Oh sweet summer child. Back in the 1999 and 2000 Network Solutions was the only registrar (for North American TLDs) and it cost $35/year (and if memory serves you had to buy it initially for 2 years, and after that you could renew it for 1 year at a time). $35 in the year 2000 is worth $65.66 today.

[–] The_v@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Yep. It wasn't cheap or easy back when they had the monopoly.

That's back when ISP's offered personal webpage hosting as part of your service. I setup my first webpage on my dialup ISP's server. Family photos and such before the social media things got going.

I for many years after that for large file transfers. Just set up a landing index page and a folder for the file in FTP to activate it. Then share the http address to file.