20 Years Ago on AOL.com: July 31, 1999 -- Pokemon

July 31, 1999: For the last Saturday of July, we led with a Pokemon package, featuring Pikachu. I wonder whatever happened to that obscure old game?

[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: July 30, 1999 -- Shooting Aftermath; Shopping; "Runaway Bride"

July 30, 1999: For Friday, we began with the aftermath of the previous day's Atlanta spree killings...

...but by mid-morning, we'd switched back to commerce with a fashion and apparel Shopping promo. (At least, I think so, according to this post-dated image from the preview server a few days later. As previously noted, if I needed a screenshot of a prior page, I could essentially change the clock on the publishing tool to get it to show me content from that date.)

For the PM update, we switched to the Julia Roberts movie Runaway Bride:

[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: July 29, 1999 -- Find People; Atlanta Spree Killing

July 29, 1999: In a pre-Google, pre-Facebook era, it wasn't always easy to find people. For a Find People promo, we went with White Pages, E-Mail Finder, and somewhat jarringly, Search Personals:

We then did a mid-morning update following a mass shooting at two Atlanta brokerage offices, with 9 dead:

We stayed with the story for the rest of the day, with a PM update showing the shooter--a real winner--killed himself, as well as annihilating his family before the office shooting. (He was also the lone suspect in the murders of his first wife and mother-in-law 6 years earlier.):

 

[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: July 28, 1999 -- Get a Better Job; $99 Fall Fares

July 28, 1999: We started out with another passive-aggressive promo author's "Get a Better Job" promo; not sure why the ads printed in black and white, I don't imagine that actually happened in production; the second headline references the safe return of the Space Shuttle Columbia (the mission was STS-93):

For the PM update, we went with Last Chance for $99 Fall Fares (good luck with that); oddly, although the screenshot was printed at 6:36pm, we still had the morning top block format (with the sock quote lookup box). Probably human error (mine):

[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: July 27, 1999 -- Hot Cars, Hot Women, Cool Kids, and the Yosemite Murders

July 27, 1999: We went back to car shopping and the Corvette stock art; the My News headlines reference the deadly US heat wave, as well as a motel handyman near Yosemite National Park who confessed to (and was later convicted of) four murders:

Mid-day, we switched over to a hot woman:

 

For the PM update, we switched to a little kid trying to cool off in a sprinkler:

[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: July 26, 1999 -- Kennedy Curse Fully Broken with Personal Finance and Another Heat Wave

July 26, 1999: We started the first full workweek of the post-JFK-Jr.-era moving back to the predictable and prosaic Monday morning Personal Finance, with loan and stock tools and investing chat:

For the PM update, we went to another July heat wave:

Incidentally, I posted this using my phone; OMG, what a chore; not only were the Blogger and Flickr apps not up to the task, but using the full desktop sites on mobile, I kept accidentally refreshing the page when trying to scroll around, losing my changes.

[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: July 25, 1999 -- Get a Web Page With 1-2-3 Publish (namechecking Johnny Cash)

July 25, 1999: For Sunday, we went with AOL's web site builder, 1-2-3 Publish (not to be confused with AOL Hometown, which was specifically for home pages built off templates). The pictured bit of the animated gif promo is "My name is Sue," clearly a reference to the Johnny Cash song; we can't know the rest of the promo gif, though there's no way we used the rest of that quote:

[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: July 24, 1999 -- Weekend Home Buying (with a hidden "Invasion U.S.A." reference)

July 24, 1999: We went with another Saturday home buying promo. "It's Time to Buy" is a reference to the 1985 Chuck Norris movie Invasion U.S.A. (a terrible, terrible movie, but it has its moments; also given the current historic and political moment, I'm surprised someone isn't trying to remake it):

[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: July 23, 1999 -- Saying Goodbye to JFK Jr.

July 23, 1999: For Friday, we continued with saying goodbye to JFK Jr, making it a full week of coverage. (If we did a morning version of the page, it's lost to history.)

[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: July 22, 1999 -- Farewell to JFK, Jr.

July 22, 1999: For almost a week, the main promo headline had been a variation of "Kennedy Tragedy." This day was no different. (The My News headline says, "Kennedy Ashes To Be Scattered at Sea.")

For the PM update, we updated the headline to "Farewell JFK Jr."

[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: July 21, 1999 -- Watch Wall Street; JFK Jr's Plane Found

July 21, 1999: We temporarily went with a "Watch Wall Street" promo (the same one from the previous Thursday, only with a new piece of stock art); however, the My News headline has an update on the JFK Jr. story: "Kennedy's Body, Plane Wreckage Found":

We did a mid-morning update of the headline to "JFK Jr, 1960-99," now that the death of JFK Jr and his passengers was official:

For the PM update, we continued with the "Kennedy Tragedy" headline:

[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: July 20, 1999 -- Kennedy Tragedy

July 20, 1999: For the fourth day, we went with the Kennedy tragedy. There wasn't much to do except change the photos and tweak the colors. I also took a full-page screenshot, presumably to capture the link in the corporate links footer about the AOL fourth quarter earnings call:

For the PM update, there was no real update. However, we can see that we relaunched the text link version of the top nav bar:

[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: July 19, 1999 -- Kennedy Tragedy

July 19, 1999: For Monday morning, we continued with the "Kennedy Tragedy" headline; plane crash fragments had been found, and people had basically stopped hoping for a miracle:

For the PM update, we changed the headline to a remembrance (though at this point, I'm not sure if he'd been officially declared dead):

[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: July 18, 1999 -- JFK Jr. Still Missing

July 18, 1999: For Sunday, we continued to monitoring the JFK Jr. missing plane situation:

Though the longer this went on, the less likely we'd see a happy ending...

