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Webmonkey Closes its Doors
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Sat Feb 28, 2004 11:18 AM
from the thanks-for-all-the-fish dept.
from the thanks-for-all-the-fish dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to Wired, Webmonkey is being closed by TerraLycos after 8 years of teaching practical web building skills and bucking more traditional outlets. They've written some good stuff over the years - in fact, I first understood the significance of XML after reading one of their articles."
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old news (Score:4, Informative)
mmm...
First sign that web based content is unprofitable? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:First sign that web based content is unprofitab (Score:4, Funny)
Of course, those sites are so packed with ads they're functionally unusable, but still...
Parent
Re:First sign that web based content is unprofitab (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:First sign that web based content is unprofitab (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:First sign that web based content is unprofitab (Score:5, Interesting)
RIP, Webmonkey.
Parent
Re:You are insane, and greedy (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you some kind of communist? The Internet is about making profit not some crazy hippie idea of freely exchanging knowledge for the benefit of mankind. Did you use the useless network of networks called the Internet before it began to be commercialized around 1993? I doubt it. There was nothing there except research papers an
Re:You are insane, and greedy (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't tell if you are joking or not, which is scary.
I know you probably are, but I've also known people who think exactly like that.
Heh.
Parent
Re:You are insane, and greedy (Score:5, Funny)
Ahhh.. the days of alt.pics.binary...
cat titties1.uue titties2.uue titties3.uue > titties.uue | uudecode -o titties.jpg
Parent
Spanish company (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Spanish company (Score:5, Informative)
Telefonica is not as big as AT&T, but they are as evil
Parent
Wow! (Score:4, Interesting)
Was a great place to learn and find out that I was not really interested in going past the "hobby level" in that area. Like "one stop shopping" as it were. I suppose there are plenty of other places on the web now to find the same sort of thing.
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Content... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Content... (Score:5, Interesting)
Lycos: You listening?
Parent
Re:Content... (Score:5, Informative)
Internet Explorer --> Add to Favorites --> Properties of favorite --> Make available offline --> download tab --> follow links 6 pages deep (just to be safe) --> Synchronize.
This will give you an offline archive of the entire site, as followed by links on the pages. 6 pages deep might be a little much, but you can also tell it to not go to pages off of this site (that's the default setting). What you get is a (mostly) complete archive of a great site. Now make your own CD.
Parent
Re:Content... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
I think what you meant to say was: (more flags) (Score:5, Informative)
wget -k -p -nh -E -nc -r -l 6 \
hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey
convert links
get prerequisites
don't dns everything
add a
don't clobber (download only once)
recursive
levels 6
slashdot wouldn't let my lines be long enough, so a \ : )
Parent
Re:Content... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Content... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
www.Archive.org (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Content... (Score:5, Insightful)
Webmonkey has a big name, and Terra-Lycos can probably still make ad money off it enough to cover the costs of keeping a server or two running.
At least, that's what I think (and hope)
Parent
Re:Dammit! (Score:4, Informative)
Best of all, it's all Creative Commons licensed, so the articles won't disappear like Webmonkey's soon will.
http://www.help2go.com/
Parent
This is kind of depressing (Score:5, Interesting)
CharlesP
Howabout an archive (Score:5, Interesting)
Simon
Salute! (Score:5, Funny)
At first I thougth they meant Primate Programming (Score:3, Funny)
An Alternative to Webmonkey (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.w3schools.com/
Some stuff seems IE centric - i.e.: some examples only work with IE6 and alternatives aren't suggested.
Mark
Re:An Alternative to Webmonkey (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:An Alternative to Webmonkey (Score:4, Informative)
I agree that w3schools.com is a great place..that's usually where I head to find a quick reference when I need it. There are a number of things I don't like about the site, namely the lack of acknowledging that Mozilla even exists! However, overall, I think that they are a great site.
I also use codewalkers for things php related (aside from the reference chm from php.net, which is AWESOME--anyone have one like that for html/javascript? I would love that).
Parent
Re:An Alternative to Webmonkey (Score:5, Interesting)
That is what makes it so wrong; you have to develop specifically for it in order to make it do anything half-decent.
Parent
Noo! (Score:4, Insightful)
Downloadable archive? (Score:5, Interesting)
How about it guys?
-S
Not Completely Lost... [karma whore warning] (Score:5, Informative)
Hopefully the terralycos lawyers won't ask the wayback to pull the content.
As an aside, I wonder, but am doubtful, about whether alternate licensing could be arranged for the content, perhaps some form of the Creative Commons License [creativecommons.org]??
cleetus
For great design tutorials (Score:5, Informative)
Index DOT CSS [blooberry.com]
And the Complete Idiots Guide to HTML 4. All three of those resources helped me a great deal, plus looking at other sites source code to see how they were made. Some of WMs articles were OK, but it wasn't exactly overly helpful to me.
Man, this really pisses me off (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a jewel of rarity (Score:5, Insightful)
And with the death of Web Techniques magazine... (Score:5, Interesting)
At least SysAdmin [samag.com] (even if pretty clueless [perlmonks.org] sometimes as an entity) and Linux magazine [linux-mag.com] are still worth reading. Both contain enough code to keep the old brain cells churning.
