20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 31, 1998 -- Remembering Princess Diana, One Year After Her Death

August 31, 1998: Princess Di had died just the year before, so naturally we were all over that anniversary:

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 30, 1998 -- Time Savers

August 30, 1998: For a generic Sunday graphic promo (weekends were low traffic compared to weekdays), we had the Find a Job Time Saver; I'd forgotten about Time Savers, which were behavior-based feature packages of content and functionality (maybe canned searches?). Some of the other ones we'd seen referenced include Plan a Night Out/In. Like I said, I'd forgotten about them:

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 29, 1998 -- Pigskin Classic Preview

August 29, 1998: A preview for the 1998 Pigskin Classic; USC would face (and beat) Purdue on Sunday. College football wasn't a big clickthrough winner for us, but apparently I was hard up for content and we had to maintain the facade of timeliness.

One thing I forgot to notice: The column footers (which linked to the same section main pages as the column header images) are aligned to the bottom, instead of the previous sawtooth configuration. We were concerned that people be able to navigate to the section main pages if they scrolled below the fold (ha):

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 28, 1998 -- Neve Campbell Dazzles [sic] in '54'

August 28, 1998: The lead graphic promo features Neve Campbell in the forgettable and forgotten Studio 54 movie 54. I don't recall if the movie content we linked to actually used the term, or if that was just a bit of puffery to help promote the film: 

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 27, 1998 -- Bonnie Downgraded, Dow Dips

August 27, 1998: The day started with a continuation of the Hurricane Bonnie story, using the same satellite image, while the second text promo was for the new AOL Instant Messenger v2.0 Beta. (I guess the color printer wasn't available that day):

We did a midday update on the Bonnie story, using a photo showing the impact of the hurricane. The first text promo references another stock market dip:

Apparently, it was significant enough that we moved the Dow dip into the graphic spot, recycling the Personal Finance graphic we used for the downturn on August 21:

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 26, 1998 -- Hurricane Bonnie Arrives

August 26, 1998: Hurricane Bonnie arrived off the coast of North Carolina. The lead graphic promo, which says, "Travel: Take a Labor Day Getaway," was not a hurricane tie-in.

We followed it up with a mid-day update, moving the Bonnie news into the graphic spot with a satellite photo:

Also, the second text promo for AOL White Pages reads "This 411 Doesn't Go on Strike." I can't find the specific event this references, but apparently there had been a recent telephone worker strike that affected 411 service.

There are also some handwritten notes; I'm not sure what the "Non-Netfind" note means, but in the Free Products column, you can see the arrow which adjusts the order of the AOL Instant Messenger v1.0 and v2.0 Beta promos—a change you'll see tomorrow.

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 25, 1998 -- Hacky Hurricane Headline

August 25, 1998: The top promo block is a mini-package around Hurricane Bonnie, which formed the week before, featuring Research & Learn, My News, and a shameless, fruitless shopping promo (online grocery buying wasn't really a thing back in '98).

I also wrote a really lame text promo using an obvious, hacky reference to My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 24, 1998 -- 'Will & Grace'

August 24, 1998: The lead graphic promo spot is for the Entertainment Web Center's fall TV preview, with a pic of Will & Grace, which started its debut season in 1998.

Naturally, 20 years later, they couldn't leave well enough alone, and rebooted it.

One other thing I overlooked: Also in the August refresh, we renamed the fifth column, which used to be "Essentials," to "Free Products." Because everyone likes free stuff, and we were trying to increase clickthrough.

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 23, 1998: Where'd the Search Box Go?

August 23, 1998: Another generic Sunday promo. Of course, the "bigger monitor" in the stock image is a CRT. (Looks like a 17-incher.)

Nothing really notable... except that I just realized that there's no AOL Netfind search box anywhere on this version of the page. (A web page without a search field. Unthinkable.)

I had to flip back to see when we took the search field out; it looks like we removed it a week or so after the August 14 design tweak (when we moved it to the left column).

Actually, I'm not 100% sure that was a functional search box to begin with: I still remember a meeting we had with some of the ad folks, who were touting the clickthrough benefits of ads with fake functionality (like entry fields or radio buttons that were just images, to trick users into clicking them). "Faux functionality," they called it. I called it evil.

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 22,1998 -- Peyton Manning and Post-Strike Assessment

August 22, 1998: The Saturday after the US military strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan, we led with another preseason NFL graphic promo, featuring an up-and-comer named Peyton Manning about to begin his rookie season. The battle damage assessment of the strikes made it into the text promo:

Speaking of strikes, there's an AOL White Pages promo that references a telephone worker strike that impacted 411 service.