By the end of the day, we'd changed the wording to "Kennedy Tragedy":

[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: July 17, 1999 -- "The Blair Witch Project"; JFK, Jr.'s Plane Goes Missing

July 17, 1999: We led with the The Blair Witch Project (which opened nationally on July 14), but we would soon get overtaken by events...

...namely, that John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s plane went missing:

 

We updated the top promo, though we still hadn't had any additional details:

[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: July 16, 1999 -- Summer Fun, "Eyes Wide Shut"

July 16, 1999: For Friday, we went with a generic summer fun promo, as represented by beach ball.

We also teased an update to the top nav bar, switching from a clickable graphic bar to text links, though it looks like we reverted it later in the day (also, I'm not sure why there's no My News headline showing, even though this is a screenshot from production):

In a mid-day update... we tweaked the lead promo, switching out "Check Weather" with Restaurant Guide. We also pulled "Top News" out of the Daily Essentials, which leads me to wonder if there was a My News outage we were working around:

For the PM update, the My News headline returned, as did the previous top nav bar. I feel like we tried to launch a few changes but were forced to revert them. Anyway, we changed the lead promo to Eyes Wide Shut:

We did another late day update, putting "Top News" back in the Daily Essentials. The My News headline references a gathering of moonwalkers to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing:

[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: July 15, 1999 -- Watch Wall Street; Muppet Fever

July 15, 1999: We went with stock info, market news, and stock chat (the #3 text link was increasingly just the formulaic "______ Chat" on whatever we were featuring):

For the PM update, we went with Muppet from Space:

[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: July 14, 1999 -- Fly to France; Hollywood News and Photos

July 14, 1999: We did reference Bastille Day, though only as part of a "Fly to France" travel package promotion, anchored by a pic of the Arc de Triomphe. (This was also the 1-year anniversary of the redesigned AOL.com, though we didn't mention that at all.)

For the PM update, we went with a pretty tame Hollywood news feature, with presumably an Entertainment feature and photo gallery (we led with a pic of Mike Myers and I think his then-wife?):

[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: July 13, 1999 -- Real Estate; an "Other AOL Sites" Footer; Buffy Finale

July 13, 1999: The Real Estate promo was nothing special (though we did feature non-white people in the stock art; we were still catching up on representation in main page promos). However, this is the first full-screen capture since June 26; I had to think back, but clearly I did it to capture some page change below the fold.

And after stopping to compare the designs, it's a new footer--previously, we used the same nav bar for the header and footer; with this design tweak, we bagged the footer nav bar (if they made it that far to the bottom of the page, clearly they were looking for something else), replacing it with an "Other AOL Sites" section, with 11 corporate and other utility links.

Below that, is the standard legalese block; I'm pretty sure I pasted the footer bit from the dev server version of the page, since the stock art in the top of the page clearly wasn't an AP photo:

For the PM update, we went back to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 3 finale, since this was the actual broadcast night. I have two screenshots taken 2 hours apart, though I can't see any difference between the two versions:

 

 [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: July 12, 1999 -- Beat the Street; "Buffy" Season 3 Finale Controversy

July 12, 1999: A new Monday meant an old, re-used stock market package, with stock lookup, market news, and investing AIM chat rooms:

For the PM update, we went with the Season 3 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; the "controversy" we reference was the fact that this episode, the second part of a two-parter, was postponed from its original May broadcast date at the last minute, since scenes of armed students fighting a final battle at the high school was a bit too much for network execs who were still sensitive after Columbine:

[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: July 11, 1999 -- NASCAR Racing

July 11, 1999: It may seem strange now, but 20 years ago, NASCAR wasn't nearly as big as it is today. It was gradually poking its way into the coastal media elite bubble (even as we made efforts to make sure we were reaching a more mainstream [that is, flyover country] audience):

[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: July 10, 1999 -- Vacation Travel Promo... on a Saturday!

July 10, 1999: I guess we were trying to shake things up, in a low-effort summer vacation sort of way: We took the usual blue airline stock art travel promo and featured vacation and flight bargains... on a Saturday!

[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: July 9, 1999 -- "American Pie" Opens

July 9, 1999: I guess we didn't have a choice but to feature the teen coming of age sex comedy American Pie (our editorial overseers were a bit uptight about these sorts of things); we started the morning promo with a photo of Alyson Hannigan:

For the PM update, we stuck with American Pie, switching to a movie still featuring Natasha Lyonne and (I think) Tara Reid. We didn't feature any of the male leads, presumably for clickthrough reasons:

[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: July 8, 1999 -- Car Buying and Lilith Fair 1999

July 8, 1999: Thursday began with a car-buying promo (for both new and used cars); the My News headlines referenced tobacco companies found liable in a Florida case, and Clinton (doesn't specify Bill or Hillary, but it was the president, not the future failed presidential candidate) to visit the Watts section of LA: 

For the PM update, we went led with Sarah McLachlan and the dates for the 1999 Lilith Fair (the final one, not counting the ill-fated 2010 revival attempt):

[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.]