Webmonkey Closes its Doors

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."

old news

this is old news, the article even says Feb 17th
mmm...

First sign that web based content is unprofitable?

It does seem than web based content (on adverts alone) is unprofitable. I think micropayments will solve this - maybe PayPal could easily expand into this area by dropping the 39c transaction fee for transactions under a dollar...

Re:First sign that web based content is unprofitab

Don't tell this to IGN or GameSpot , which are finally raking money in hand over fist, for advertising, after years on the skids.

Of course, those sites are so packed with ads they're functionally unusable, but still...

Re:First sign that web based content is unprofitab

We'll always have Arhive.org [archive.org], at least, although I'm not sure if they just mean that they are stopping adding new content or taking the place offline (yeah, RTFA, I know).

Re:First sign that web based content is unprofitab

IMHO, while they were great for beginners and I loved going there, it seemed they stoped making any significant additions to their content years ago -- and this was part of their downfall. The wired article even mentions how they often reshuffled old content to make it seem new.

Re:First sign that web based content is unprofitab

The problem is not that web-based content is unprofitable, but that web-based content that is no longer of interest is unprofitable. As many others here have said, I too used to visit webmonkey a lot. But, I learned enough so that I didn't have to visit any more. Newer folks, at least in some cases, are relying heavily on "do everything for you" tools, so the site is not (or less) needed.

RIP, Webmonkey.

Re:You are insane, and greedy

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 and the occasional MUD or usenet article. Not until sites like Amazon or eBay came along did the Internet become truly useful.

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.

Re:You are insane, and greedy

Ahhh.. the days of alt.pics.binary...

cat titties1.uue titties2.uue titties3.uue > titties.uue | uudecode -o titties.jpg

Spanish company

It should be noted that, ultimately, HotWired belong to Terra-Lycos, a Spanish company closely tied to the old monopoly Telefonica [telefonica.es].

Re:Spanish company

It's more than closely tied, actually Terra Belongs to Telefonica. Telefonica
Telefonica is not as big as AT&T, but they are as evil :)

Wow!

I read them frequently about 5 years ago and learned a lot about web building. Not that I always followed their good advice or anything :)

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!

A site like that is no longer needed. With Microsoft products like Frontpage and IIS anybody can become a web genius. And from anywhere, allowing web development to be offshored to cheaper, better, faster countries.

Re:Wow!

"With Microsoft products like Frontpage and IIS anybody can become a web genius." God, I hope you were kidding. What a ridiculous statement! With products like Frontpage, anybody can churn out incomprehensible, invalid, bloated crap that only works (and barely at that) in one browser. Sure, anyone can make *something* with programs like Frontpage, but that doesn't mean it will be good, or even usable. How many sites have you seen with incomprehensible navigation (or no navigation to speak of), with such horrible design you can't even read the content, with....the list goes on. There's a hell of a lot more to becoming a web designer/developer than cobbbling together some html. There are UI considerations, information architecture, maintainability of code, and much more. Does picking up a copy of Quicken make one a CPA? If so, a lot of high-prices CFO's are out of a job!

Re:Wow!

How many sites have you seen with incomprehensible navigation (or no navigation to speak of), with such horrible design you can't even read the content, with....the list goes on.

Many, and a large proportion of them *aren't* by Frontpage users but by web designers who really should know better. And frankly with the coming of CSS and XHTML, and all the other so called 'improvements', the number of bloated, slow, horrible sites is *increasing*. Too many web designers spend too much time on 'UI considerations, information architecture, maintainability of code, and much more' and very little time on making sure the damm thing works and that the content on the pages is actually acessible.

nah

Webmonkey's tutorials treated you like a five year-old with learning disabilities. They tried to be cute and informative at the same time- and failed at both.

Content...

There is quite a bit of good useful content on Webmonkey. Has anyone considered saving it all for future reference? I know it would probably be illegal to put them up for free access somewhere else on the web due to copyrights, but it seems a shame for it all to go to waste completely :(

Re:Content...

I'd even pay for a CD archive.

Lycos: You listening?

Re:Content...

Want an archive of it? How about....

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. :-)

Re:Content...

