Paulnoll

I followed the review by Lori B (http://www.sitejabber.com/users/307ceeb6f0bd6f86d*******ddd5a19c4f and sorry about the length of the URL but no doubt the site admins are working on it) to get to this remarkable site.

Waaaaay back, back in the day, Yahoo! Was grey, owning a 28.8k modem was cool, people learned HTML 3 and wrote their websites by hand and computer programs were still computer programs and not Apps. There was also a triumvirate of internet communities - Geocities, Angelfire and Tripod - which opened up the web to people who'd never published anything before and gave them the freedom to expose themselves, so to speak, to the world. Offering not only space, but also simple design and file management tools, these sites enabled anyone with web access to publish something for themselves, largely free of charge.

The result, in many cases, was a hideous explosion of inappropriate colors, unavoidable and unstoppable soundclips, massively oversized images, eye-popping animated banners and an outpouring of more personal information than anyone would want to know. Everyone who could afford a space on Geocities and had the publishing urge, could show the world what their personal lives were really like, what their hobbies were, what their dreams and beliefs were, and, more often than not, how truly bad they were at designing websites. But in there too, were little gems that opened windows into other folks' lives in more gentle, less explosive ways. And this is one of those, a survivor of less hasty times.

Using only the minimum of coding bells and whistles consistent with a neat and tidy site, the Nolls' website is - at least for me - a step back into the days when personal websites were worth visiting, and even recommended by the Yahoo! Directory (which, astonishing though it seems today, was at that time created by real people looking at each submitted website in person). These days, of course, no search engine will bother with this stuff: there's no money in it. You come across it by chance or recommendation, as I did here. And that's a pity.

The Nolls describe their site as their "window on the world", though it would be true to say it's rather more our window, on them. And I won't spoil it for you, but they've been around the block a few times and are still at it, so although you'll get handy homespun tips on seasonal produce here, they'll also show you China and try to encourage you to learn to speak English properly and not mix American and British on the same page (forget it, folks, it's a lost cause).

All the prerequisites of the early days of home websites are here: photos and descriptions of the computer, the cameras used, right down to a photo of their battery charger. The webcam in the backyard. Vacation and family stories. And all presented as plainly as it comes, without a single nod towards any coding development less than ten years old and apparently no temptation to turn this into a blog and lose that 20th century touch.

I realised as I was coming to the end of this review that this is the first genuinely personal, non-profit, non-forum, non-blog website I've visited in years.

What happened? I guess We got awfully self-important back there somewhere, and now everyone's a social commentator. Strangely, society doesn't seem to have changed that much for all the opinions we've blogged, but the Nolls are still here, and let's face it, how many blogs teach you how to can prunes anyway?