September 30, 2000

by Steve Baldwin

So many e-commerce sites have disappeared so quickly that Web preservationists are deeply worried that a large, irreplacable chunk of the 1999-era Internet - that part of it formerly bristling with all manner of marvelous B2B, B2C, and wacky content ventures - has already disappeared from the Net.

Few will mourn the passing of these look-alike catalog sites. Still, the culling of the dotcom herd represents a loss to Web history. Are not Web sites - even humble E-tailing projects - our generation's equivalent of cave painting? Do these failed workhorses of commerce deserve to go to the scrapper's torch without a dignified death? How can we expect people of the future to understand the wild, irrationally optimistic spirit of our times if we fail to save even one lousy little screenshot of sites like Boo, Pseudo, Home Warehouse.com, Craftshop.com, DEN, or Petstore.com?

You can help us preserve artifacts of the Golden Age of E-Commerce. If you've taken a screen shot of a dead or endangered e-commerce site (just hit ALT-PRINTSCRN and paste into PaintBrush), please send the bitmap on to s.baldwin@worldnet.att.net, and we'll add it to our collection. If we get enough screen shots, we'll develop an online exhibit modeled after The Pathfinder Museum.

Correction Department: Falchion Beta sends word that his site, http://surf.to/fmc/, a project we identified as a Ghost Site back in 1999, is now back among the living. He writes:

"It's now being hosted on my very own computer and cable connection. It just goes to show you that if you want some space out on the web, you have to go ahead and create some of your own, rather than bitching and moaning about everything."

Amen, Brother.

Ghost Site correspondent Larry Weiss has found one of the most intriguing Ghost Sites we've seen - his message follows:

"The 'Info-Supercollider' site at http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/collider is still active, but its database of URLs is sort of fossilized these days. That makes it a perfect place to dig up Ghost Site material. The idea of the Info-Supercollider was to create a unique page on every Reload of materials from a "random" set of unrelated URLs and see what happens. Kind of a high-energy collision between a bunch of sites. Anyway, when you hit "Reload" today, you get scraps of very old Web sites, some of which fit the bill for Ghost Sites"

As Weiss reports, using the Info-Supercollider's crashing collection of cyberjunk yields a highly fragmentary, atavistic pastiche of old Web matter. Strange JPEGs loom out of the darkness - as do newsgroups devoted to archaic RPG games. Occasionally, strange authentication windows spontaneously appear when from URLs that have migrated behind firewalls.

Don't miss this odd, dynamically-deranged collection of deconstructed HTML randomly served up from the depths of the Web's primordial databanks.

Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved

Ghost Sites correspondent Ron Morris reports that the official Warner Bros. site for "The Wild Wild West" has been badly damaged by the ravages of time.

Morris' account of the highlights of this "ossified" site include:

"Inscrutable navigation - each section may open a regular window, a medium-sized scrollable window, or a tiny window. In a minute or so you'll have half a dozen odd windows cluttering the screen". Morris also observes that the site's "Studio Store" area contains no Wild Wild West-related items to buy, and notes that the copy in the site's "Partners" section reads: "The promotions are now over! Go see the movie! It's a whole new west!"

Few will miss this site, which like so many Shockwave-rich sites produced by overzealous Hollywood Web designsers, attempts to provide a "cinematic" Web experience that's just an embarassing waste of time and bandwidth.

Site is Dead, Shows Advanced Decay

Here's a disturbing instance of an undermaintained "Guestbook Area" coming back to haunt its creator. Take a close look at TrueFit.com, a small-scale site billing itself as "The Shoemaker's Home" whose Welcome Page announces that "This page was last revised 10/27/97 by Buford J. Collins."

Unfortunately, (and here's the rub) the site's Guestbook Area has remained quite active during the last three years of this site's slumber, and it's dutifully recorded what has in recent months turned into a cesspool of scathing comments about TrueFit's dearth of fresh content. Example:

"I am disappointed with your site. I could not find anything relevant to my research. I am currently studying Shoes design, and the only thing I could see in your site was, 'what makes a shoe comfortable, Size and Width'. Are you promoting your book? Are you a shoemaker by trade? If you want to share your thoughts with other people, please make them available to us."

(This user is alluding to the fact that a link from the Welcome Page to The Enclopedia of Shoemaking doesn't work (its target is a rudimentary test page).

The lesson here is clear: if you want to let a site die a peaceful death or sink into a happy coma, get rid of your "Guestbook" area first.

Thanks to Keith Fehn for finding this site.

