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Zombie Webmonkey: Back From the Dead? 123

Posted by Hemos from the zombie-monkeys-with-straight-edge-razors dept.
Mirkon writes "Back in mid-February, the news was broken that Webmonkey, one of the web's most prominent web development tutorial and reference resources, was "shut down," in that no new content would be delivered. A little over four months later - though Wired News (another child of Webmonkey's parent company, Terra Lycos) says nothing, and the Webmonkey Blog (hosted on Tripod, another Terra Lycos subsidiary) hasn't seen an update since January - the Webmonkey home page boldly declares: "We're totally back! Webmonkey is alive and kicking, serving up new articles all hot-n-fresh like a stack of banana pancakes. With syrup." Is this the end of the end for Webmonkey?"
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Zombie Webmonkey: Back From the Dead? More

Zombie Webmonkey: Back From the Dead?

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  • End of the end? (Score:4, Funny)

    by ArbiterOne ( 715233 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:25AM (#9484041) Homepage
    What a weird statement... like saying "It might not be the beginning of the end, but it might be the beginning of the end of the middle."
    Besides, the end of the end is "d".

  • All hail Webmonkey! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:26AM (#9484046)
    *me flings poo at coworkers in act of celebration*

  • obvious (Score:5, Interesting)

    by technoviper ( 595945 ) <technoviperx&yahoo,com> on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:28AM (#9484061)
    where there is demand there will be supply; its a standard law of economics.. there were enough people who wanted it back for lycos to bring it back... i know a lot of developers who were quite inconvenienced when webmonkey was shut down...

    • Re:obvious (Score:3, Insightful)

      by desertfish ( 571552 )
      Yeah, I was bummed I couldn't read for the 900th time that PHP/MySQL tutorial from '99.

    • Re:obvious (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Squareball ( 523165 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @01:49PM (#9486300)
      Yes it's a law of ecnomics but if they are giving away the content for free I'm not sure how that comes into play. There is a great demand for free playstation 2s. Everyone would want one but that doesn't mean that Sony will do it.
      • yes/no

        If the market would not bear any price for PS2s, but there was a significant market for free PS2s, then sony would most likely release them, and then recoup the costs of the item in the form of advertising on/in the unit, and by charging developers more per disk.

        Much like how at one point it was costing microsoft money to sell the X-box (not the case any more I imagine), so they passed on the cost to the devlopers instead; since lots of people were buying X-boxs, because they were superior hardw

  • See boss I told you it was popular (Score:5, Funny)

    by PetoskeyGuy ( 648788 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:28AM (#9484069)
    First day and 50,000 hits. Referers? Well mostly from one website... well no it's mostly just the front page...

  • "serving up new articles" (Score:5, Funny)

    by tcopeland ( 32225 ) * <tom AT thomasleecopeland DOT com> on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:29AM (#9484070) Homepage
    Definitely serving up new ads... five ads on the front page alone. Argh.

  • Relevance? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DaveKAO ( 320532 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:30AM (#9484084) Homepage
    I personally havn't used web monkey as a development resource since about 1998, because I have found information elsewhere. It seems as if WebMonkey lost it's edge around that time. Has anyone else had the same experience?

  • Technically... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:30AM (#9484087)
    ... they can't be *Zombies* if they're back from the dead. Resurrected != Zombiefied.

    • Re:Technically... (Score:5, Funny)

      by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:38AM (#9484163) Homepage
      They were dead, now they're up and shambling around and making moaning noises. However the question of whether they still have a soul left remains unanswered. Until that's determined, the Resurrected vs. Zombiefied issue is moot.

    • Re:Technically... (Score:2, Funny)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      Obligatory Penny Arcade link:

      A Matter of Life and Death [penny-arcade.com]

      KFG
      • Damn... you read penny arcade too? The list of reasons to stalk your user page just keeps getting longer!
        • Other than, perhaps, being at one end of the age curve of Penny Arcade readers I'm not at all sure why reading it is any particular mark of distinction.

          As I understand it a whole lot of people do, some of whom, judging by Tyco and Gabe's comments about their email, I would likely consider to be arrogant, snot nosed, ignorant savages unlikely ever to acquire enough culture to reach the pottery making stage.

