20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 31, 1998 -- BASEketball Opens

[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.]

July 31, 1998: We closed out the first month of the new AOL.com with a graphic promo for the movie BASEketball, starring the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

It looked like a stupid movie, but the only other film to open in wide release was Ever After: A Cinderella Story. Of the two, the Cinderella movie definitely did better at the box office, though in terms of lasting cultural impact, it feels like a wash to me.   

South Park had just started on Comedy Central the year before, and most of us had first become aware of the duo behind it from their animated Christmas card,The Spirit of Christmas, which went viral in December 1995 the old-fashioned way: bootleg videos attached to emails.

When I heard about South Park going to series, I remember thinking, "That's cool, but I don't think they'll have enough material to go from a 5-minute short to a half-hour show."

...21 seasons later, South Park is still going strong.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 30, 1998 -- The Big Unit (and a Note on Y2K)

[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.]

July 30, 1998: Another Sports promo graphic, featuring Randy "The Big Unit" Johnson. (Not to be confused with an Absolute Unit):

Also, in looking through the past screenshots, I realized I missed a change in the Messages From AOL section at the bottom of the page: A week after launch, around July 22, we added an item about AOL's Y2K preparations, linking to a page on the AOL corporate site (corp.aol.com at the time, now redirecting to Oath). 

The publishing preview says the item may begun with the wording "AOL and the New Millennium: Find out about the steps AOL is taking to address this issue," though subsequent pages use wording that's much more direct: "AOL's Year 2000 Program."

The Messages From AOL section was provided by CorpComm (corporate communications) and didn't change very frequently.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 29, 1998 -- Lindsay Lohan in 'The Parent Trap'

[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.]

July 29, 1998: In the graphic promo spot, we featured the release of the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap, featuring a fresh-faced 12-year-old Lindsay Lohan in her breakout role.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 28, 1998 -- Monica Lewinsky Given Immunity Deal

[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.]

July 28, 1998: The original lineup featured a Travel Web Centers promo with a very nice purple image of the Eiffel Tower, which I'm including below the fold just for the sake of historical completeness, because it was all mooted when Monica Lewinsky was given a deal for immunity:

By now, the routine for dealing with breaking news was pretty... routine. Of course, the News team was used to the rigamarole, and AOL.com's content needs were pretty light.

Jumping back to the future, like many of the alternative bands of the 1990s going on 20th and 25th anniversary tours, Monica Lewinsky has made something of a comeback.

Anyway, here's that purple Eiffel Tower:

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 27, 1998 -- Space Photo

[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.]

July 27, 1998: Pretty nondescript lineup. Research & Learn was a low-priority, low-performing Web Center, even with space photos.

One thing no one else will care about: I'm an Oxford comma guy. Always have been. And yet the My News promo omits it. (Previous promos all used the Oxford comma.) A troubling lapse? Or a sign of things to come? (This sounds like foreshadowing, but it doesn't mean anything.)

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 26, 1998 -- Any Given Sunday

[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.]

July 26, 1998: A pretty generic lineup that could have been from any day, let alone any Sunday. I had a loose rotation of AOL products, content, and Web Centers to feature.

One of the text promos was always a Shopping promo; there'd be at least one Web Centers promo (in this case, Careers & Work in the graphic spot and I think "Plan a Night In" was a Local feature); and then a product like My News, AOL Netfind, or NetMail.

The graphic is kind of neat; I don't remember who created it. Maybe one of the AOL.com designers on the West Coast?

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 25, 1998 -- Sports Wasn't a Good Performer

[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.]

July 25, 1998: Another Saturday promo, with Sports in the top spot.

Clickthrough on Sports content was never that good, even considering that none of the promo clickthroughs were that great: mostly in the low, low single digits, since most pageviews came from the fact that the AOL.com home page was the default web page when you opened up the AOL client browser.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 24, 1998 — US Capitol Shooting

[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.]