Or you can use a product like Teleport, or you can use "wget -r -l 6 hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey" for the same functionality, if you're not on a Windows machine. ;)

I think what you meant to say was: (more flags)

I think what you meant to say was:
wget -k -p -nh -E -nc -r -l 6 \
hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey

convert links
get prerequisites
don't dns everything
add a .html extension for your viewing
don't clobber (download only once)
recursive
levels 6
slashdot wouldn't let my lines be long enough, so a \ : )

Re:Content...

wget is your friend (for personal use, of course :-))

Re:Content...

httrack [httrack.org] is also your friend. I just found this tool (via the SpiderZilla [mozdev.org] front-end for Mozilla/Firefox). Did a good job of spidering a couple sites I was having trouble with using wget.

www.Archive.org

Archive.org [archive.org] is your friend!

Re:Content...

I don't think Webmonkey will go dark, it's just that no new content will be added.

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)

Re:Dammit!

I run a site called Help2Go -- it's all tutorials and help for newbies, including a lot of web stuff.
Best of all, it's all Creative Commons licensed, so the articles won't disappear like Webmonkey's soon will.

http://www.help2go.com/

This is kind of depressing

I learned a LOT of my HTML and related skills from webmonkey. They did good work, were always big advocates of standards, and a great resource no matter what your level of web work was. I personally am going to miss them greatly... makes me feel old (granted a LOT of things do that lately, but.. that's not the point now is it?).

CharlesP

Howabout an archive

Webmonkey was pretty good - I remember referring to it now and then... I know we can use the wayback machine / google (at least for a short while) etc. but if they're closing the doors, are they doing anything about the content ? Seems a shame to throw it away... Nothing mentioned on the site :-(

Simon

Salute!

On behalf of all companies too cheap to by up-to-date reference books, I salute you WebMonkey. You've given me the information that has prevented me from robbing Barnes and Nobel countless times.

At first I thougth they meant Primate Programming

They are not talking about this company [newtechusa.com].

An Alternative to Webmonkey

FWIW, I've found "W3Schools" a decent source of Pretty Good Tutorials for most things 'web (xml, xsl, css, etc.).

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

Just want to say that if you like/liked Webmonkey, you may also like A List Apart [alistapart.com].

Re:An Alternative to Webmonkey

You beat me to it....

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).

Re:An Alternative to Webmonkey

IE actually makes a damn fine platform if you develop specifically for it, why is that so wrong?

That is what makes it so wrong; you have to develop specifically for it in order to make it do anything half-decent.

Noo!

Rest well, WebMonkey. You taugh us all so much. Someone should e-mail them and ask if they can mirror the papers, so the legacy of the WebMonkey may live on forever.

Downloadable archive?

It would be real slick to be able to buy a downloadable archive of articles. I'd gladly cough up some bucks for that. Certainly a lot better (not to mention more environmentally friendly) than bopping down to your favorite ink and paper store to buy some overpriced tome on how to make web pages.

How about it guys?

-S

Not Completely Lost... [karma whore warning]

Thanks to the wayback machine: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.webmonkey. com [archive.org] has, for the most part, working links to a great deal of content, not to mention a nice view of the evolution of the graphic design proclivities.

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

Index DOT HTML [blooberry.com]

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

I learned a lot of shit from webmonkey. I'm going to go as far as to say that they're doing a grave injustice to those who are just learning things like PHP by closing their doors. Hell, they're doing an injustice to the internet itself. It's built on knowledge, so I only hope their reference materials will be available in other formats.

It's a jewel of rarity

I haven't been on Webmonkey for ages. However, when I did, I remember it as a resource that was unusual in the way that it was able to pander to both the inexperienced and the experienced alike. It provided a decent and friendly place for individuals to start learning about web design/programming, while also serving as a viable reference for experienced web designers.

And with the death of Web Techniques magazine...

.. (a year or so ago) and The Perl Journal, there goes the rest of the teachers from my early coding days.

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

Since this is educational content, wouldn't it make sense to give/sell-on-the-cheap the content to a university somewhere to make it publicly available on the tons of available bandwidth most universities have? Some CS department somewhere could probably find student volunteers to maintain the site and update it with externally-submitted articles.

Or is TerraLycos going to sit on it for the next 95 years "just in case"?

all-in-one web "schools"

Seems like a lot of these web "schools" that try to present all (or at least the common) facets of a subject are having trouble. Their product was access to content, and I think they've gone the way of most access providers.