And it was so sad that Web Techniques turned into a load of old wank [webtechniques.com] aimed at PHBs - that, and TJP [tpj.com] were the only ones I happily paid for.
Anyone else got any (reasonably priced) recommendations for geek mags that still keep the ol' brain cells working?
.02
cLive ;-)
.edu (Score:5, Interesting)
Or is TerraLycos going to sit on it for the next 95 years "just in case"?
all-in-one web "schools" (Score:5, Interesting)
When webmonkey (and others such as builder.com) started out, the web was such that it could be difficult to find resources about some topics. Thus, to have all these references collected in one place was pretty handy. Now, however, it's pretty easy to find resources (through google if nothing else) for just about anything, and you can get the resources from experts who are deeply involved with the topic (which may or may not be the case from one of the "schools").
So, like all other companies that make their money by providing access (e.g. ISPs, cable carriers), these schools must shift to instead offering a service. Granted, webmonkey did have somewhat of a service: Lots of n00b friendly articles all written in a similar format. But apparently that wasn't enough.
Lycos, RIP (Score:5, Insightful)
The current Lycos Home Page [lycos.com] still has the search box, but they're talking about the "new Lycos" which is all about the non-search sites that are part of the Lycos Network. It seems as if Lycos has fallen into an also-ran status.
Another classic search engine met the same fate a few years ago. When Infoseek was bought up by Disney, it was supposed to be the anchor of the Go Network. When that didn't work out, the core part of the Go Network shut down, leading to a Go Network homepage [go.com] that does nothing but link to stories on the surviving Disney-owned sites and provide a Google-powered search box.
When we see Lycos Search powered by Google, we'll know that the layoff spree is complete...
Re:Lycos, RIP (Score:5, Informative)
i worked for tripod/angelfire for 4 years as their senior web developer (even wrote an article for webmonkey on PHP photo galleries) and at the time they closed webmonkey, lycos laid off most of it's employees who worked for "non-core" business parts now.
pretty much they (terra) are focusing on the money-making aspects (proudly tripod/angelfire seems to be one of these) and cutting the rest of the crap.
Parent
Put the website on GNU? or.. (Score:3, Insightful)
A couple of you posted some links for archives and also metioned something about lawyers and licenses - as in it may be illegal to archive the site?. It would be nice if the Webmonkey folks gave their content to someone like GNU - officially so that their work would live on.
It's sad (Score:5, Informative)
While they produced good articles, many of their articles were poorly written, or written far above the heads of their intended audience.
Back in the boom days, some of the WebMonkey employees got fed up with the corporate policies that valued ad placement over good content, often writing articles specifically tailored to woo the advertisers... a practice that clearly continued beyond the boom days. Those rebels started e-volt.. which still exists and is a vastly superior service.
Slashdot is successful because they provide content that their readers want... instead of what the advertisers want. A simple thing to understand unless you are a marketing professional.
The average marketing pro thinks that the average 'customer' doesn't know what to (think||read||buy) unless a marketeer tells them.
sad they're closing (Score:5, Insightful)
I was kind of assuming they'd close. In recent years they've been lacking on 'new' technologies, that's my impression. They were fairly strong years ago, when the web technologies were still overseeable und basic: html, javascript, cgi... and then nowadays it's just too much to cover for webmonkey.
Thanks WM for offering your *free* articles, they've been a great recource over the years.
Flamebait (Score:4, Funny)
This might seem like a bad joke but people getting laid off from webmonkey team might make a use of this:
Webmonkey Tips [lycos.com]
Article full of historic revisionism (Score:5, Interesting)
I just want to point out as an ex-Wired employee from back in the day, that this article is full of lies and crap about what was going on inside at the time.
First off, webmonkey wasn't even remotely close to profitable and certainly wasn't the only profitable website wired had if I'm wrong and there was some random day where they eeked out a penny. Hotbot was Wired's cash cow for years. It's the only service that made enough money to pay for the hardware, bandwidth and staff to run it. Webmonkey? Maybe if you don't charge against the site for equipment, staff, bandwidth, and power, then uhm, sure, ok, they made a penny.
Second, the idea that the webmonkey people were these oppressed geeks who wrote content in their spare time for free is a complete fabrication. The webmonkey people would sometimes lower themselves from their prima dona perch and help out the rest of us little people here and there but they had very little interaction with the rest of the company. And they sure as hell didn't write for free on the side. Webmonkey staff did nothing but write a few articles and sit on the couch in the play room right off their quad playing Tekken4 all day. I guess sometimes they would go out for a long triple mocha latte break after coming in late so they'd have the energy to leave early.
Webmonkey, I love you guys but you weren't what Wired was about. It was just as well Lycos came in and killed the company. It was DOA anyway.
The article is all propaganda.
ENTIRE SITE ARCHIVE - Bittorrent (Score:5, Informative)
Total size is 450MB, compressed down to 130MB using WinRAR 3.3.
View info and download the torrent here. [torrentz.com]