The first website was created in August 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, a European nuclear research agency. Berners-Lee's WorldWideWeb browser became publicly available the same month. By the end of 1992, there were ten websites.[1] The World Wide Web began to enter everyday use in 1993, helping to grow the number of websites to 130 by the end of the year.[2] In 1994, websites for the general public became available.[2] By the end of 1994, the total number of websites was 2,278, including several notable websites and many precursors of today's most popular services.[1]
By the end of 1995, the number of websites had expanded significantly, with some 23,500 sites.[1] Thus, this list of websites founded before 1995 covers the early innovators. Of the 2,879 websites established before 1995, those listed here meet one or more of the following:
They still exist (albeit in some cases with different names).
Near the end of 1992, there were fifty to sixty websites, according to a robot web crawl by Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica researcher Guido van Rossum.[9] The following list is in chronological order.
Nikhef
Nikhef, the Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics, launched the third website in the world in February 1992.[10][11] It was originally at nic.nikhef.nl.
Fermilab, a high-energy physics laboratory in Illinois, created fnal.gov, the second or third website in the United States.[13] It was established in June 1992.[13]
SunSITE
SunSITE (Sun Software, Information & Technology Exchange) started in 1992 as an FTP service and was hosted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[14] It was a comprehensive archiving project that was a collaboration between Sun Microsystems Computer Corporation and the Office of Information Technology at the University of North Carolina.[14]
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University Department of Computer and Information Science developed early gateway programs and undertook the mass conversion of existing documents, including the main page for RFCs, TeXinfo, UNIX, and the Usenet.
IN2P3
The French National Institute for Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics (IN2P3) launched its website at Centre de Calcul in 1992.[10]
Initially hosted as a .nb.ca domain, youngmonkey showcased music and writing projects and DOS and Amiga software.[17] It also included articles, technical information, and other resources for synthesizer enthusiasts and developers. It was home to what was likely the first online store using dial-upcredit card verification; and the first web streaming video distribution, and pay-per-view online video system. It came online at some point between 1991 and 1992. It moved to www.youngmonkey.ca in April 1995.
simianpress
simianpress was a manifestation of youngmonkey. It was a showcase for graphic design and publishing projects, likely offering the first professional website design. It merged with youngmonkey in 1995.[citation needed]
CBSS
CBSS, Inc. was a network consulting firm in Houston, Texas that came online in late 1992. The Website is no longer maintained but still visible at www.cbss.com.[18][better source needed]
Bob Cherr launched the Bluegrass Music News and Information, the first music-based website, on September 9, 1992.[21][17] Its name changed to Banjo on September 30, 1992, and Cybergrass in 1995.[22] Its content was bluegrass music, lyrics, and chords. It was hosted on the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center vax, parcvax.xerox.com. It now resides at www.cybergrass.com.[23]
1993 websites
By the end of 1993, there were 623 websites, according to a study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Matthew Gray.[24] The following list of websites established in 1993 is in alphabetical order.
ALIWEB
ALIWEB (Archie Like Indexing for the WEB) was the first search engine created for the Web.[25] It was announced in November 1993 by its developer Martijn Koster but was relatively short-lived.[26][25]
Bloomberg.com
Bloomberg.com is a financial portal with information on markets, currency conversion, news and events, and Bloomberg Terminal subscriptions.[27]
Peter Flynn from University College Cork (UCC) saw Tim Berners-Lee demonstrating the Web at a RARE WG3 meeting. He tasked Berners-Lee with installing software at UCC for the CURIA project, now known as Corpus of Electronic Texts.[29]
Électricité de France, the French utility company, had one of the first industrial websites in Europe. It started as the website of the company's research and development division (R&D) and was implemented by engineers Sylvain Langlois, Emmanuel Poiret, and Daniel Glazman. They did not have approval for the site and had to restart the server by connecting to RENATER through a 155Mb link, every time IT shut it down. Electricité de France's R&D later submitted patches to CERN httpd and was active in Web standardization.[citation needed]
The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) was founded in 1990 by participants in the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.[36]IMDb was launched on the web in late 1993 and was initially hosted by the computer science department of Cardiff University in Wales.[37][38][39]
After a start as an anonymous FTP-based art gallery and collaborative collective, The OTIS Project (later SITO) moved to the web in January 1993.[54] This artist collaborative was hosted by SunSITE.[55][54] It remains at sito.org/.