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 21, 1998 -- Aftermath of US Military Strikes and Dow Dips

August 21, 1998: I'm not 100% on the order of the published updates; the first lineup was screenshot off the live site at 11:24am, following up on the prior day's missile strikes against targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. It features the photo we ran the prior day (as well as a stray line break that threw off the table layout a bit):

Next, we have an updated page that was screenshot (also from the live site) at 3:05pm, with a Personal Finance promo referencing a dip in the Dow, and a text spot about the missile strikes:

Some where in the mix, there was an updated promo on the missile strikes, featuring a new image of guy burning an American flag; I'm guessing it was the second promo of the day, as a story update while the Dow dip graphic was being created:

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 20, 1998 -- US Military Strikes Bump Lewinsky Testimony

August 20, 1998: The top story was Monica Lewinsky's return to testify before the grand jury. Briefly. The timestamp on the screenshot (it's covered up in the scan) is 2:10pm:

Then, the US launched cruise missile strikes against targets in Afghanistan and Sudan, bumping Monica out of our top spot (though we left the lead text promo as an update on Major League Baseball's Race to 61, go figure), and providing a modicum of support for theories that the strikes were part of a Wag the Dog strategy.

 

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 19, 1998 -- Want to Retire Early? Click here.

August 19, 1998: Looking at the lineup, you wouldn't know that we were in the heart of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. The lead promo is a proto-clickbait headline for the Personal Finance Web Center.

On a general note, we'd incorporated the "click here" text into the lead graphic promos because we weren't sure that people would know the image was a clickable link without hypertext. Another concern was that people would just think it was an advertisement. (Imagine that.)

Also, one thing I forgot to notice: Starting the prior Monday, we'd turned the fourth text promo into a static listing of "Daily Essentials": News, weather, stock quotes, and sports scores, which our research at the time indicated were things that people really wanted. (Especially the stock quotes: Remember that this was on the ramp-up to the peak of the dotcom bubble.) 

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 18, 1998 -- Back to School Buyer's Guide (Oh, and Clinton Apologizes)

August 18, 1998: Back to business (if not back to normal) with a Back-to-School Buyer's Guide promo for the Computing Web Center (ugh, look at that lack of hyphenation and the capitalized "to").

Oh, and the top text promo references our My News coverage about President Clinton's post-grand jury testimony live TV address.

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 17, 1998 -- Clinton Testifies Today

August 17, 1998: Lead item: "Clinton Testifies Today." On Monday, President Bill Clinton became the first president to testify in front of a grand jury; later that evening, he gave a live, televised address where he admitted to his affair. (Here are the contemporaneous news articles from the Washington Post archives.)

Good thing we've left that kind of political turmoil far behind us.

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 16, 1998 -- Madonna Turns 40

August 16, 1998: Lead item is an Entertainment Web Center promo about Madonna turning 40. So if my calculations are correct, that means in the 2018 present day, she turns 60:

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 15, 1998 -- More Preseason Football

August 15, 1998: Another preseason NFL promo for a Saturday. The game was 49ers at Seahawks. The photo credit is handwritten at the bottom of the page: "Eric Gay, AP." The screenshot scan is super-crooked. The Seahawks won, 24-21:

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 14, 1998 -- Design Tweaks, One Month Post-Launch (and the 1998 Avengers)

August 14, 1998: The top graphic spot features Uma Thurman from The Avengers, the big-screen adaptation of the 1960s TV series that had minimal impact compared to the 2012 movie of the same name. (Also, the "Uma is Emma" line was my take on David Letterman's "Oprah, Uma" bit from the 1995 Oscars.)

More importantly, this is one month after the July 14 relaunch, and where we introduced some design tweaks (that I'd forgotten about until I was scrolling through the August photos and saw some differences):

Here's an animated gif that makes the differences easy to spot:

• First and foremost, the AOL Netfind search bar below the main promo block (and that previously spanned the top of the five columns) was moved to the AOL Netfind column, which also received a background color to make it stand out more. 
• We added bolded "Explore [Product Name]" headers above the static list items below the fold, and also made them unordered lists with red bullets.
• You can also see horizontal dividers between the different column sections. Apparently, we were concerned that people were ignoring the column content.
• We made an odd font choice, where the column header and promo content was a serif font (probably Times Roman), whereas the list items remained sans serif. It might have just been an artifact of how we published the promos via the promo rotator tool. It looks ugly as hell.

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 13, 1998 -- PGA Championship Tees Off Today (feat. Tiger Woods)

August 13, 1998: Another screenshot off the live site (taken 7:32pm, evidently), featuring Tiger Woods in the top graphic spot for the 1998 PGA Championship. While he led after the first round, Vijay Singh eventually won.

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 12, 1998 -- Last Chance for $99 Fall Fares

August 12, 1998: A relatively rare Travel Web Centers promo that references a specific deal, $99 fall airfares. I don't remember how it performed.

The top text promo is about a preview for How Stella Got Her Groove Back.

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 11, 1998 -- A Gap in the Record

August 11, 1998: As you can see from the header, this is a printout of the HTML mockup that I used for copyfitting the promo block text. (According to the footer, I printed it on August 22, apparently after I realized I had a gap in my printouts.)

The first text promo reads "Stock Market Plunges," whereas just the day before, the text was "Will the Rally Continue?" Apparently August 1998 showed a lot of stock market volatility.

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 10, 1998 -- Sneak Peek at Paradise

August 10, 1998: Lead graphic promo was a preview for the movie, Return to Paradise. I don't remember it either.

One phrase as a headline writer that I'm always extra careful about is "sneak peek," because I've made the "sneak peak" mistake more than once.

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 9, 1998 -- Already Into Repeats

August 9, 1998: Nothing special above or below the fold, except the generic weather promo graphic is the exact same one I used the previous Wednesday.

This wasn't even the first repeat: The baseball promo photo from August 4 (featuring Ken Griffey, Jr.) was the same one we launched with on July 14.

Repeating promo text—and even entire lineups—was just the nature of the beast. I would at least try to tweak wording, though the promo graphic text at this point was baked in; I wasn't allowed to touch (and didn't even have) the source files.

[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.]

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 8, 1998 -- Generic Football Promo

[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.]

August 8, 1998: Generic football promo for the Sports Web Center, featuring the Broncos' Terrell Davis and some really odd capitalization in the graphic headline.

(A bunch of the scans I've been doing are crooked. I was lazy and didn't fix them.)

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 7, 1998 -- US Embassies in Africa Bombed

[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.]

August 7, 1998: The US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania happened on a Friday, and while we added it to the top text spot, it wasn't enough to knock the Nicholas Cage movie Snake Eyes out of the graphic spot.

20 years later, no one is talking about Snake Eyes.

It wasn't because we had payola deal where we had to promo it. (August 7 was just not a strong movie weekend.) Nor did we have a huge stake in the outcome of the movie. (Good thing, too.)

The main reason we didn't bump it from the graphic spot was timing and attention: We got the news late enough on a Friday it would have been a big hassle to request and get a news photo for a distant—though tragic—story, especially since people didn't really come to the site for news.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 6, 1998 -- Lara Croft and Lewinsky to Testify

[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.]

August 6, 1998: The lead promo features Lara Croft, in a Computing Web Center promo presumably previewing Tomb Raider III, which would come out in October.

The top text promo references a MyNews story about Monica Lewinsky, whose testimony to the federal grand jury began that day.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 5, 1998 -- Weather Forecasts and Clinton vs. Starr

[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.]

August 5, 1998: The graphic promo for getting customized weather reports in MyNews is pretty blah. The first text promo is about independent counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation into Bill Clinton, though I can't for the life of me remember why the Computing Web Center would be featuring it.

Looking over in the ad block: Music Boulevard was bought by CDNow in 1999 (we'll see CDNow in later ads), which was later bought by Amazon.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 4, 1998 -- See What's Up in Baseball

[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.]

August 4, 1998: Another Sports promo. See how the catcher and Ken Griffey, Jr. are looking up in the photo? Well, what most people miss is how the imagery thematically matches the headline text, "See what's up in baseball."

You see, the players in the photo are literally looking up to see what's happening in the baseball game, while we (the readers) are being exhorted to figuratively "see" what's up (that is, what's happening) in the general realm of baseball.

It's another keen insight into the late 1990s digital publishing process that makes this series such a valuable contribution to the historical record.

You're welcome.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 3, 1998 -- Melrose Mondays Are Back

[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.]

August 3, 1998: Starting the week with a photo of Heather Locklear for a Melrose Place promo. Its seventh and final season had premiered the week before:

Jumping to the current day, 2018 hasn't been a great year for Heather.

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 2, 1998 -- Summer Vacation: It's Not Too Late

[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.]

August 2, 1998: Another generic Travel Web Center promotion.

In the fourth text promo, I do still kinda like the couch potato callout:

20 Years Ago on AOL.com: August 1, 1998 -- Name this 1998 NFL Quarterback

[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.]

August 1, 1998: Another Sports Web Center promo, this one for the NFL Preseason Kickoff.

I don't claim to know my late '90s NFL quarterbacks, especially from poorly scanned, 20-year-old photos; maybe someone can tell me who we featured: