#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 30, 1999 -- Build Your Own Home Page! Loud Noises!

September 30, 1999: Get noticed by building a free web page. It's fast! It's easy! Share photos! Post a resume! Why isn't there a PM update?! I have no idea!

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 29, 1999 -- Find People; "Dawson's Creek" Season 3 Premiere; Another Date Screwup

September 29, 1999: We went with the loosely themed "Find People," with White Pages (which were a thing), email finder, and genealogy (spelled out as "family research" in case that was too opaque) and tied together with a generic, multigenerational white people stock art family:

For the PM update, we were back to fall TV, with the Dawson's Creek Season 3 premiere.

You can also see the penciled-in date correction, which means I screwed up the date again: The data was hard-coded into the HTML of each promo block. I believe I kept the HTML snippets as text files stored on my computer.) I'd just copy, paste, and modify each block, then paste them into the publishing tool (the Java-based Shakespeare), into blocks that were handled by a promo rotator/scheduler.

Those blocks would also be reused, though they had a version history you could dip into if you needed to look back. And I think we had two full sets of day blocks (consisting of day and night blocks for each weekday), so we could schedule out more than a week, although we did still schedule content pretty hand-to-mouth.

Despite our best efforts, I could never get more than a few days out, and when I did, there'd inevitably be some news event that upset our lineups. I hated Fridays and long weekends, because those were just extra days that had to be pre-scheduled.

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 28, 1999 -- Help Wanted; Find Love

September 28, 1999: We went with some bold colors and basic calls to action; for the morning, we started with a find a job promo:

For the PM update, we switched to Love@AOL personals. Oh, look in the My News headlines: "GOP Health Bill Aims to Help Uninsured." Truly, the 1990s were a strange time.

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 27, 1999 -- Watch Wall Street; Fall Fares; Quayle Drops Out

September 27, 1999: For Monday, we went our standby of Personal Finance; it did not usher in a day of market unrest, though we see in the My News headlines that former VP Dan Quayle would end his presidential candidacy:

For the PM update, we went with another fall airfare promo, this time with a stock photo of a passenger jet... from behind!

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 26, 1999 -- AIM 3.0

September 26, 1999: Another low-effort AIM 3.0 promo for generic Sunday:

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 25, 1999 -- Saturday Sports Roundup

September 25, 1999: For Saturday, we led with a sports roundup featuring... I'm not sure which college football player's photo we featured. Or even the team... is that Florida State?

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 24, 1999 -- Ashley Judd in "Double Jeopardy"; Love@AOL Photo Personals

September 24, 1999: We started off Friday with the Ashley Judd movie Double Jeopardy, which once again, we didn't even bother to name (though we also didn't name the actor this time around):

For the PM update, we went with Love Games and Love@AOL photo personals; the My News headline references the 1999 Ryder Cup, which was controversial for the behavior of American fans and competitors:

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 23, 1999 -- Fall Fares Fall; "Friends" Season 6 Premiere; New "NEW"

September 23, 1999: Thursday saw a purposefully repetitive "Fall Fares Fall" headline; that was about as much room for wordplay that we had in the limited space. The My News headline references the Mars Climate Orbiter crash -- you know, the one caused by the mixing of metric and non-metric units:

For the PM update, we went with the Friends Season 6 premiere; Thursdays were still very much "Must See TV." Also, in the search bar, we added NEW! in big, all-cap red letters, though I'm not sure why. (We also updated the Shop@AOL column text header, removing the little shopping bag image and adding .com):

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 22, 1999 -- Build Your Own Home Page!!! Free Web Chat!!!

September 22, 1999: Build your own home page! It's Fast! It's Easy! Exclamation points!

