My archive.org vs Geocities-style clone dilemma for a 1999 fan site

I spent last month rebuilding my old Tori Amos fan page, the one I made in 1999 with a black background and animated flames. The problem was I had to pick between just linking to the preserved copy on archive.org or hand-coding the whole thing from scratch in a GeoCities-style clone like Neocities. Archive.org had the authentic broken frames and midi files, but it also had my cringe guestbook with my real email and 14-year-old rants. I went with Neocities and rebuilt all 47 pages over three weekends, which meant rewriting every hit counter and the visitor tally that said 12,003 after I faked the numbers. It took way longer than I thought, and now I'm stuck because the clone feels fake without the original loading lag and the 'under construction' banners I used to have. Is the real value in the original artifacts or the careful recreation? Has anyone else made this call for their old site, and which side do you land on?

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butler.shane10d ago

Keep the clone, but steal the best stuff from the archive. Grab a couple of those broken frames and the old midi file, dump them on Neocities, and you'll get that nostalgia hit without the cringe. I did the same thing with my old site, and honestly, the recreation ends up being way more fun in the long run.