It was so simple, anyone who wanted to could create a free account [on Geocities, Tripod, FortuneCities, or Freeservers and build a website to share their hobbies and ideas.

The web was more about browsing and exploration.

It is worth remembering a website [...] can also be art. The web is also a creative and cultural space that [can be Free from convention defined by commercial product design and marketing].

If the commercial web is "industrial", you could say that the small web is "artisanal". One is not better than the other. They serve different needs and both can co-exist in an open web.

There is a lot of old good website, internet archive links and examples

To quote https://rhizome.org/editorial/2015/nov/30/oldweb-today/

Today's web browsers want to be invisible, merging with the visual environment of the desktop in an effort to convince users to treat "the cloud" as just an extension of their hard drive. In the 1990s, browser design took nearly the opposite approach, using iconography associated with travel to convey the feeling of going on a journey.

The web was "browsed", discovered by neighborhoods or [webrings], a circular collections of websites around a topic or a theme. To get orders and efficiency, one shared web directories such as the DMOZ open-directory project. One would simply go to a website and discover others on a page such as Retro Stuff

There are today gatekeepers keeping the attention only on some platforms: Facebook, LinkedIn. I would add TikTok now.

The commercial web emerged by the 2000s. Today's web is mostly commercial now. They invented words like "native advertising" and "sponsored content". They brought a completely different set of priorities: engage their audience, convert them and retain them for as long as possible.

Then came the product-oriented website and its sanitisation: it is polished, follows conventions and is optimised for efficiency. Modern websites are designed to direct user behavior towards certain goals: a purchase, a click, a share or a sign-up.

But the web remains and is also a creative space. the web is really a lot simpler than that. You really only need two things: a web host and HTML (and basic CSS for formatting).

If the commercial web is "industrial", you could say that the small web is "artisanal". One is not better than the other. They serve different needs and both can co-exist in an open web.

There are ways to discover it. Here some highlights from the past:

• Internet Archive, which, thanks to the 439 billion web pages saved since the mid 90s, lets you travel back in time and see how a website looked in the past.
• Restorativland, a "restored visual gallery of the archived Geocities sites, sorted by neighborhood".

and other highlights from the present:

• the search engine Wiby.me: for old-school, interesting and informative webpages, with a useful "surprise me" button that takes you to a random result.
• the Neocities.org is a modern web host that lets anyone create a basic website for free and be a part of a community where you can follow other webmasters.
• Curlie is "the largest human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a passionate, global community of volunteer editors".

Some websites presented:

A fan-made site from 1998 about comedy duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Norville Hardy. Why? The siteinfo states "Why not!!!" - https://geocities.restorativland.org/Hollywood/Studio/5352/index.html

A student built the website Fractal Explorer to explore fractals. It includes very clear explanations, image galleries and step-by-step guided tours - https://web.archive.org/web/20020223163039fw_/http://www.geocities.com/fabioc/

The National Coca-Cola Bottle Clearing House lists all bootles since the 70s

NetHistory an informal history of BITNET (before internet) and the Internet - https://web.archive.org/web/20010516205238/http://nethistory.dumbentia.com/

Joan stark's ASCII Art Gallery - https://web.archive.org/web/20010420182629/http://www.geocities.com/spunk1111/indexjava.htm

European butterflies since 1998. Some pages such as Agrodiaetus ainsae have more informations than the dedicated wikipedia page.

The webtender since 1995, features over 6000 recipes, a handbook with information on bar glassware, tools, measurements and ingredients, a forum, a wiki and even lets you search for recipes based on what you have in your bar - https://www.webtender.com/info/

Disstant Skies is a fansite about the RPG game Crystalis - https://distantskies.neocities.org/

and you can build your own presence on the web!
Neocities.org allow to make a file and publish it with a free account. Spending hours browsing the websites made by passionates

There is also bear.blog dedicated for blogs.

The discussion follows on HackerNews https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23326329