phew, time for another monthly blog post. we've been wondering if these even make sense lately, since there's barely anything to tell, but looking back each month is still fun. and somehow, I still end up writing way too much anyway.

if you're enjoying the ramble, stay with me, it's going to be a long one again.

does anyone still remember "site of the month" contests from the early 2000s? last year, we quietly joined a website contest on neocities just for fun. we didn't promote it anywhere since winning wasn't the point, it was just that seeing something like that still exist in 2026 felt SO EXCITING, especially after we thought those times were long gone.

when we brought back designfreaks in 2024, almost all the sites we used to know were dead. we would've loved to bring back our interactive corner, but it was already difficult to find enough participants in 2018, so we dropped that idea pretty quickly. you wouldn't believe how often danny and I hit each other with an unhinged "OH GOD LET'S BRING THIS BACK" moment, which usually lasts about five seconds before reality kicks in. the old web is dead.

but shortly after we came back, we discovered hundreds of active sites on neocities, just like the old days. it also made us realize how everyone has their own version of what "the old web" even means.

for a lot of people today, it's that windows 95 aesthetic or frutiger aero. and honestly, we love that too. but for us, it was never really about that specific look. I don't really remember websites in 2006 looking like frutiger aero at all, to be honest. when I see that style, my brain just goes to... fancy toilet seat covers. 😭

instead, when I think of those days, I think of sites like shizoo-design, bloomotion, or the-peril, which are all dead by now sadly. there were so many websites where people shared resources, designs and pixels for others to use. since most of these sites were in the german-speaking bubble, I really wonder what the equivalent was for you? 🥹

every few months there was a new style to chase, and we went through so many phases. dark layouts covered in glowing swirl brushes, the obsession with glass effects and orbits.

and the contests. one of my favorites were photo retouching challenges, where the goal was to manually clean up skin without making it look like plastic. though, most of us just added a HORRIBLE gaussian blur, messed around with the smudge tool, and called it a day. the fun was in the process. another variant was the "colorize contest", where you had to realistically colorize a black and white photo, or a restoration contest, where you had to repair an old vintage photo. and of course, the site of the month contests.

we would love to bring something like that back nowadays, but realistically? the pool of people still doing this is finite, and finding enough new participants to keep a monthly contest going feels almost impossible. we aren't in 2006 anymore. even those skill-based challenges feel different now, especially when AI can "fix" a photo in two seconds and skip the whole point of the struggle.

it's kind of mindblowing to think that we were all just kids back then, learning html for no reason, and somehow ended up in the same corner of the internet.

it honestly makes me wonder if there are still sites out there exactly like ours, those old-school graphic sites, and we just haven't found each other yet. <3