We included a few web page use cases, for sharing photos, posting a resume (LinkedIn wouldn't exist until 2002), and more:

For the PM update, we went back to AIM 3.0:

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 21, 1999 -- Investing for Y2K; Fall '99 Top TV

September 21, 1999: Here's our first real feature reference to Y2K (I think), which we'll start to see more of, using a stack of gold bricks and focusing on investing. In the My News headlines, we see that the death toll of the Taiwan earthquake jumped from 15 to 1,500:

For the PM update, it was back to fall TV (shocker), looking at Dharma and Greg, while the quake death toll continued to climb:

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 20, 1999 -- Max Your 401(k); Fall TV with "Ally McBeal"; Taiwan Earthquake

September 20, 1999: We started out the week with a Personal Finance promo that focused on how to Max Your 401(k), which didn't seem incredibly hard during a bubble:

 

For the PM update, we went with more fall TV, featuring a photo of Calista Flockhart, since we were still at peak Ally McBeal. The My News headline references the 1999 Taiwan earthquake; this first news article cites 17 dead, though the final toll would be much, much higher. (Skipping ahead to future days, we let the News headline cover the story; we didn't give it the feature treatment.)

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 19, 1999 -- Sports Roundup

September 19, 1999: Sunday's promo was a generic sports roundup feature, with a pic of the Miami Dolphins' Dan Marino:

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 18, 1999 -- Breaking Free of Floyd with Free Web Chat

September 18, 1999: We finally got out fully from under the thumb of Hurricane Floyd (after focusing on it for the better part of a week) with the usual AIM 3.0 Free Web Chat promo:

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 17, 1999 -- Headed Into the Weekend Like a Hurricane

September 17, 1999: With a slightly more crooked scan than usual, we went with another flood picture to ponder how Hurricane Floyd might alter your weekend plans:

For the PM update, it was back to Love@AOL photo personals, with the requisite closeup imminent kiss stock photo:

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 16, 1999 -- Hurricane Floyd Hits North Carolina, Moves North

September 16, 1999: We continued with Hurricane Floyd, with heavier coverage than normal because this one would actually affect... us.... as it passed through Northern Virginia up through the mid-Atlantic:

Mid-morning update with flood photos:

For the PM update, back to the satellite view:

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 15, 1999 -- More Hurricane Floyd

September 15, 1999: We continued tracking Hurricane Floyd, which skimmed Florida and headed towards the Carolinas:

For a mid-morning update, we shifted from the satellite view and used a photo of idiots in the big surf:

For the PM update, we went back to another satellite photo:

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 14, 1999 -- A Four-Pack of Hurricane Floyd Updates

September 14, 1999: Not surprisingly, we stayed with Hurricane Floyd; it hit the Bahamas hard, but only one person died:

The next update was pretty much the same, only we changed the promo background color:

For a 7pm update, we went back to red. I guess the satellite photos are different, but who can tell?

The last update was... swapping out the text link for local weather forecasts (redundant, of course, to the Weather link immediately to its right in Daily Essentials) with a photo gallery of impacts:

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 13, 1999 -- Emmy Award Followup; Hurricane Floyd

September 13, 1999: We started off post-Emmy Monday with Helen Hunt, who took best comedy actress honors for Mad About You; this was just the top block preview:

Here it is in the full, live page (which also features My News headlines referencing the latest 1999 Moscow apartment bombings, which would eventually spur a war):

For the PM update, we switched to Hurricane Floyd, which hit the Bahamas and southeast US (sound familiar?):

We did another update following Floyd:

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 12, 1999 -- 51st Primetime Emmy Awards, Live from "New York Shitty"

September 12, 1999: Sunday was the Emmy Awards. We started with a photo of Calista Flockhart (this was peak Ally McBeal -- I'm kind of surprised they're haven't tried to reboot it yet).

As I've said before, we covered awards shows because it gave the appearance of more realtime coverage than we actually did, since we could prepare photos based on the nominees, then it was a quick swap until the Photo folks could grab something off the wires.

After a few years of this, it had a side effect of making me want to never, ever watch a live awards show again (though I remember this is the one where co-host Jenna Elfman accidentally said "New York Shitty" on the mic and had to pass it off as a jokey, tipsy word-slurring:

For the first update, we went with Kristen Johnston, who took best supporting comedy actress for her work on Third Rock from the Sun:

For a later update, we went back to Calista Flockhart (even though she didn't win) for the post-show followup:

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 11, 1999 -- Just Another Day, with New Car Closeouts

September 11, 1999: 20 years ago, Sept. 11 was just another day (a Saturday). The lead feature was for year-end car closeouts, featuring the same red Corvette stock photo we used all the time:

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 10, 1999 -- Weekend Weather; Emmy Preview; 250 Hours FREE!

September 10, 1999: The first full day of the tweaked design featured a generic weekend fun promo, focusing on the ever-fun weather. The My News headlines reference a flareup in the 1999 East Timor crisis, as well as Israel transferring more of the West Bank to the Palestinians.

In other important news, though, check out Try AOL Now promo in the right column -- previously at 100 hours free, it was bumped up to 250 hours. And it won't be the last time that number goes up:

For the PM update, we featured a photo of Jenna Elfman (she was kind of the It Girl of the moment thanks to Dharma & Greg) in an Emmy preview (she'd be hosting):

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 9, 1999 -- Farefinder, Sega Dreamcast's Sonic, and Going Horizontal

September 9, 1999: Big (well, medium-sized) changes were afoot, though not until the afternoon. For the AM, we went with a generic airliner stock photo supporting an equally generic travel promo:

For the PM update... well, the top promo section didn't change much, with the Sonic the Hedgehog photo for a Games article about Sega Dreamcast. [Edit: So I didn't realize until just now that it was the actual Dreamcast launch. In my defense, the promo is so low-key that it was easy to miss.]

However, below the search bar (and note the snazzy little negative space arrow on the left side), we shifted from the five equal-width column layout, to a horizontally oriented one with a wide Web Centers listing, and two remaining columns (that didn't match up with the columns above, ugh) for Shop@AOL and AOL NetFind:

This had the affect of shortening the page (which was the whole point of the exercise); it also let us expose more of the Web Center subcategories and shortcuts (which previously had their own column). As to the community products, some of them made it into the Daily Essentials lineup (we created some extra space by moving the stock quote search box into the Web Centers column... it's just kind of floating there randomly) though others didn't.

It also means that the bottom of the page is once again visible on a single-page screenshot. Until we started adding crap to it again...

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 8, 1999 -- AIM 3.0; Build a Web Page With Kordell Stewart?

September 8, 1999: We started Wednesday with another AIM 3.0 promo. And remember that note from yesterday about how the AOL 4.0 ad jackpot wasn't necessarily so, because it was from the preview server? Well, this one is from the live page.

The My News headlines look at the Waco siege probe; also "Bradley Outlines Campaign" refers to the presidential campaign of former Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ); he'd drop out in March to Al Gore:

For the PM update, we went with another promo for AOL members to build Fan Pages, though there are two things about this promo (one slightly notable, the other less so):

1. We don't make any mention of a fan pages contest, unlike the one from just a few short days before
2. We promote the feature using the name and likeness of Kordell Stewart. Did AOL have a licensing deal with him and the NFL, or did we just use his info? I want to say I hope so, because it's in no way an editorial use of his pic. (I do note, though, that in 2019 web advertising, people seem to play a lot faster and looser with celeb likenesses, especially using TV and movie stills. Remember, just because it's in a meme, doesn't mean you can use it):

Also, if anyone is reading to the bottom of this (doubtful), shit's about to get real 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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 7, 1999 -- Get a New Job; Get Out of Debt

September 7, 1999: For the post-Labor Day return, we led with a 5-step job finder, job listings, and a salary calculator, using cash stock art (the AOL 4.0 jackpot is still showing, but this is just a preview server page so it might not have been what live users saw):

For the PM update (only have this partial preview), we went with a get out of debt personal finance promo, switching from cash to credit:

[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.]

#20YearsAgoOnAOLcom: Sept. 6, 1999 -- Labor Day, What's That? Get AIM 3.0!

September 6, 1999: For Labor Day 1999, we didn't even bother acknowledging the holiday, instead just using the standard AIM tout for downloading/upgrading to AIM 3.0:

[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.]