Site is Dead, Shows Advanced Decay

A man who will only identify himself as "a man who loves political humor" writes:

"Ironically I found this site the same day that I found yours in Oct 1999 on The Drudge Retort. This site is www.theamericanjerk.com, a very funny political site that is no longer in existence due to money problems. The last posted date is May 1st, 2000, and the authors say they have no intention to re-establish it because they're broke. I really loved this site, but at the same time I feel sorry for the authors. I hope they come into some quick cash and re-establish the site, but until then it is a Ghost Site that is very slowly decomposing."

Fortunately, the American Jerk's authors, Rob Reuter and Paul Marino, took the time to archive the site's back issues, and also to provide a full explication of the causes leading to their site's demise:

"The effort required to produce this magazine as we have for the past year has been tremendous, requiring no less than two to six hours a day, after work and on weekends, for three of the four weeks in a month... However, we have discovered that there are only three ways to attract the kind of readership needed to make enough money to even break even on a Web site such as this: garner critical acclaim from mainstream press and Web sites, advertise like hell, or agree to trade links with every similar Web site you can find."

We applaud this site's authors for giving their project a simple, dignified funeral. Anyone thinking of closing down their Web site (and God knows, that's a lot of us these days) could benefit from following their example.

Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved

Erik T. Hansen presents a strong case that that the virtual commissary of Kraft Military Sales has been infested with cyber-mold. Evidence that this site is abandoned include:

The copymark on the home page reading: "© 1997 Kraft Foods, Inc. All rights reserved."

The statement on the home page: "This site is best experienced using the Microsoft Explorer 3.01 or Netscape Navigator 3.0 browsers for PC. Or by Macintosh users with the Microsoft Explorer 3.0 Beta 1 or Netscape Navigator 3.01."

The statement in the "Products, Prices, and Promotions" section reading: "Prices in effect March 1-31, 1997".

Other signs of neglect include what Hansen calls "an old style" page design, including "millitary-esque" MIDI-music that can't be turned off", and the lack of an e-mail address on the site's "Contact" Page - just a toll-free 800 number.

How did Hansen stumble onto Kraft's rusty messkit? By entering the term "Velveeta", at Lycos.com. Kraft Military Sales was the third best choice returned by the search engine.

Site is Dead, Shows Advanced Decay

Here's another one from Ron Morris.

The Internet Help Desk was the brainchild of Amy L. Ward. Its avowed purpose was to be "a free service designed to offer help to both beginning and advanced Internet users." Back in 1996, the site's thoughtfully presented, well-written content was garnering rave reviews from many important organs of the computer press.

Today, however, the Internet Help Desk is silent, leaving historians to pore over its outdated "Troubleshooting" section. Many will certainly wonder how early Homo Internetus was able to cope with Windows 3.1 General Protection Faults, Netscape 1.1 (16-bit version) bugs, and Internet Explorer 1.0 idiosyncrasies.

Of special interest are the site's "Author's Bookmarks" and "Guides and FAQs" sections. Here, you'll find a stack of dusty links to early Web resources, some of which no longer exist at their indicated URLs.

Although this site's content is ancient, it's still valuable, especially for newbies seeking information on basic e-mail snooping techniques.

Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum

Ron Morris also sends word that The Official Whitney High School Website has been in a state of suspended animation for a long, long time. He writes:

"I wrote the webmaster once, asking about it, and he said he made it when he was a student and had to sign a paper relinquishing ownership of it to the school district. It's part of the ABC Unified School District, which itself is a missing page. Of special note are the links to former students (http://www.abcusd.k12.ca.us/high/whitney.web/students.htm) with such descriptions as "Class of 1993. Page under construction."

Other embarassingly decayed elements here include a missing Academic Calendar, an ancient "What's New" page, and a bad link to the school's Faculty and Staff page.

This one gets an F.

Site is Dead, Shows Advanced Decay

Chris Stamper - a longtime friend of Ghost Sites and fellow Pathfinder alumnus, reports that an unusually large clump of Pathfinder-related debris has accumulated on the servers of the Federal Trade Commission. This material was evidently supplied to the FTC as part of a mid-1997 "Privacy Workshop" designed to appease regulators' anger about the way personal information was being handled by commercial Web sites.

The "Lost Cache" contains both a mind-numbing collection of Time-Warner "Privacy Statements" and a fascinating collection of old Pathfinder graphics, including home pages from Pathfinder and other Time-Warner properties, including the main WB site, Sports Illustrated for Kids, and DC Comics. As far as we know, these are the only actual screen recordings that exist of these abandoned content areas.

Those interested in perusing more antique artifacts from Pathfinder are invited to inspect The Pathfinder Museum - an unofficial historical site dedicated to perserving the memory of the Web's tragic proto-portal.

Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum