[ionvoe3w]

I recall kids who weren't computer geniuses would still start websites about their hobbies / interests using geocities or tripod. They have wysiwyg editors that were easy.

But of course, just having access to computers and the internet wasn't a given for many families

[vvanders]

Yup, Dreamweaver and Frontpage were very much a thing in that era. Plenty of WYSIWYG options existed.

[ajmurmann]

Didn't MS Word even have a "export as HTML" option? I feel like I might have used that initially to build the first version of my CounterStrike clan's website.

[astura]

They did.

IIRC this site was made in Word: https://web.archive.org/web/20060414015434/http://easternsho... (on mobile, can't look at source to verify)

[Aardwolf]

Hmm, and it renders better on mobile than some modern actual "mobile" websites

it allows to zoom to perfectly readable size, no half screen taken by "use the app" with tiny close button, no social share floaters overlapping part of the text, no functionality removed for mobile, ...

[midgetjones]

Yep, good old `<meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 9">`

[adventured]

I knew a lot of people in school and work places that were using Netscape's built-in WYSIWYG editor, Composer. They couldn't build a site in raw HTML to save their life otherwise, but they could throw something basic together in Composer. Before that, if I'm not mistaken, Navigator 3 had some kind of simple page editor with it as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Composer

[khedoros1]

Yep. I built a page using a WYSIWYG editor sometime around 1995-1996, when I was in grade school. I knew the concept of nested HTML tags, but couldn't have written a page by hand (and I didn't have anyone to guide me).

A couple of years later, I re"designed" it. Both of them were about as cheesy as you'd expect a preteen's Star Trek fan page to be.

[dev360]

You forgot hotdog professional. Hated how frontpage mangled the code!!

[crtasm]

That's brought back some memories for me! This is the only screenshot I could find from a brief search: https://archive.org/details/tucows_194462_HotDog_Professiona...