20 hours ago
- Viaweb's 1998 website had very small pages due to smaller screens, with display text often rendered as images because browsers lacked fonts and antialiasing.
- The Viaweb and Y Combinator logos share a red circle design as an inside joke.
- Robert Morris (Rtm) avoided publicity after the Worm incident, using the pseudonym 'John McArtyem' on the site.
- Trevor Blackwell went from impecunious grad student to millionaire PhD when the acquisition closed, celebrated with a press release and drawing.
- A fake ringer 'Trevino Bagwell' was inserted in the web designer directory to deter competitors from spamming.
- Viaweb paid a PR firm $16,000 per month for press mentions; reporters liked the company.
- SEO advice listed 7 important search engines (Yahoo, AltaVista, etc.), notably missing Google, which was incorporated that September.
- Online transactions were supported via Cybercash, but merchants were advised to process orders manually due to poor service.
- The site funneled visitors to a test drive, and used 'cgi-bin' in dynamic URLs to mislead competitors about how the software worked.
- Frederick's of Hollywood was a notable user; its bandwidth cost matched the $300/month flat fee.
- Servers were in Trevor's office (dubbed the 'Hot Tub'), connected via two T1 lines, without AWS or colocation.
- The template language RTML (named after Rtm) was Common Lisp augmented with macros, hidden under a structure editor.
- Version numbers were made up for the trade press; the site was built using Viaweb's own software.
- In 1997, Viaweb released Shopfind, a general-purpose shopping search engine with a programmable crawler.