          At best it makes me psuedo-hip, and I haven't a clue why the GBA even exists.

          KFG
          • As I understand it a whole lot of people do, some of whom, judging by Tyco and Gabe's comments about their email, I would likely consider to be arrogant, snot nosed, ignorant savages unlikely ever to acquire enough culture to reach the pottery making stage.


            This is where you were supposed to notice that it's pretty much the same readership as /.
            • This is where you were supposed to notice that it's pretty much the same readership as /.

              Where do you think I first heard of Penny Arcade?

              And I wouldn't be so crude as to make that sort of comment about /. readers here on /. (well, most of the time anyway), I'd go over to the Penny Arcade forum to do that.

              And quite frankly, the whole issue is starting to get uncomfortably self-referential (I have made pottery though).

              KFG
              • Well, my point was simply that it means we have something in common, besides of course reading slashdot. Awwwwwwww...

                Though I love reading your posts (and have mentioned that some of them are at least somewhat life-altering), it's actually quite obvious that I'm quite different than the mighty KFG. First, there's the age factor... Then there's the fact I've lived in the same state all my life, quite the opposite of the well traveled KFG. Your diverse number of hobbies... Just your diverse nature in gen

  • Confusing wording (Score:5, Funny)

    by vijaya_chandra ( 618284 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:30AM (#9484091)
    Zombie webmonkey

    I jumped out of my chair in happiness thinking that my old buddy the bonzi monkey's back

    (I will adjust with the clippy for the time being)

  • Monkey Island... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ideatrack ( 702667 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:31AM (#9484096)
    said it best:

    "Oh, dear, he's had a sudden and completely unexpected relapse of death!"

  • I really hope so (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SlashDread ( 38969 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:32AM (#9484120)
    No other source of free information has been so usefull in developing my (rather lame by 2004 standards) homepage, and thus web knowladge.

    I loved it, recommended it to all I knew interested in webdesign, and by bog, more designers could learn from it.

    "/Dread"
  • sweet...you mean we'll get to see something aside from the articles on how exciting that new PHP language is?

  • I want suck.com to come back.

    Polly! How I miss thee!
    • Suck.com definitely qualifies as a zombie. It's bizarre how it's been dead for years, yet it's still out there serving up old articles.

  • WYSIWYG, why webmonkey? (Score:3, Informative)

    by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:39AM (#9484173) Homepage Journal
    with all the wysiwyg editors what is the reason for the average joe to know html. If you are more advanced then that you prolly have a minilibrary of book on it. So, why webmonkey??? I havn't used it in years.
    • Creating a web page without knowing HTML is like driving a car without knowing how to read.

      • Re:WYSIWYG, why webmonkey? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:46AM (#9484247) Homepage Journal
        Creating a web page without knowing HTML is like driving a car without knowing how to read.

        I wouldn't say that. I would say it's like driving a car without knowing how it works under the hood. And there are a lot of people that don't know how a car works under the hood but can get done what they need to do.

        • Re:WYSIWYG, why webmonkey? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by kryptkpr ( 180196 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:58AM (#9484362) Homepage
          Not quite.. driving a car is closer to browsing the resultant webpage.

          Creating a page without knowing HTML/CSS is like assembling an entire car without knowing how any of the pieces work. It may work for very, very simple cars but if something goes wrong, or happens not the way you expect, you have no idea what's wrong or how to fix it.
          • Right on the head there : I owe alot of my problemsolving skills in my (minimalistic) webdesign skills to Webmonkey's easygoing tutorials.

            WYSIWYG sometimes can have the problem of not completing the first stage 'what you see' : As you wouldn't have a clue how to do it.

        • Millah, old bean, I meant what I said: you don't need to understand the internals of the MS HTML Control or the Gecko Runtime Environment or IIS or Apache, which is what's "under the hood", but if you don't know HTML then it's like driving a car while being functionally illiterate. I know quite a few people people who are functionally illiterate in English who have no problem driving a car so long as they know where they're going, or they've got someone to help them, or they stay in the part of Houston where I live where all the street-signs are in English and Chinese.

