.
In theory, once completed, the only work that's done on modern computers is updating and maintaining the backend.
Hoping once I get a lot of the issues ironed out so it's as solid as possible to post it all on GitHub for anyone to have a nice little retro-friendly blog with a still modern and secure backend.
It's a fun little project that I will expand over time. I've been experimenting with other things like re-encoding Twitch and YouTube streams to be played through RealPlayer or WinAmp on a retro machine. That's my next project on this site once the site is actually up. 😉
Late night rambling. Not sure if it all made sense.
