A hobby homepage that becomes a different decade every time you reload: a phosphor BBS, a Borland-blue DOS box, a synthwave arcade, a GeoCities fever dream.
Kongomax.com lists the owner's self-hosted web apps in an old-school Internet 1.0 style. The trick is that the same content is shown in a different full theme on each visit: BBS, DOS 1986, 16-bit console, Neon '86 synthwave, EXTREME, GeoCities, Classic, and a Plain front door. A gorilla mascot called Kongo runs the site, and each theme draws him its own way.
Underneath is a modern edge-routed stack: an Astro static build on Cloudflare Pages, a Pages Function that picks the theme at the edge, KV for a real hit counter, and D1 for the arcade leaderboard and the guestbook. Everything runs on free tiers. Every change goes through a numbered review before it merges, and the review count passed fifty in under two weeks.
The projects page grew from a few finished apps to the whole portfolio: Clipper Overlord, PermitBuzz, Eboda Gymnast, Tiny Clipper, Bopsmith, and this history site joined, each with a short write-up in the site's voice. Two of them are still plans, so every theme's intro, which had promised things built and put online, was rewritten to cover built, half-built, and only drawn. A placeholder link now renders as a dead end instead of a button back to the same page.
The neon grid stood up too steeply. It now lies flat and runs to a vanishing point, with a road down the middle, palms travelling beside it, and the hero's Insert Coin button gone. Same day: palms set moving with the grid rather than standing still, on a one-word ruling.
A list of small rulings deliberately not taken this week: the Extreme theme's headline, a per-theme empty-guestbook line, a phone check of the BBS page, a CRT vignette for Eighties, two review nits. Recorded so the history shows what was parked, not just what shipped.
When a guestbook entry is waiting, the owner now gets an email with one-click Publish and Hide links, so moderating no longer means running SQL. Sent through Cloudflare's send_email binding from a separate Worker, with Resend as the fallback. Five slices, and a live test that passed end to end today.
The site dropped every claim it could not back up: hand-coded, fake visitor counts, a Made with Notepad badge, five placeholder projects. Pastiche is allowed; lying is not. Accessibility fixes shipped alongside.
The DOS theme's prompt was a menu in disguise. It is now a simulated MS-DOS 3.20 with a read-only C: drive holding the site's pages and a RAM drive D: you can write to. The theme's copy was rewritten in period-true 1986 wording in one revertable merge.
The guestbook was designed through four rounds of security review before a line was written, then built in six slices. No captcha, no accounts. The newest 30 entries show, 50 entries a day site-wide, and at most 100 waiting for moderation.
The owner reported that the rotation confused visitors. The answer was a small bar shared by every theme with a Keep this look toggle, a year stamp per theme, and Plain as the theme everyone sees first.
The mockups had a visitor counter, a web ring, a game leaderboard, and a projects list that were all placeholders. One day later each one was backed by something real: KV, a ring with next/prev/random, D1, and the actual projects.
A reload rolls a new theme. A theme locks for the visit and expires after 30 minutes idle. A visitor can lock their favourite, and locking or unlocking no longer reloads the page.
Six theme mockups were approved in the morning. By evening the skeleton, a theme contract, an edge routing function, and all six themes were built in parallel, checked by a QA pass, and kongomax.com was live.
Kongomax started as a one-page brief: a personal homepage in the spirit of the early web, free to run, every asset self-owned. The signature idea arrived the same day: the whole site re-skins itself on every visit.
Kongomax started as a one-page brief: a personal homepage in the spirit of the early web, free to run, every asset self-owned. The signature idea arrived the same day: the whole site re-skins itself on every visit.
Six theme mockups were approved in the morning. By evening the skeleton, a theme contract, an edge routing function, and all six themes were built in parallel, checked by a QA pass, and kongomax.com was live.
A reload rolls a new theme. A theme locks for the visit and expires after 30 minutes idle. A visitor can lock their favourite, and locking or unlocking no longer reloads the page.
The mockups had a visitor counter, a web ring, a game leaderboard, and a projects list that were all placeholders. One day later each one was backed by something real: KV, a ring with next/prev/random, D1, and the actual projects.
The owner reported that the rotation confused visitors. The answer was a small bar shared by every theme with a Keep this look toggle, a year stamp per theme, and Plain as the theme everyone sees first.
The guestbook was designed through four rounds of security review before a line was written, then built in six slices. No captcha, no accounts. The newest 30 entries show, 50 entries a day site-wide, and at most 100 waiting for moderation.
The DOS theme's prompt was a menu in disguise. It is now a simulated MS-DOS 3.20 with a read-only C: drive holding the site's pages and a RAM drive D: you can write to. The theme's copy was rewritten in period-true 1986 wording in one revertable merge.
The site dropped every claim it could not back up: hand-coded, fake visitor counts, a Made with Notepad badge, five placeholder projects. Pastiche is allowed; lying is not. Accessibility fixes shipped alongside.
When a guestbook entry is waiting, the owner now gets an email with one-click Publish and Hide links, so moderating no longer means running SQL. Sent through Cloudflare's send_email binding from a separate Worker, with Resend as the fallback. Five slices, and a live test that passed end to end today.
A list of small rulings deliberately not taken this week: the Extreme theme's headline, a per-theme empty-guestbook line, a phone check of the BBS page, a CRT vignette for Eighties, two review nits. Recorded so the history shows what was parked, not just what shipped.
The neon grid stood up too steeply. It now lies flat and runs to a vanishing point, with a road down the middle, palms travelling beside it, and the hero's Insert Coin button gone. Same day: palms set moving with the grid rather than standing still, on a one-word ruling.
The angle of the ground on the 80s theme seems way too steep. The perspective is off. It should really feel like it extends outward and away into the horizon.
The projects page grew from a few finished apps to the whole portfolio: Clipper Overlord, PermitBuzz, Eboda Gymnast, Tiny Clipper, Bopsmith, and this history site joined, each with a short write-up in the site's voice. Two of them are still plans, so every theme's intro, which had promised things built and put online, was rewritten to cover built, half-built, and only drawn. A placeholder link now renders as a dead end instead of a button back to the same page.
