20 Years Ago on AOL.com: Oct. 5, 1998 -- Monday Night Football and Another Design Tweak

October 5, 1998: Another NFL promo, on the Vikings-Packers matchup and Vikings QB Randall Cunningham, who was hot in his return after one year of retirement.

Then, at some point during the day, we implemented a design tweak that really shrank the column headers, switching from a graphic logo with integrated tagline to a text hyperlink with a much-smaller logo and no tag line.

We did this because we wanted to get more content to show above the fold: Clickthrough rates were really low for content below the fold. The fact that it was mostly bulleted lists probably factored into that.

[Series note: In the late 1990s, I programmed the content for the AOL.com home page, which relaunched with a new design on July 14, 1998. I printed screencaps and saved them. 20 years later, I'm scanning them in and posting them with a little commentary under the tag #20YearsAgoOnAOLcom.]