Man 13 years old seems like forever ago. I’m not saying I was the leetest hacker out there but I knew my fair share of shit. Enough that it played an important role in my life and was one of my biggest hobbies.
I still keep up to date with this site whenever I get bored. Lately its been more often these last few months. I’ve been switching themes/layouts a lot trying to find something that will fit for all these nostalgic screen shots.
Who would of thought a website which there were 1000s of that all had the same content would come down to just one. (Looks like lenshellarchive.com is gone now too) I sit back an look at the way people found your site back then was by a spammed hyperlink or through a topsites script. Before blogs there was the e/n scene which I was more involved with than the AO Scene. Back then my sites were constantly content driven which holds the same today.
Never would of thought more than 15+ years ago I would be sitting writing this article from my bed on a smartphone. I always loved technology I still do to this day. I constantly need to have the latest smart home devices, mobile devices, laptops, etc. I’m 31 years old and I have a wife and two kids. I try and keep myself updated with the latest but it’s hard.
A lot of people ask me how many Aolers contact me from the page honestly not enough. It seems like back then there were 1000s of users in chats. I left the scene roughly 2004 I know a lot of people stuck around and some disappeared as well. I didn’t start this site until 2014 (fuck it’s already 4 years old). So I wonder how many looked up in the years prior to 2014 and nothing existed.
The AOL proggies facebook page lately has been getting a ton of attention seems like more users join each month. I’m not sure who the admin is but thanks for creating the group.
Many years ago I visited pads site aolhackers.com and I said that’s going to be my next site something similar to his. So I started taking screenshots of all the old aol progs so they don’t disappear. He was kind enough to hook me up with a zip filled with screenshots.
I do a lot of time travelling with the Archive.org way back machine hoping one day I find that huge dump of active files. I literally have 1000s of sites saved in texts that I need to crawl. Occasionally I find that one rare file or screenshot. Back then however; who would of thought all these files and sites would vanish.
Anyways this post is targeted at everyone who still has an old hard drive or floppy disk to get the data and submit it.
Thanks to everyone who has already submitted files if you have anything you would like to submit. Send it to: justinakapaste@gmail.com
Loved this write up. I too come from the same era of AOL and progs and VB6 programming and all that. Now I’m 30 and married and have a house and a career building web sites, or now as they’re called “web applications,” perfectly manicured to optimize ad revenue and keep the user from leaving. Man, I long for the day when you built a page for no reason other than “you wanted to,” hoping someone might find it!
I ran the site run-around.con, an e/n site that never got big outside of my high school, but boy I loved every part of that scene.
Anyway, found this site while searching for old AOL screenshots and this definitely delivered! I recall visiting this site, lenshell, oogle.net, patorjk, all that stuff. Now we’re old men! Haha
Cheers mate!
“RaGe”