Now this is an interesting one. I entered RetroChallenge 2022/10 to see if I could bring the GeoCities archive back to life again using the scripts built by despens in 2012/2013. The goal was to use hardware from that era running Ubuntu 12.04, the OS those scripts were originally written for.

And what can I say? If I’d been better at installing dependencies, it probably would have happened sooner. Regardless, it worked! Now that I’ve seen all of the scripts in action, I’m going to try running them on a modern OS, Ubuntu 22.04. I’ll track it all in my GeoCities GitHub repository. I’ve even downloaded GitHub Desktop to try using GitHub properly… that’s a first.

What was most interesting about this project is that it combined a few labours of love. Modems, the MiSTer (DE10-Nano), Raspberry Pis, websites (from the internet of old), and probably most importantly a little more knowledge on how things work. The best part was tying it all together.

You can track my RetroChallenge 2022/10 progress in Portable All-in-One GeoCities Web Server and look at last year’s effort in GeoCities Rebuild for Older Browsers. I wonder what I’ll do for the next RetroChallenge? Time will tell. Sooner or later… time will tell… 🙃

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