MTVVJAdam Curry registered the music television network's domain in 1993 and personally ran an unofficial site.[11] Later, MTV sued Curry over the rights to the domain.[11] The corporate website is still live at www.mtv.com/
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone or NTT (WWW Servers in Japan (日本のホームページ, Nihon no houmu peiji, lit. "Home Pages in Japan") was the most famous web page in Japan in the mid-1990s.[59] The page launched in December 1993.[60] It still has a website at group.ntt/en
PARC Researcher was created by PARC researcher, Steve Putz, who tied an existing map viewing program to the Web. It is now defunct.[61]
photo.net
Philip Greenspun designed and founded photo.net, an online photography resource and community.[62] Later, Greenspun released the software behind photo.net, the ArsDigita Community System, as a free open-source toolkit for building community websites.[63]
By mid-1994, there were 2,738 websites, according to a study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Matthew Gray.[24] By the end of 1994, there were more than 10,000 websites. The following selected list of websites is in alphabetical order.
ALIWEB
ALIWEB, an acronym for Archie Like Indexing for the Web, was the first web search engine.[78] It was announced in November 1993 by Martijn Koster and went online in May 1994.[78][26]
A group of marketing professors created a website for the American Marketing Association professional association in 1994. The website offered general marketing news for marketers and marketing professors. Approximately a year later, the site was moved to www.ama.org, where it remains.[80]
Lile Elam created Art.Net or Art on the Net in June 1994 to showcase the artwork of San Francisco Bay Area artists as well as international artists.[citation needed] It offered free linkage and hosted extensive links to other artists' sites. This is not to be confused with Artnet, a publicly tradedart market website based in New York City.
Art Crimes
Susan Farrell of the Art Crimes Gallery launched the website Art Crimes in September 1994. It was the first graffiti art website and originally served as an archive of photos from around the world. It became an important academic resource as well as a thriving online community.[82] Its early content was moved to the Graffiti Archives in August 2015.[83]
The Amazing FishCam
Lou Montulli created The Amazing FishCam which provided a continuous web feed of an aquarium in the Netscape headquarters, via a webcam.[84] This was the second live camera broadcast on the Web.[85] According to a contemporaneous article by The Economist, "In its audacious uselessness—and that of thousands of ego trips like it—lie the seeds of the Internet revolution." It went offline in the summer of 2007, showing an empty tank on the website. It was later moved to a new site showing Montulli's new tank at the offices of Zetta, but has since ceased operations.
Automatic Complaint-Letter Generator
Scott Pakin created the Automatic Complaint-Letter Generator in April 1994. The site allows users to specify the name of the individual or company that the complaint is directed toward, as well as the number of paragraphs the complaint will have. After submitting the data, the computer generates sentences that are composed of arbitrary verbs, nouns, and adjectives. This website is still active at www.pakin.org/complaint.[86][87][88]
The Barney Fun Page
An early online game or meme, The Barney Fun Page allows users to attack a crude drawing of Barney the Dinosaur with icons representing a knife, gun, and other weapons. Hosted originally on a University of Alberta[89] computer system in October 1994, it moved to impressive.net in 1996, where it is still available. It is an example of anti-Barney humor.
BBC Online
BBC Online started as BBCi in April 1994 with some regional information and content from the Open University Production Centre (OUPC). By September, it launched the first commercial service, providing transcription services via an FTP server. At its peak, it had 122 accounts, including FBI offices from around the world, taking daily updates from twelve feeds. It is still active at bbc.com.[90][91]
Buzzweb.com was the earliest website for alternative music artists and news. It was created by A. Joi Brown and Matthew Brown between 1993 and 1994. They registered the website with Network Solutions in 1993.[citation needed]
CitySites, the first "City Site" web development company, created this website in 1994 to advertise businesses and review music and art events in the San Francisco Bay Area. CitySites was featured in Interactive Week Magazine in 1997. Founder Darrow Boggiano still operates CitySites.[101][102]
Classical MIDI Archives
Pierre R. Schwob founded Classical MIDI Archives in 1994 as an online digital music archive featuring MIDI sequences of classical music for free.[103] It became Classical Archives in August 2000 and now offers commercial label recordings for downloading and streaming.[103] It is still active at www.classicalarchives.com/
Cool Site of the Day
Webdesigner Glenn Davis created Cool Site of the Day in August 1994, featuring his daily pick of a website.[94][104][105] Its Cool Site of the Year Award, also known as the Webby Awards, became a coveted prize for Silicon Alley start-ups.[104] Davis disaffiliated with the site in November 1995 and it went dormant in February 2020.
