Thought it might be fun to celebrate some of the oldest communities and businesses with websites on this wonderful world wide web. The ones that haven't felt the need to change their design. Here are some of my personal favorites:
https://www.battleofthebits.com
haha that's this one!!
https://www.voicecrystal.com/
If you're into 80s-90s synths or want your sample packs on CD, this is the site for you. In particular, the memory cards they sell are pretty fairly priced given the secondhand market these days; and they're brand new.
https://amigaworld.net/
Haven't looked through this one much myself, but I also don't own an amiga... yet.
https://neocities.org/
While not that old, what it's based on sure is (rip geocities), so I thought I'd include it. Need to get on making a homepage there...

you'll love wiby.me

, an index and search engine for sites of exactly this type.

there's also the Big List

of Personal Websites maintained by the author of The Cheapskate's Guide to Computers and the Internet

, a blog about getting the most out of antiquated hardware (relevant to a BotBr's interests i'm sure).

plus there's the melonland

forum for appreciators of the old school web aesthetic and ethos. it's run by melon king

, author of one of the most popular neocities sites.

i have way more than this buried in my bookmarks, i'll see what else i can dig up later.

since 1992, i think this one is oldschool as well: http://aminet.net

and this one isn't the same as used to be, but it is still around: https://worldofspectrum.org

I'd guess everyone around here is familiar, but in case not, it's always fun to hit up https://archive.org/ , search for a site, and look at the oldest archived versions of it. On that note, here's the oldest archived version of botb from 2005 :) https://web.archive.org/web/20050511111550/http://battleofthebits.com/

Also 02FD if you like old Geocities nods there is a a collection of restored ones here, that I haven't spent much time in but pretty fun. https://geocities.restorativland.org/

https://www.zophar.net/
https://www.vgmusic.com/
both started in '96

http://andkon.com

I appreciate this flash game site for still being up and running (and not updating their design), although I believe some of the games don’t work anymore since their original SWF links are dead? Though at least classics like Ultimate Flash Sonic still work on old Flash supported browsers

personal websites are cool too, and these ones are still online:
- http://dkvador.chez.com/
- https://donkeyontheedge.com/mahir/

⚠👮⚠

Hi. My name is Economy. Let's make all these web sites look more like Facebook if we can, mmmkay?

Also, if any of them have brick-and-mortar locations, our beige CVS in a strip mall renovation team will be in touch with you shortly.

Thank you and have a nice day.

http://modarchive.org/
somewhat botb-adjacent (irc on espernet too)

http://homeoftheunderdogs.net/
got the classic phpnuke style layout

https://www.majorgeeks.com/
this one too, and it seems like it evolved from an annoying "download scraper" in the 00s into an actually useful catalog of non-bloatware/classic-style desktop apps

http://2a03.free.fr/
http://pouet.net/
http://romhacking.net/
https://www.rpgclassics.com/
some webcomics are pretty old now

These are unrelated to BotB, but I want to share anyway:

https://www.writing.com/

Writing.com is 22 years old, and relatively obscure as far as I know. I don't even remember how I found it. You have to make an account, but if you do post there, like here, you will get at least some views and criticism.

https://chooseyourstory.com/

Another writing-related one, Choose Your Story is 20 years old, and ugly in a way I like.

The point of the site is pretty straightforward; you can make Choose Your Own Adventure stories or "Storygames". It's sort of like BotB, because of the contests and silly humor, although contests don't run the whole site.

EDIT: Just remembered another.

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/

This one's from 1995. It's a vintage car news website, but their HAMB (Hokey-Ass Message Board) is the part I use most, if ever. Mostly I just lurk there because I don't actually know anything about cars. :(

the day alltext comes to BotB writing.com’s days are numbered. BotB conquers all!!!!

https://www.micromusic.net/

Old website for an even older technology
https://www.sliderulemuseum.com/

http://weltenschule.de/TableHooters/instruments.html I still visit this site from time to time

Not sure if https://everything2.com/ is eliminated on a technicality - think the original Everything/E1 started in the 90s, but i think it's disappeared and come back a couple of times

Also, 'table hooter' is *such* a good description for those wonderfully janky cheap keyboards

I always thought this site dedicated to the NES game Solstice was pretty cute! https://www.celephais.net/solstice/

Breakbeat Paradise! Not the oldest but dear to my heart:
https://breakbeat-paradise.com/bb_samples.php

Domain registered since 2004 but the earliest footer-based year I can find is on the samples page from 2001, I think I read somewhere it's been going since '99 but cannot confirm. Excellent source of free samples, albeit a little limited and sometimes lower quality, but fun to download a few of the packs that interest you and see what you can make out of them.