          So, you can get along not knowing HTML, but you won't have the faintest idea what to do if anything goes wrong. If you get into the equivalent of a strange part of town, you're stuck. If there's a detour, you better hope you understand which set of arrows to follow...
        • Creating a web page without knowing HTML is like driving a car without knowing how to read.

          I wouldn't say that. I would say it's like driving a car without knowing how it works under the hood. And there are a lot of people that don't know how a car works under the hood but can get done what they need to do.

          You mean like irritate the rest of us by acting like they know how a car (the web) works since they now know how to drive (use frontpage) and wish to occupy "their space" in the fast lane to the fr

        • These automobile analogies are really getting out of hand. :-P
    • You missed out a step - how does one get from one stage to the other?
    • well, why don't you take a look at what the site offers... theres a lot more than HTML tutorials on there. notice the categories "programming" and "backend"? "multimedia"? if it was only html, it wouldn't be nearly as popular as it is. its a really great resource that is extremely helpful to beginners in lots of different domains of web design & development.
    • Yeah, who needs to know HTML. I mean, weve got frontpage. Everybody uses IE anyways. And frontpage is only for semi-professionals. Normal people use Powerpoint or Word.

      And while were at it, why do we use HTML anyways. We can link thousands of word and powerpoint and excel documents together! And if you're like, super-professional or something you can use pure flash pages. They are soooo good.

  • i personally like webmonkey just for it's name. i haven't used the actual site in years...

    after all, monkeys just make things better.
  • Unix Reference Guide [lycos.com]

    Unless you have a Unix machine sitting on your desktop, you're probably accessing it through telnet or a command-line shell.

    I have had shamelessly lived on others' *nix boxes using X-Win32 [starnet.com] and Cygwin/X [starnet.com] for a long time

    (Karma be damned; I am no better than an AC anyway)

  • neato! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hover your mouse over the parts of the Webmonkey logo.
    Mod me "-1, Who Cares" if you want, but I thought it was a cool gimmick.

  • Nothing on Tclhttpd (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <yoda AT etoyoc DOT com> on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:43AM (#9484220) Homepage Journal
    What am I the only person who uses it? What's there not to love about a web server written completely in TCL?

    /back in my box

  • A List Apart (Score:5, Informative)

    by Enygma42 ( 301776 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:46AM (#9484248) Homepage Journal
    Take a look at A List Apart [alistapart.com], they're a bit into CSS but that's a Good Thing really.

    I don't need no steenkin' webmonkey.

  • When the title of the first word begins with some supreme-marketing-drone-with-a-poor-command-of-the -English-language nonsense-word such as 'Strategizing' it's no wonder they went down the pan.

  • Like New Coke (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Omega1045 ( 584264 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:48AM (#9484258)
    This is like New Coke, where everyone went up in arms when Coca-Cola was going to get rid of the original formula. All kinds of people rallied and the Original Coca-Cola gained tons of popularity and PR.

    Many suspected that Coca-Cola Corp had pulled off one of the best PR stunts of all time, that they had never intended on getting rid of the original. Do you think this is what Terra Lycos has done with WebMonkey?
    • Well no. They really did intend to cash in on neophilia with a "new brand". The PR stunt was realizing in time that the cause was lost and putting together a quicky branding strategy with the "classic".

      It's a bit like praising someone's ingenuity for repairing a busted tire with chewing gum while ignoring the fact they hadn't had a spare.

    • What makes you think that they ever brought back the original Coke?
      • The whole thing was a carefully orchestrated dupe. Coke was losing money hand over fist by using raw cane sugar in their original product, and knew that their rabid legions of consumers would be up in arms about switching to the cheaper (and not as good tasting) corn syrup... so they nixed real coke, and came out with 'new' coke, a cheap ripoff of their biggest competitor, pepsi.

        When the public predictably poopoo'd new coke, coke 'acquiesced' and 'begrudgingly' released coke classic, with the new money-sav

        • The change in sweetener wasn't anything that diabolical. Corn syrup was cheaper than cane sugar; that's what it came down to. In 1980, five years before the introduction of New Coke, half the cane sugar in Coca-Cola had been replaced with high fructose corn syrup. By six months prior to New Coke's knocking the original Coca-Cola off the shelves, there was no cane sugar in American Coca-Cola. Whether they knew it or not, what consumers were drinking then was 100% sweetened by high fructose corn syrup.

          http [snopes.com]

    • I take it you haven't seen the new Coke C2, targeted at all of those dumbasses who are on those low carb diets that kill your kidneys, induce depression, and don't work nearly as well as just getting off of your fat ass, walking around a little, and not eating 2 McLardass burgers for every meal?

      New coke, this time targeted at the totally nutritionally incompetent fad crowd... /Rant from someone blessed with a fast metabolism ;)

  • Webmonkey - what a stupid idea (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Everyone knows it's SPIDERS that make webs, not primates. Oh, except Spiderman, I suppose. And maybe that Berners-Lee guy, although he never got to kiss Kirsten Dunst upside down in the rain.

  • OK who restored the backup (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blowdart ( 31458 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @10:51AM (#9484300) Homepage
    and forgot to update the copyright dates everywhere? (Copyright 2003)

    Anyone else find it amusing that a site that wants to teach people HTML doesn't even have a DTD and has to resort to putting "warez" in its metatags? Twice.

  • It's a shame (Score:4, Interesting)

    by amacedo ( 779821 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @11:08AM (#9484464) Homepage
    Web monkey was my first real PHP, MySQL and JavaScript online resource. It's tutorials were always clear, fun and extremely "hands on".

    WebMonkey was probably the best place for a beginner to learn the basis of Internet development.

    I'm sure allot of Perl "holier than thou" developers will bash me for this, but somehow I feel the web will be worse off without such a valuable help do web development newbies.
    • Umm, why is this Informative?

      The article is stating that Webmonkey is back. The above post is lamenting that "the web will be worse off without such a valuable help do [sic] web development newbies"?

      Only on /. can someone get the gist of an article completely backwards and be rewarded for it by their peers.
  • Maybe they are just running on limited staff. The top article on webmonkey is from June 18th 2004.

  • Back from the dead? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by manavendra ( 688020 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @11:50AM (#9484949) Homepage Journal
    Dunno if this is the "end of the end" (grimace) for webmonkey, but I stopped using it when they fell for that oh-so-common trap - mindless adverts, popups, flash-ads

    I guess that's why a lot of other people stopped using it...

  • Webmonkey great for beginers (Score:4, Insightful)

    by drgonjo ( 746794 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @01:24PM (#9486050)
    I've found myself training some young newbs in the finer points of web dev. I notice that despite my best efforts in explanation I often slip bits of techno jargon in which leave my trainees looking confused and bewildered. Though I hadn't used webmonkey in years (ie. my newb days) I remembered that jargon was either avoided or thoughtfully introduced, something I seemed incapable of doing. So now I create lists of webmonkey articles for my newbs to peruse prior to their hands-on lessons with me. Long story short, webmonkey is a great resource for beginners but a bit dumbed down for the slashdot crowd.

  • Article (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EdMcMan ( 70171 ) <moo.slashdot2.z.edmcman@xoxy.net> on Monday June 21, 2004 @01:47PM (#9486279) Homepage Journal
    Article from 18 June 2004 [lycos.com]

  • Taking a pass (Score:3, Insightful)

    by shokk ( 187512 ) <ernieoporto AT yahoo DOT com> on Monday June 21, 2004 @01:50PM (#9486307) Homepage Journal
    I don't consider "Punch the kangaroo for a free web cam taking up 1/3 of the page" being a significant contribution to web publishing. The Macromedia Contribute article required you to click "Next Page" every three sentences, which I'm sure was a great way to maximize eyeballs per page of advertisements. No thanks, I'll pass.
  • All I can think of when I hear webmonkey is that ridiculous "Punch the Monkey" banner ad. I was celebrating its demise--there was much rejoicing--until I realized I had no idea what was being discussed.

  • saw this some time back and couldn't resist...
    God is Dead
    -Nietzche
    Nietzche is Dead
    -God
    But Zombie Nietzche Lives!!
    -Zombie Nietzche

  • Cool! (Score:2, Funny)

    by sharkey ( 16670 )
    Now I can finally learn how to make webpages with all the content on the left half of the screen, and nothing but the background image on the right half. That's SOOOOOO cool!
  • Ok, do we get to shoot them in the head w/ a shotgun?

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