July 24, 1998: Saving Private Ryan opened; it was in the lead image promo.

Then, another conveniently placed bit of breaking news during the business day happened: the 1998 US Capitol shooting, where a gunman shot and killed two US Capitol Police officers (OK, convenient isn't the right word.)

This was the attack that ultimately led to the creation of the US Capitol Visitor Center.

I swapped out the first text promo, which was a generic Local Web Center (basically Digital City) promo, and replaced it with the news item:

In other happenings, this was the first promo block promotion for AOL NetMail. I think at this time it was still powered by an ActiveX plugin; it would become a lot more central to the site.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 23, 1998 -- Emmy Nominees Announced

[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.]

July 23, 1998: The nominees for the 50th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards were announced in the morning; I'd programmed a generic Emmy nods promo earlier in the week, knowing we'd switch it out later:

The only good thing about awards ceremony promos was that, as a scheduled event with predictable subjects, you could have photos for some of the likely candidates lined up ahead of time, which sped up the process.

Here, the text referenced 'Moon' (as in HBO's From the Earth to the Moon miniseries), as well as The X-Files (whose photo we selected).

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 22, 1998 -- The Death of Astronaut Alan Shepard (and the First Mid-Day Update)

[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.]

July 22, 1998: The first American in space, astronaut Alan Shepard, died in California late Tuesday night, and we got the news Wednesday morning.

While this version of the home page wasn't set up for breaking news (or really, any news at all, save for the My News promos in the center column), we knew we were going to get there eventually, and Shepard's death, though tragic, gave us an opportunity to try things out during the business day.

The page lineup shown here wasn't the one that was originally scheduled (obviously); this is a publishing tool preview that shows I'd swapped out the first text promo with the news story. You can't see the time stamp in the scan, but it shows that the screenshot was taken at 1:27pm ET.

 

This bought us some time until we got Shepard's photo and turned it into a graphic promo, which I then swapped in. I don't know how long it actually took (this next screenshot is one I generated from the publishing tool the following day), but it was probably at least an hour.

Our inability to rapidly turn around graphics with integrated text to react to breaking news would be a strong argument for switching to text headlines in graphic promos... but that would take a while.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 21, 1998 -- The Rise of NASCAR

[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.]

July 21, 1998: Back to a legit screenshot from the live site. My first NASCAR-related graphic promo.

I worked with the AOL Photo team to get wire or stock photos, then gave them to a designer to integrate the text into the final graphic. The requested lead time for this whole process was a few days, which was... not ideal and caused loads of heartache for all involved. (We eventually found ways to streamline the process. Eventually.)

The way we handled photo credits in those early days was to put them in a separately scheduled promo spot at the bottom of the page.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 20, 1998 -- A Headline Lapse?

[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.]

July 20, 1998: Another screenshot from my offline copyfit mockup.

One thing I just noticed that annoys me: The first three text promos (in the top block) use headline case, with articles and prepositions of less than four letters left uncapitalized. But the fourth promo—the Shopping promo—has everything in the headline capitalized.

I want to say that it was given to me by someone on the Shopping team, but it just might have been a lapse on my part.

 

The timestamp on the bottom shows that this screenshot was done ex post facto.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 19, 1998 -- All-You-Can-Eat AOL

[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.]

July 19, 1998: Third text promo is "Unlimited Time Offer: 'All-you-can-eat' AOL, $21.95/month." I don't remember if I wrote that gem solo or in consultation with the member marketing folks. Note that we're also still pitching 100 free hours in your first month (in the right column). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Also in the right column, check out the AOL NetMail promo. A lot more about Netmail in the coming months.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 18, 1998 -- We Add a Lame Disclaimer

[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.]

July 18, 1998: The first Saturday home page, which means it was scheduled on Friday. You can also see in the printout header that it's a screencap of the offline HTML template mockup that I used for copyfitting.

