Web Jail

planted on April 23, 2024 in: Digital Graveyard and Button Board.

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I found this via the Software Button Parodies page of Boodle Box as its 88x31 button stood out to me. The internet archive doesn't have that good a copy of the website as it was originally with most the graphics being replaced by the same "huge domains" placeholder image that seems to have been scraped decades later.

This appears to have been a prison themed link exchange, although I am unsure if members paid for placement. These kinds of projects where popular during the early years of the internet as a way of increasing discoverability of websites. For example, while browsing around available pages from the Web Jail I discovered a link to yersterland.com from 1998 a time before it had the yersterland.com domain name.

The Web Jail domain appears to have been taken by squatters in 2000 and to have remained that way for the past 24 years, currently being offered at sale for $4,195.

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