Little something for everyone:

https://www.detstar.com/
https://www.virtual-boy.com/
https://www.arcade-museum.com/
https://davidwonn.kontek.net/
http://otakuworld.com/jennifer/
https://studiopixel.jp/

At least one of 'em has been around since 1995.

fuck yeah jennifer created Boppin'

Is this thread still kicking? It is now, 𝓫𝓸𝓸𝓬𝓱.

http://www.kaiju.com/otaku_photos.htm

https://www.null-hypothesis.co.uk/ was alive enough last year to update the copyright on their static page to 2022 but their image host seems to have died so i think their time is up

While definitely not being as old skool as the others mentioned, https://poolsuite.net is near and dear to my heart as a place to listen to good music

This person understands the style.

https://www.chrismcovell.com/index2.html

Here’s a website for a 3D program available since 1999
http://www.artofillusion.org/

Another nite, another site. This one's “a compilation of medieval recipes from authentic sources... on the Internet since November 1997.”

http://www.godecookery.com/godeboke/godeboke.htm

RPGamer started as the Unofficial Squaresoft Homepage. It had fan-created MIDI and s3xmodit music from RPGs. This was where I first found out about trackers and how to use them!

It’s a nightmare to navigate, but you have to click on a game, then click the “Digital Music” section on that game. Any of the classic 90s games should have music on their pages. Also some fun remixes.

This was a time before mp3s were really popular or feasible (due to slow dial-up speeds). This was before spcs and nsfs were developed.

Chrono Trigger Digital Music:
https://archive.rpgamer.com/games/chrono/ct/ctdm.html

FF6’s Digital Music:
https://archive.rpgamer.com/games/ff/ff6/ff6dm.html

Full game list: https://archive.rpgamer.com/games/games.html

https://hornet.org/

demoscene history anyone?
i highly recommend the music contest 6 page

https://hornet.org/ha/pages/mc6/results_2/veteran.html

What a cool idea for a thread! And lots of interesting websites here.
One of my favourites is http://streamingsoundtracks.com, a community and web radio station for soundtracks. It has been up since 2001, and the design was last changed in 2003. My father used to listen to it as well. Unfortunately the admin hasn't been too active in the last 5-10 years, so it's not exactly thriving anymore.

http://www.post-neo.com/

Points of interest:

⋅ References to MP3.com
⋅ Street credibility
⋅ Daria fan fiction

Many DIY synthesizer pages are disappearing in these times, so I figured it'd be cool to collect those which don't:

https://schmitzbits.de/ - Rene Schmitz navigated this site a few years back from his old university host, to somewhere else. The news section goes back to 1999!

Someone put together a list of some shareware game sites that are still standing, complete with a listing of links at the bottom.

https://virtualmoose.org/2023/09/18/shareware-game-developer-websites/

https://www.newgrounds.com

since 1995! the site's probs well known here but after youtube fell face first into pure madness I unlisted everything from youtube and finally after all these decades made a newgrounds account. I'm here

! and yeah they still got indestructotank

and it looks like it even got a graphics update

how old is old enough? some that come to mind:

http://www.sm64.com/ - started in 2002 and certainly looking like it! notable for descriptions of stages with detailed locations of coins (including the "impossible" coin in tiny-huge island), amongst other things
https://www.groovestats.com/ - ranking website for the american ddr clone series called "in the groove", started in mid 2000s, still used by players to this day, though the backend is struggling to keep up with the demand :P
https://www.mariokart64.com - time trials ranking website, got a big update relatively recently, but merely 3 years ago you still had to submit your times by sending an e-mail :) the old versions of the website are accessible thru the sidebar, for the curious

one of the All Time Great Websites of the Internet. The creator has been dead for some time and the business attached fairly recently closed up as well, but it's still well-maintained and current.
https://sheldonbrown.com/

you may have heard of this little company as well...
https://berkshirehathaway.com/

thought of some more
https://www.2600.com/
https://www.carlsfriends.net/
http://dinosaurcollectorsitea.com/
https://www.thewebcomiclist.com/
https://www.balsaworkbench.com/

i have to nominate https://wdell.com/

for being one of the websites i constantly visited as a kid for its mario 64 tricks and MIDIs

Absolutely have to mention Stickpage

, a site entirely dedicated to flash games/anims featuring exclusively stick figure characters (some original to the site and some you may recognize, like Henry Stickmin). What makes this website so fascinating to me is that it's been around since 1999, and although it basically froze in time after Flash was shut down, all the content on the main stickpage itself is still fully operational with Ruffle!

https://www.angelfire.com/in2/DigimonCentral/Hfree.html

just found this one http://www.dupontcastle.com/

Online pixel art community with weekly challenges! I'd say it's a bit like botb but focused on pixel art:
https://pixeljoint.com/

I never joined the site myself but there is a ton of awesome art there!

https://www.futuretimeline.net/
wow, it still works, gets updates and still is a depressing / exciting read \o/

This is an old gaming Spanish speaking site http://postback.geedorah.com/archivo.html . The most impressive I have ever seen anywhere. It focuses on "obscure" games on "obscure" hardware in japanese and english.

There is an english forum ( http://postback.geedorah.com/foros/viewforum.php?id=5 )

It's just 15 years old so not THAT old.

Also, hcs64.com

https://z0r.de/ is still going, even though flash has been discontinued.

the barney fun page!
https://impressive.net/games/barney/fun.cgi