Most active commenters

    ←back to thread

    Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

    358 points ofalkaed | 13 comments | 11 Oct 25 22:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.6s | source | bottom

    Just curious and who knows, maybe someone will adopt it or develop something new based on its ideas.
    1. kesor ◴[12 Oct 25 08:43 UTC] No.45556517[source]▶
    Geocities ; It was a "put your html here" Free web hosting back when people barely knew what html was. Today you have to be a rocket scientist to find a way to host a free static "simple" page online.
    replies(8): >>45556584 #>>45556654 #>>45556948 #>>45557012 #>>45557051 #>>45557171 #>>45557698 #>>45557761 #
    2. mock-possum ◴[12 Oct 25 08:53 UTC] No.45556584[source]▶
    I’ll bet you I could ask any LLM about it and have something launched within an hour.

    tumblr will practically let you do that for chrissake

    replies(1): >>45557553 #
    3. gmac ◴[12 Oct 25 09:04 UTC] No.45556654[source]▶
    … or just use Cloudflare Pages and upload a folder or zip of your static site via a web UI?
    4. donatj ◴[12 Oct 25 10:07 UTC] No.45556948[source]▶
    GitHub pages is frankly the closest in my opinion, as someone who used Geocities to host a domain for years longer than I probably should have.
    5. ZWoz ◴[12 Oct 25 10:19 UTC] No.45557012[source]▶
    There are few similar projects. neocities.org for example.
    6. FergusArgyll ◴[12 Oct 25 10:27 UTC] No.45557051[source]▶
    Github pages
    replies(1): >>45557786 #
    7. ◴[12 Oct 25 10:50 UTC] No.45557171[source]▶
    8. pessimizer ◴[12 Oct 25 11:57 UTC] No.45557553[source]▶
    tumblr is nothing like a webpage. LLMs were just invented 5 minutes ago and are losing money hand over fist until people are dependent, then will be very expensive to use; and you still have to figure out how to host, where to host, and how much it's going to cost you. So, I have no idea what you're getting at.

    You could have said Wordpress.com or something. It's not quite a website, but it's close. It's also probably going to be Typepad (i.e. defunct) in a few years and Blogger is probably going to be there quicker than that.

    replies(1): >>45559917 #
    9. dzjkb ◴[12 Oct 25 12:22 UTC] No.45557698[source]▶
    cloudflare pages
    10. funflame ◴[12 Oct 25 12:32 UTC] No.45557761[source]▶
    Neocities[0] is going strong, if you just want an alternative. Copy paste your html to the online editor or upload your files, and that's it.

    [0] https://neocities.org/

    11. mrec ◴[12 Oct 25 12:38 UTC] No.45557786[source]▶
    Valid option - I used it myself for a very brief toe-dip into blogging earlier this year - but maybe worth noting that Google seems to flat-out refuse to crawl anything you put there. Won't pick it up by itself, won't read a sitemap you explicitly tell it about. It'll grudgingly index specific page URLs you tell it about, but that's kind of absurd. I don't know if it's because it's on a subdomain, or a Microsoft property, or because I was 100% ad- and tracker-free or what.

    I tried DDG (Bing-backed, I believe) and it happily found everything with no manual intervention at all. That was the point where I ditched Google Search after 30 years.

    12. mock-possum ◴[12 Oct 25 17:18 UTC] No.45559917{3}[source]▶
    Ask the LLM about hosting too. I’ve literally gone through this process recently - setting up hosting, a domain, and a static html site from scratch, vibing from start to finish. It is not difficult.
    replies(1): >>45560811 #
    13. pessimizer ◴[12 Oct 25 19:02 UTC] No.45560811{4}[source]▶
    It is between one and two orders of magnitude harder than geocities, and infinitely more expensive.