There's a fairly small but telling change that was added in the days after launch that most people would miss (I nearly did just now): Just below the nav bar, and above the promo block, we added a tiny text line that says, "America Online's Internet@Large Experience."

It looks like a slogan, but it's actually more of a disclaimer: I forget exactly why we were told to add it, but I think it had something to do with the fact that some of the execs were concerned that people would confuse AOL.com with the core AOL service offerings.

Of course, this little line of text would do absolutely nothing to alleviate that; it was a tiny piece of ass-covering that we were told to add.

Ad spot of the day: Lower right in the ad block, the ad for Cybermeals: "HUNGRY? Point. Click. Eat." Yeah, like that would ever become a thing.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 17, 1998 -- Tiger and Mel

[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.]

July 17, 1998: We're name-checking a young, up-and-coming golfer named Tiger Woods. I wonder what ever happened to him?

You'll also notice that the four text promos are color-coordinated with the adjacent graphic promo. The designers would create the graphic, then give me the hex color codes for the table rows to match.

I'll talk more about the graphic promo creation process later; it was a point of contention between design and editorial.

 

20 Years Ago, on AOL.com: July 16, 1998 -- A Word on Web Centers

[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.]

July 16, 1998: Nothing particularly interesting; the graphic promo is a fairly generic promo for the Travel Web Center.

Web Centers were just categories; they almost, but not quite, aligned to the AOL Channels. Part of the reason was to increase the available ad inventory (at least it was, later on): they weren't extensions of AOL Channels on the web, they were completely different, and differently sellable thing. That was our story, and it was true (at least as far as they reflected the organizational relationship between AOL.com and the AOL service channels.)

Also, If you look in the Web Centers column, you see that they're listed in order of popularity, not alphabetically.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 15, 1998

[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.]

July 15, 1998: There's Something About Mary opens in the US. (Note the current slew of articles about the film's 20th anniversary.)

Naturally, we used a Cameron Diaz photo for the graphic promo spot:

Free AOL Hours Offered: 100 (in your first month.)

20 Years Ago, On AOL.com: July 14, 1998

20 years ago on AOL.com, on July 14, 1998 (Bastille Day), I was part of the AOL.com team that relaunched the AOL.com website.

It featured a new home page that I did the content for; at the time, that just meant writing the 4 daily text promos and text/graphic promo spot (more on that in the future), and some text promos below the fold that rotated on a weekly-ish basis. Everything else on the page was static (well, except for the four ad spots in the top right):

Depending on the specific time period, there were actually a few different versions of the home page: one view for non-AOL members (people using external, standalone browsers) that was mostly an ad to sign up for AOL (this is the version that the Internet Wayback Machine would tend to crawl); an AOL member version seen by people using the (much-hated) AOL client web browser; and later, a version for AOL members signed in to their Webmail accounts using external browsers.

The promos that I wrote were most visible in the member signed-in views.

Anyway, I'd write the promos in an HTML template to make sure the copy fit, then paste it into our publishing tool (I think we launched with the Java-based Shakespeare), then use a push tool to publish it to the staging server, then out live to production.

As part of my process, either from the preview staging server or after it went live, I'd take a screenshot and print it out. (This July 14th launch version was definitely the live version, as you can see from the header URL.) I don't think I kept the soft copy screenshot, just the hard copy, which went into a folder and that I kept, even after all this time.

(One other thing: The footer with the legalese often printed to a second page; you can see here where I cut it out and taped it to the first page.)

Anyway, to commemorate the launch, and to open that time capsule from the late 1990s, I bought a new scanner (after I upgraded to High Sierra, my original 4-in-1 wouldn't scan anymore) and now, mostly as a writing prompt, will be publishing an image of the AOL.com home page from that day, 20 years prior, with a little commentary as appropriate, and as best my faulty memory can recall. (I'm also publishing all the scans to a Flickr collection: 20 Years Ago On AOL.com)