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

It seems as if TerraLycos is cleaning house and pulling the plug on unprofitable operations. Furthermore, it seems as if the Lycos search engine itself is one of those elements being downplayed.

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

actually, the lay off spree is mostly complete.

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.

Put the website on GNU? or..

somewhere else for access?

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

It's sad to see em go, but I used to be a competitor of theirs until I cashed out my site (heh heh heh.

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

Back when I was a n00b, webmonkey was the place I went to learn HTML. They've always been a neat and friendly place.

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.

Other Sources?

Hello, Since webmonkey is going down, what are some others resources that you guys find equally well? I know of Arson Network [arson-network.com]. What about you guys?

Flamebait

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]

Style sheet reference

Mulder's Style Sheet Tutorial [lycos.com] on Webmonkey is one of my favorite style-sheet references.

Article full of historic revisionism

This is not about knocking the webmonkey people.

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.

I really don't understand Slashdot sometimes...

Here are your recent submissions to Slashdot, and their status within the system:

2004-02-17 23:02:43 Webmonkey, RIP: 1996 - 2004 (articles,news) (rejected)

Summary:

rejected (1)

Linked XML Article

Ha. In the linked article on XML on page 4, in section "Recipe For Disaster", there's a link to Lark, Tim Bray's XML Parser. When I click that link I get...

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

I know the story isn't about XML per se, but by sheer coincidence I've been checking out XML recently so I thought I'd have a look at Lark. LOL. I hope this experience isn't a precursor of what I'm about to get into!

The Wired article was written by Paul Boutin ...

... and Paul Boutin [paulboutin.com] is writing about a subject that he knows about, because he has written several good articles [google.com] in Webmonkey [lycos.com]

I will miss Webmonkey too. I have learned many things about web building in the "early days" from the articles that have been posted there.

And so it proves...

A thousand monkeys, typing on a thousand typewriters cannot keep a site running.

Josh

I'll miss them!

Back in late 2000 I released a shareware program called MosASCII.. a few weeks later it appeared on one of their Monkey Bite articles (10/11/00 [lycos.com])

I received a ton of orders thanks to them, and they are probably what helped the program become popular.

Too bad I discontinued it this month =(

Pity...

I learned a lot back in the day from Webmonkey. Well, as long as they don't pull the plug on Cocktail [wired.com].

I know this sounds like a troll, but...

Thank God! Hopefully this means that people at the level this site catered to have realized that they are not needed in the computer industry and have moved on.

I see a lot of Java programming for idiots sites that seem to be in their final death throws too. Thank God!

It seems like the problem with the boom is that it attracted and ecouraged a lot of people who have no business being within 10 feet of a computer.

Will they release it Open Content?

Back when I had high hopes that The Idocs Guide to HTML [idocs.com] would be my path to riches, I thought of WebMonkey as my chief competitor. There was no way I could produce the quantity of documentation they could, but I hoped that my narrow focus on client-side web pages features and high quality would win me followers. In fact, it did win me followers, but not enough to become profitable.

Well, when I finally gave up that dream, I released the Guide as Open Content. Anybody [htmlcodetutorial.com] who [estek.net] wants [webmasterexchange.com] to [porjes.com] can publish the content as they see fit. AFAIK, nobody's made a fortune off of my work (which, I admit, would bug the crap out of me), but some people have been helped, which is pretty cool. I wonder if WebMonkey will consider doing the same thing.

ENTIRE SITE ARCHIVE - Bittorrent

For the benefit of posterity, I archived the entire site this morning, including audio and video content. It is now available for you to download as a Bittorrent release, containing a single RAR file. The site was archived using HTTrack 3.3 [httrack.com] and set to crawl to infinitely many levels, excluding external sites. You may unpack to an empty folder and browse it as if you were on the live site.

Total size is 450MB, compressed down to 130MB using WinRAR 3.3.

View info and download the torrent here. [torrentz.com]

We're not killing the site

Thanks to all for their kind comments about Webmonkey.

Despite what you've read here, we're not shutting down the site - it's just going into maintenance mode. That means no more updates, but all the old content will remain.

- Anonymous (TerraLycos) Coward