WebBuilding

Encyclopedia

Events and eras

This department

Turning points in the history of the web, from the first website in 1991 to the security incidents of today.

Entries

2 of 8 planned entries are published. New entries are added in batches, and every one is checked against its sources before it goes live.

  • The first website (1991) (coming soon): info.cern.ch and what was on it
  • Browser wars: Netscape vs Internet Explorer, then round two
  • Dot-com bubble (coming soon): The boom, the crash and what survived
  • Web 2.0 (coming soon): Blogs, wikis, social sites and user content
  • Heartbleed (2014) (coming soon): The OpenSSL bug
  • Mobile-first indexing (coming soon): Google ranking the mobile site first
  • End of Adobe Flash (2020) (coming soon): How the web moved off plugins
  • PHP2Shell (2026): The October 2026 critical PHP flaws

Other departments