Cybersell
Cybersell was the first commercial advertising service that focused on using spam. It came online as sell.com. It was set up by Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, notorious for spamming Usenet newsgroups earlier that year.[106][107][108] It is no longer active.
CORDIS
CORDIS, an anacronym for the Community Research & Development Information Service, was the European Commission's first permanent website. Launched on ESPRIT day in November 1994 as www.cordis.lu, it provided a repository of EU-funded research projects.[109] It is still online at cordis.europa.eu/.
e-democracy went online in 1994 to help civic organizations in Minnesota would distribute information online and then hold the first online debates ever for US Gubernatorial and Senatorial candidates in October 1994.[112]
Einet Galaxy
Einet Galaxy was one of the first searchable web catalogs.[25] It was created at the Einet Division of the MCC Research Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin and went online in January 1994.[113] It passed through several commercial owners and is now run by Logika Corporation as gallexy.einet.
FolkBook: An Online Acoustic Music Establishment was a fansite dedicated to documenting folk music and folk musicians. It operated at Ohio State University at web.cgrg.ohio-state.edu/folkbook/ from September 1, 1994, until it went offline on March 7, 1998. After that, it was redirected to a similar site, folkmusic dot org, which still exists, but has not been updated since 2002.[115]
Lawinfo is an early legal website and provides public access to pre-qualified, pre-screened attorneys, and free legal resources.[129] It is still live at www.lawinfo.com/.[130]
Legislative Information System
Virginia's Legislative Information System (LIS) was developed by the Division of Legislative Automated Systems (dlas) and was launched at leg1.state.va.us. It remains active as lis.virginia.gov but is also viewable in its original format at LIS Classic.[131][better source needed]
Megadeth, Arizona was the website for the band Megadeth and was also the first website for a band.[139][140][141] It was created by Robin Sloan Bechtel of Capitol Records as a tie-in to a record promotion and featured news updates and a chatroom.[11] Later, when Capitol wanted to remove the website, Bechtel fought conventional wisdom that promotions were short-lived and helped establish the concept on ongoing marketing sites.[11]
Microsoft
An early corporate site for Microsoft was launched in 1994.[142]
Netrek is one of the first sites dedicated to multi-user video-game programming on the Internet. It was maintained at obsidian.math.Arizona.edu and is now defunct.[153]
Launching on August 31, 1994, Purple.com is the first known single-serving site. It consisted of just a purple background.[159][160] It was defunct by November 2017.
The website Sex.com was the subject of a twelve-year legal battle that established parameters of domain ownership.[167]
The Skeptic's Dictionary
The Skeptic's Dictionary at /www.skepdic.com/ was launched in 1994 and is still active. It features definitions, arguments, and essays on topics ranging from acupuncture to zombies.
Sirius Connections was the first Internet service provider in the San Francisco Bay Area.[169] Its owner, Arman Kahalili, gave novice website creators technical assistance to get them started on-site building and expanding code that was used in later versions of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and other web technology.[170]
Snopes, the fact-checking website, was created by David and Barbara Mikkelson in 1994. It was an early online encyclopedia focused on urban legends and rumors.[36]
New South Network Service developed the first sports news site for cycling magazine VeloNews. It was originally called VeloNews Tour de France and was created to cover the Tour de France from June 30 to July 30, 1994.[175]
VirtuMall
Dan Housman and Ron Schmelzer created VirtuMall in 1994. when they were fraternity brothers and roommates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[176] This website pioneered shopping cart technology and credit card payments sent via fax to mail order catalogs. It was also the first pooled-traffic site, helping foster standards for security. One of the first virtual "tenants" was Hickory Farms.[177] The website's name changed to ChannelWave and was sold to Quick Commerce sometime after 1998.[176]
WWW Useless Pages
Paul Phillips founded WWW Useless Pages or The Unless Pages in 1994.[178] It is perhaps the first site that showcased bad or eccentric websites and helped distribute early minor Internet memes and phenomena. It is now defunct.
