Sometime in February 2026, I stumbled across this Reddit thread. I was blown away that someone remembered the site — and even more blown away that I was nearly doxxed in the process (thanks, doppelganger). I don't really do Reddit, so I tried to join and add some context, but got automodded into oblivion. Not worth it.
Anyway, I had just started doors98.com after the holidays — what started as a laugh and a bit of end-of-year nostalgia, a throwback to the old web and simpler times. But this got me wondering. I still had so many of the original assets from that era. Some were unfortunately lost forever due to hasty WS_FTP transfers of binary files in ASCII mode, but I still had plenty. That sent me down a rabbit hole of early internet archaeology. I found numerous sites on the Wayback Machine I used to lurk — check them out in the 'Murica Web bookmarks on the desktop! I was also able to restore some old Final Fantasy RPG Maker 2000 games — head to the Begin Menu on the desktop to check those out. As for the people I followed back in those days — some made it, some crossed over with the game makers, and others had untimely deaths.
Being more versed in AI these days, I decided to see if I could restore the old forums from our Ikonboard backup. To my amazement, I was able to extract most of the saved data — and what you see here is the result. Going through the threads, I remembered so many things I had completely forgotten. I also discovered some posts that weren’t exactly wise in hindsight — seriously guys, a thread to share your full location, real name, and birthdate? Or a video about my socks? I still have it, but let’s not go there. Those had to be redacted. Regardless, in about two days I was able to restore this forum to what you see today.
If you stumbled across this and were around in the early 2000s, I hope you enjoy this frozen slice of history — a snapshot of how people actually communicated in an online community back then. And if you were one of the people who posted here, welcome back. Enjoy the memories. You can drop me a line in the guestbook on the desktop.