(My first masthead, created 3/7/1996)
THIRTY YEARS ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB
by Jonah Begone
March 2026
It has now been thirty years since I first created JonahWorld!
This being 2026 and the Dawn of the AI Era, I had ChatGPT read my twenty year article from 2016 and asked, "How unique is JonahWorld!, created in March 1996? How many other continuously-updated websites are there on the World Wide Web that are as old?" (Rather than my doing the research, let AI do it, right?) Here is what it returned:
ChatGPT: Here is what we do know about how unique JonahWorld! is, and about how many other long-running websites are as old and still being updated in 2026.
First, it is important to define what "continuously updated" means in the context of the Web. Generally, this refers to a site that was launched early in Web history - often in the 1990s - remains online today, and is still actively updated with new content rather than simply sitting unmodified for decades. That definition narrows the field considerably. There are many old websites that still load, but far fewer that continue to grow.
Very few personal or niche sites share that kind of longevity. There are early personal pages from the mid-1990s that remain online, often as preserved mirrors or as the same content posted nearly thirty years ago. However, many of these have not been updated in years or even decades. Some function as static snapshots rather than active publishing sites. Others were abandoned and survive only because of archival projects or the efforts of hobbyists who maintain historical mirrors.
There are, of course, major long-standing web presences that demonstrate how old a website can be. The site at CERN, specifically info.cern.ch, hosted the very first web page in 1990-1991. Today it exists as a historical artifact rather than as an actively-updated publication. Symbolics holds the distinction of having the oldest registered .com domain, dating to 1985, and remains active. IMDb began in the early 1990s and continues to update content regularly, though it has long since become a large commercial enterprise. These examples show impressive longevity, but they are institutional or corporate sites rather than individually maintained hobby pages.
There are rare examples of independently-updated sites that more closely resemble JonahWorld! One example is Blue's News (bluesnews.com), founded in 1996 and still publishing content nearly thirty years later. It maintains thousands of posts and continues regular updates. Sites like this are closer in spirit -persistent, independent, and voice-driven - but they are very uncommon when compared to the vast number of old websites that once existed.
The broader picture makes the distinction clearer. There are many old domains still online, some dating back to the 1980s and 1990s. Most, however, are corporate, institutional, or maintained for historical reasons. Numerous early personal pages from the Netscape and GeoCities era survive as digital ghosts, preserved by archives but no longer updated. Those that were created before 2000 and are still actively maintained by a single individual or small team are exceedingly rare.
So how unique is JonahWorld!?
In the grand timeline of the web, several of its characteristics stand out. It was created in 1996, very early in Web history. It remains online thirty years later. It continues to be updated with new content. And it is personal and individually maintained rather than institutional. That combination is unusual.
There are certainly websites older than JonahWorld!, but very few of them are still actively updated by their original creator in 2026. Many early sites either stopped being updated, transformed into something entirely different, or are now maintained by organizations rather than individuals.
If tens of thousands of websites were created in the late 1990s, only a tiny fraction have been continuously updated for thirty years. The number of active, independently maintained hobby or personal sites from that era is likely very small - perhaps only a few dozen worldwide. Within that small group, JonahWorld! likely ranks among the longest-running individually updated personal websites still online.
JonahWorld! is not merely old. It continues to grow while having survived every major shift in the web's evolution. That persistence - quiet, steady, and personal - is what makes it both unusual and historically interesting.
It appears that the question, "How many websites are as old as JonahWorld!" is not an easy question to answer due to the large and complex nature of the Internet. I remember trying to figure that out five and ten years ago and realizing that an answer may be impossible to arrive at. There are domain age checkers, but JonahWorld! was originally created on Geocities then moved over to wesclark.com when I brought that up in 2002 - so those won't help. And the original URL - www.geocities.com/SoHo/1422 - was only archived first at archive.org on January 16, 1999. The letters (emails) page has a dated email only back to March 18, 1998. So if I assert that JonahWorld! was first brought online in March 1996, if somebody said "Prove it," I couldn't - except for the date of the masthead above.
From 2007 to 2025, the last eighteen years, I have updated the site 291 times for an average of 15 times a year. That's "continuously updated," isn't it?
Well, whatever. I shall continue to update this web site because, as they say, "it's what I do." I am now 69 years old. Perhaps I'll be around for another ten or twenty years, perhaps not. Perhaps I can get AI to maintain and ghoulishly update it after I'm dead, just for kicks...
Feeling completely lazy at one point, I fed ChatGPT my 20th anniversary piece and told it, "Write me a 30th anniversary piece." Here is that computer-generated literary gem:
March 2026
It has now been thirty years since JonahWorld! first appeared on the World Wide Web, blinking into existence in that cheerful, chaotic frontier we used to call "cyberspace." When I wrote the twenty-year anniversary piece in 2016, I wondered how long this would go on.
Well... apparently, at least ten more years.
In 1996, putting up a personal website required a certain amount of stubbornness and a willingness to learn just enough HTML to be dangerous. There were no templates, no drag-and-drop builders, no "content management systems." You opened Notepad, typed angle brackets by hand, saved the file, and hoped you didn't forget to close something important. If you did, the whole page exploded in a most educational way.
JonahWorld! was born into that world.
Its first home on Geocities is long gone, as noted in my 2016 reflection. So are many of its contemporaries. Social media rose, conquered, fragmented, and monetized. Entire platforms appeared, dominated, and quietly evaporated. The web professionalized. It optimized. It tracked. It targeted. It learned things about you that you did not know about yourself.
JonahWorld! did none of those things.
It still does not.
If anything, it is even more defiantly 1990s than before. The 2012 widening of the layout to accommodate modern monitors remains the last major architectural innovation. I have resisted the siren call of responsive design. If you wish to view JonahWorld! on a device the size of a playing card, you are welcome to try - but I recommend a desktop or laptop.
When I asked in 2016 whether this might be one of the oldest continuously updated websites, I never did get an authoritative answer. Guinness still does not appear to keep a category for "Most Stubborn Personal Homepage." Perhaps they should. I would submit an application, though I suspect the paperwork would require more technical documentation than the site itself.
Over the decades, my interests have shifted. The reenacting years are now firmly historical - which seems appropriate. The gear was sold long ago. Other projects have come and gone. Book were written. Life has moved forward in the steady, unflashy way that real life does.
And through it all, I kept adding content.
That, more than anything else, may be the explanation for JonahWorld!'s survival. It was never built to chase trends. It was built to accumulate thoughts. There is no business model. There are no ads. There is no algorithm deciding what you should see next. There is only a growing archive of things that caught my attention over three decades.
In 2006, I congratulated myself on ten years.
In 2016, I marveled at twenty.
In 2026, thirty feels... substantial.
Not in a technological sense. Thirty years in technology is the equivalent of several geological eras. But in human terms, it represents persistence. A long habit of sitting down, typing something, and uploading it to a corner of the Internet that refuses to disappear.
Back in January 1999, archive.org captured JonahWorld! in its primitive glory. The differences between that snapshot and today are modest. More pages. More words. Slightly wider margins. But the spirit is intact.
Which is, I suppose, the point.
The web has changed almost beyond recognition since 1996. JonahWorld! has not. It remains a hand-built artifact from an earlier age - still functional, still standing, and still accumulating text.
Will there be a forty-year anniversary piece?
Check back in 2036.
I plan to keep adding content.
More Fun: I let Sora re-do the Charles W. Reed Jonah drawings. The results are rather surprising.
