Activity

Build an Under Construction Mini Site

Learn basics of HTML and CSS by setting up your own '90s-style under construction page!

What you'll do:

Learn about the history of '90s under construction pages.
Generate a customized, under construction page - while learning about the basics of HTML and CSS!
Host your mini-site on the internet using beginner-friendly web tools.
Link a domain name!

Note: this activity is a work-in-progress and currently works best on desktop!

a decorative under construction gif

a decorative under construction gif

a decorative under construction gif

Extra readings and resources

Here are some cool resources that touch on things in this tutorial!

On 90s web design, internet culture, and Geocities:

One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age is an awesome blog documenting real, archived snapshots of old Geocities websites. They also have a Tumblr.
A blog post about "terrible" 90s Web Trends.
An Ode to Geocities.
An article on the ruins of Geocities.
A collection of under construction gifs taken from Geocities archives, and a Vice article about its creator.
An article about Geocities webrings.

Learning HTML and CSS

w3schools is a tried and trusty resource for learning how HTML and CSS works.
Neocities has links to tutorials as well as its own, interactive tutorial as an intro to HTML - which I SWEAR I discovered right after I created this Under Construction Mini Site one :).
CSS-Tricks posts helpful articles, focusing on CSS and frontend programming!

Other things on under construction pages

A guide to putting up a temporary under construction page when you already have a website in place.