17 Nostalgic Websites from the Early 2000s

Remember the early 2000s nostalgic websites you browsed on the internet as a kid?

If you were born in the 90s, you probably grew up on the internet using websites we look back on now as nostalgic.

I was born in 1995, and started going on the computer at a super young age.

Today I thought we’d walk down memory lane and reminisce our old and fave nostalgic kids websites.

When I was in primary school I had relatives who were preteens, and I often watched as they browsed websites like Asian Avenue and Neopets.

One of my cousins even created my very first MSN account for me when I was in grade 4, which she named “cuti_gal68”.

I remember sneaking onto Neopets during computer labs in elementary school, and even sneaking onto the family computer late at night to play Runescape.

Also, remember when “rawr” and “g2g bye” were a regular thing in people’s vocabularies?

Here are some of my favourite old nostalgic kids websites from the early to mid-2000s.

Let me know if you remember any other popular ones from back in the day!

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Nostalgic kids websites from the early 2000s

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1. Dollz Mania

Remember playing those drag-and-drop dress-up games?

I used to spend hours and hours dressing up dollz, screenshotting the finished products, and saving them all in a massive MS Paint file.

The preppy ones were my favourite and the goth ones terrified me.

I think I even tried designing my own dollz drag-and-drop website at one point.

Playing with dollz was my guilty pleasure.

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2. MSN Messenger

Not really a website, but remember spending hours just chatting on MSN?

When conversations were as simple and pointless as “sup”-“nm u”-“nm”?

When you’d obsessively stare at your crush’s email until they logged online?

I used to be obsessed with making my own MSN icons and customizing my personal message.

It was even a trend to use funky lettering and shortcodes to customize your personal message.

I thought I was so cool for “designing” personal messages like:

` ` { & тнe [b]s н α d o w[/b] oғ тнe [b]d α ч[/b] , wιʟʟ [b][c=4]e m в r α c e[/c][/b] тнe worʟd ιn [b]ɢ r α ч[/b] ; ×

And we can’t forget about chatting with Smarter Child. He freaked me out.

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3. Piczo

Ah, the good ol’ days of Piczo.

Piczo allowed you to create websites by dragging and dropping elements, so you didn’t really need to know any HTML.

It’s actually where I first started to get a taste of graphic design.

My friends and I made things like celebrity “blends”, MSN icons, and fixed backgrounds using Photoshop.

This was a time where being emo or scene was seen as ~cool~.

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4. MySpace

Tbh I wasn’t a frequent MySpace user.

I don’t know if it was just my age group, or if it just didn’t pick up as much in Canada.

All my Canadian friends were on Facebook while all my American friends were on MySpace.

I added all my ~Runescape friends~ on there.

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5. Bebo

Bebo was another popular social networking site back in the day that obvs does not exist anymore.

You could customize your profile using skins (like WordPress themes) and friends could draw things on your “White Board”.

You could also create quizzes about yourself to see if your friends really knew you lol.

Those were the days!

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6. Freewebs (now Webs)

Throwback to when people created webpages for the sake of nothing but fun.

Freewebs allowed you to create free websites, and you could customize them completely using HTML and CSS.

I was pretty nerdy about this stuff, so I created a lot of random sites to practice my HTML skills.

None of them were good, but at least it was good practice for this website 😉

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7. Photobucket

I used to upload all my photos on here so I could use my 1337 HTML skillz and <img src=””> them onto my websites.

Photobucket still exists, but it’s a jumbled mess of ads in your face and you have to pay to use it now. Boo.

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8. DeviantArt

I didn’t use DeviantArt myself, but my sister did.

It was basically a forum for artists to share their work and give each other feedback.

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9. Barbie.com

I don’t know what was so fun about feeding Baby Krissy or making over Barbie… but I spent hours doing it.

It was my guilty pleasure tbh.

I think there were some great MyScene games I really liked as well. Those were the days.

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10. Neopets

Remember sneaking onto Neopets during computer lab and having to switch browsers every time the teacher walked by?

I spent way too much time on Neopets back in the day…

I used to collect their monthly magazines, toys, and plushies, and I was so excited when they collaborated with McDonald’s for Happy Meal toys that one time.

Sadly I can’t access my old Neopets account because I faked a birthday to pretend I was 13 when I made it. *tear, tear*

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11. Runescape

Remember the olden days of being a noob?

Runescape was a huge part of my childhood and probably one of my most favourite nostalgic kids websites.

What made the game so much fun was all the great friends I made on it, but I unfortunately don’t have any connections with any of them anymore.

Fun fact: I used to also make Runescape music videos.

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12. MapleStory

Tbh I was never much of a MapleStory user, but my friends who weren’t on Runescape were playing MapleStory.

I downloaded the game, went up to level 11, and never played again.

It was a hard game to play, okay?!

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13. Club Penguin

Club Penguin was such a wholesome place.

You just walked around as a penguin and made internet friends with strangers.

You can’t play it anymore, but it was fun while it lasted!

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14. Habbo Hotel

I don’t think I ever actually played Habbo Hotel myself, but I remembered other people playing it.

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15. AdventureQuest

AdventureQuest was like a bootleg version of Runescape.

It was fun, but I definitely preferred playing Runescape.

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16. Scary Maze Game

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t quite meant for kids, but we all remember playing the scary maze game.

Or tricking our friends into playing the scary maze game.

If you’re in the mood for a little jump scare, you can watch a video of the scary maze game on YouTube.

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17. Ask Jeeves

Before we were asking Google questions, we were asking Jeeves.

They actually still exist today, but they’re just “Ask”.

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Nostalgic websites from the 2000s:

1. Dollz Mania
2. MSN Messenger
3. Piczo
4. MySpace
5. Bebo
6. Freewebs
7. Photobucket
8. DeviantArt
9. Barbie.com
10. Neopets
11. Runescape
12. MapleStory
13. Club Penguin
14. Habbo Hotel
15. AdventureQuest
16. Scary Maze Game
17. Ask Jeeves

Of course there are tons more nostalgic websites from back then, but these were just the ones I was using.

It’s funny that kids nowadays are growing up on the internet as well, but in a completely different way.

I feel like it was a lot more carefree back then.

The early 2000s was definitely a great time for the internet.

Did you go on any of these old nostalgic kids websites back in the day? What are your favourite websites from the early 2000s? Let me know on Twitter or Instagram!

P.S. if you liked this post, you might like this post on things only OG Instagram users will remember, or any of my other lifestyle posts.

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