Welcome to KangWorlds!
Hey! I'm bonkmaykr, also known as Kangang in some places. This is the website I use for retro or Web 1.0 related content, mainly pertaining to WorldsChat. My main stuff can be found over at bonkmaykr.xyz.
You can check the links on the sidebar to look around.
A minimum resolution of 800x600 is required.
A resolution of 1024x768 or higher is recommended.
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FAQ
What is Worlds? Why does it matter?
Worlds, or Worlds.com, is a 3D online chatroom comparable to VRChat. Created by former employees of Knowledge Adventure (the same company that would later go on to create Neopets), it launched into early access originally in spring of 1994 as "Worlds Chat". In 1995, there was an "End of the Worlds" party, an online event where the Worlds Center space station crashed into a red planet. When the station crashed, all users were booted offline to perform an update and Worlds Chat was upgraded to Worlds Chat Gold, thereby leaving early access. Knowledge Adventure Worlds, now known as Worlds Inc., would create sponsorships with major brands such as AOL and Coca-Cola, and also had a partnership with music artists such as David Bowie and Britney Spears. Worlds was bundled in with CDs provided to AOL subscribers. In 1998, Worlds Chat was once again overhauled into the "WorldsPlayer" we know today, which is based off of the Renderware 2 game engine and allowed for phong-shaded 3D models. Users created many custom worlds with WorldsPlayer (codenamed "Gamma" by developers), and hosted the World files on their web servers for others to load up and join. Unfortunately, many of these old worlds are lost to time forever, as is most of the old internet.
Worlds would stop getting major updates sometime around the mid-2000s, aside from some recent QoL improvements thanks to the late LRNR. For a long time, it only stayed online in order to provide the Worlds Inc. CEO with leverage in order to perform patent trolls and milk money from trademarks. Worlds is still very primitive by today's standards, but thanks to some explorers who joined around 2011 and spread the word that Worlds was still online, users began joining and a new wave of regulars arrived. It is still active to this day, and while it is not nearly as busy and lively as it used to be, there is a small sense of community among the several dozen people who still log in. Some OG Worlds users come back every now and then, too. It is a living and breathing museum, full of both old and new creations, and it's truly one of the only remaining ways to experience the spirit of the old internet. Worlds has inspired users to be innovative and artistic with their creations, whereas most other places on the web are so cookie-cutter and unremarkable by contrast.
This history lesson I just gave is by no means extensive. If you really are interested in the backstory behind Worlds, the Worlds Chat Wiki explains it best. And if you wanna jump right in and try it out, you can find copies of the WorldsPlayer available on the library at Worlio.com. 1900 is the version I personally recommend, though many World creators prefer to use 1890 while newbies like to use 1920+.
I need help with Worlds.
See the Tutorials section, and read this forum thread. If you are still confused, ask on the Worlio forums.
I want to submit Worlds content for this site.
Please email me, or contact me on Discord or XMPP. My contact information can be found on bonkmaykr.xyz. I will credit your name if I decide to feature your work.
Is the cult real?
No LMAO, don't be silly. It's a huge meme. If you think the Worlds cult is real, then I'm sorry, but you're going to walk away very disappointed. There's nothing scary here. What there is, however, is a very interesting and sparkling universe for you to explore. That's what made me stay, after all.
Worlds won't run on my computer!
Please read this forum thread.
Where do I download WorldsPlayer?
One, scroll up. Two, Google is your friend.
What did you make this site with?
I wrote every line of CSS and markup by hand. Anything that is generated from templates is proably handled by me too, save for any ad banners or webring embeds.
What browser and OS is this site meant for? It doesn't look that old...
The latest version of any browser for the latest computers. I know that's really weird for a website about a retro 90s chat program, but hear me out.
Firefox 52 is what I consider to be the bare minimum for browsing the web if you're on an old machine these days, as SSL/TLS technology evolves and older software fails to keep up with encryption standards, and HTML5 evolves as well. Firefox 52 has near perfect support for this websiteーexcept for one extremely nasty CSS bug that breaks the navigation on the side of the screen. This feature works just fine on Chrome 49, but Chrome 49 is incompatible with a ton of other things on this site and it's slower than a snail stuck to a chicken poop stain on a velcrow wall. No matter which browser you use, if you are on an older computer, you're basically screwed. I wrote this website with simplicity in mind, using my very zoomer-ish HTML5 browser knowledge, so making things compatible with the older browsers is hard. I'm working on workarounds but I have to draw the line somewhere. If you are on anything older than Windows XP, god help you, because I sure can't.
K-Meleon and Otter browser might look appealing, but don't fall for it. Otter in particular is so atrociously outdated that it makes Netscape 4 (an actually old browser) look like The Jetsons in comparison. Settle on Firefox for now since it's the closest you're going to get.
What page generator do you use?
The templates are created by me. They're either baked into the HTML the old-fashioned way, or loaded using Javascript. These pages will look very sterile compared to actual homepages from the golden era, so if you find that boring, I am sorry.
Where may I contact you?
My contact information is in the footer of bonkmaykr.xyz. I will be keeping it up to date, even if that site stays pretty dormant otherwise, so always look for my details there. I do not use Carrd or LinkTree.
How do I make my own site?
The "Learn" section on Neocities has some good resources. I taught myself using Mozilla DN and w3schools. As someone with a notable amount of experience, let me take this opportunity to educate you on a few things:
1. HTML and CSS are not programming. They are a document format. If you want to make things interactive, use Javascript.
2. Do NOT use large web frameworks unless you are building a web app that needs all of those features and it is not performance-sensitive. Trust me. Experienced developers hate this, and users who notice will hate it too. Using CSS/HTML generators is fine so long as they are efficient. PureCSS looks promising. Learn some PHP I/O or some Javascript networking if you wanna write your own very basic HTML importer.
Does KangWorlds have social media?
Yes! I post some short videos of Worlds.com on Tiktok and Youtube. Just be careful when looking for other Worlds related content since a lot of it is dumb clickbait "journalism".