Webmedia is a London-based website design company founded by Steve Bowbrick and Ivan Pope. The domain name webmedia.com was registered on October 27, 1994. The website was launched in November 1994.[180]
The World-Wide Web Worm (WWWW) was one of the first search engines for the World-Wide Web. It was created by Oliver McBryan at the University of Colorado and was announced in March 1994.[181]
XrayXcellence
XrayXcellence.dentistry.dal.ca (also viewed at bpass.dentistry.dal.ca) was created by Barry Pass, PhD, DDS, in June 1994, while he was a faculty member at Dalhousie University's School of Dentistry, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The website was active for approximately 6 years and provided educational and scholarly information and website links for dentistry, radiology and health physics. The site was accessed almost one-half million times, from every Internet serviced country, during the 5 years since its creation in 1994. In response to this web site on the WorldWideWeb - a paradigm shift in the dissemination of scholarly information - hundreds of global email inquiries every year were received from clinicians, scientists, students and the lay public with dental and medical questions. Frequently, medical questions resulted in appropriate referrals.
A website was created by Justin Paulson from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1994 to provide information on the conflict in the Chiapas region between the Mexican government and the Zapatista forces primarily in English[183] but later started posting information in Spanish at www.ezln.org.[184] The Zapatistas usage of the internet made them among the first in the world to use the internet for activism purposes.[185]
^Stratton, Erik. "A Brief History of Webcomics". The Rutgers Review, Vol. 40, Issue 1, Page 15
^Hans Boordahl. "Where the Buffalo Roam – First Comic on the Internet". Where The Buffalo Roam. Retrieved November 14, 2010. In 1991, Where the Buffalo Roam become the Internet's first regularly updated comic strip, when it was scanned and posted daily to its own USENET newsgroup, which still can be found in dusty corners of the Internet at alt.comics.buffalo-roam. Since then, WTBR has migrated from USENET to the Web. Alas, we cannot claim the title of 'first Webcomic' – that distinction belongs to 'Dr. Fun'.
^"alliedartists.com" & "alliedartists.net, both .com and .net URLs were registered in 1993, but no website was launched until 1994. The corporation used .com for its corporate website & .net for its email, switching from a late eighties CompuServe webmail server.
^Broadhead, Jim Carroll, Rick (1994). Canadian Internet handbook (1994 ed.). Scarborough, Ont.: Prentice Hall Canada. ISBN9780133043952.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Trent, Judith S.; Friedenberg, Robert V.; Denton, Robert E. (2011). Political Campaign Communication: Principles and Practices (7 ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. p. 348. ISBN9781442206717. In 1993, Ted Kennedy became the first U.S. senator to have a website, while, in 1994 Dianne Feinstein established the first candidate website.
^Williams, RW (1994). "The Portable Dictionary of the Mouse Genome: a personal database for gene mapping and molecular biology". Mammalian Genome. 5 (6): 372–5. doi:10.1007/bf00356557. PMID8043953. S2CID655396.
^Chesler, EJ; Lu, L; Shou, S; Qu, Y; Gu, J; Wang, J; Hsu, HC; Mountz, JD; et al. (2005). "Complex trait analysis of gene expression uncovers polygenic and pleiotropic networks that modulate nervous system function". Nature Genetics. 37 (3): 233–42. doi:10.1038/ng1518. PMID15711545. S2CID13189340.
^Bystrykh, L; Weersing, E; Dontje, B; Sutton, S; Pletcher, MT; Wiltshire, T; Su, AI; Vellenga, E; et al. (2005). "Uncovering regulatory pathways that affect hematopoietic stem cell function using 'genetical genomics'". Nature Genetics. 37 (3): 225–32. doi:10.1038/ng1497. PMID15711547. S2CID5622506.
^"History". Megadeth.com. Megadeth. Archived from the original on 6 September 2013. Retrieved 3 March 2015. Halloween, New website Megadeth Arizona is launched.
^Pasbani, Robert (8 October 2013). "Dave Mustaine Invented The Internet". Metal Injection. Retrieved 3 March 2015. If you remember back: October 31, 1994, we were the first band to have a website.
^Tong, Jingrong (2022). Journalism in the Data Age. SAGE Publications. ISBN9781529765144 – via Google Books. In the UK, The Daily Telegraph had the first British newspaper website (www.telegraph.co.uk) in 1994
^"The Web, At the Creation". United States Department of State (Archived). November 2014. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
^Rossi, Federico M. (2023). The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Social Movements. Oxford University Press. p. 698. ISBN9780190870362 – via Google Books. It is worthwhile to note that much of the research on Latin American digital activism focuses on movements initiated post-Arab Spring, despite the fact that the Mexican Zapatista resistance in 1994 and its use of the internet to spread communiques and videos marked one of the world's first examples of online activism (Castells 2004).