Some old websites merely survived. Mike Jittlov’s WizWorld appears to have survived because nobody had the heart to tell it to calm down.
This is the official site of animator, filmmaker, editor, effects artist, and professional bundle of kinetic energy Mike Jittlov, best known for The Wizard of Speed and Time. A contemporary DTV Group page says fans helped launch WizWorld in September 1997. The homepage itself carries a 2003 copyright notice and still announces itself as an “official glow-in-the-dark webpage.”
It means it.
Headings repeat at multiple sizes. Animated GIFs sparkle. A WebRing survives. The page asks why the background is moving, why Jittlov’s font crashed your computer, whether he has free software, and why the whole thing looks like a Christmas tree.
Elsewhere the site becomes a remarkably deep production archive.
WizWorld’s link index lists shooting scripts, schedules, budgets, press material, production photographs, special-effects explanations, QuickTime clips, old Macintosh utilities, travel videos, articles, props, costumes, fan art, and notes about the making and distribution of The Wizard of Speed and Time. It also includes material from Jittlov’s other animation work and personal collections.
A filmmaker’s brain rendered directly into HTML
This is what makes the site valuable in 2026.
Most official filmmaker websites eventually become clean portfolios managed by somebody else. WizWorld does the opposite. It preserves personality, tangents, jokes, technical debris, fan connections, obsolete media formats, and production details that would normally be scrubbed away during a redesign.
The page is also historically tied to the culture that built it. Jittlov thanks the friends and fans who helped launch and host the site, gave him a Macintosh, taught him HTML, secured the domain, and kept his work circulating online. It reads less like corporate credits and more like a small volunteer network keeping a cult film alive.
That is exactly what the late-1990s Web was good at.
A film that had trouble finding conventional distribution could build a second life through fan pages, mailing lists, QuickTime clips, WebRings, and direct contact with the creator. WizWorld is part archive, part museum, part sales pitch, and part extremely long personal note.
CacheRat’s larger 1,967 Ancient Web Domains research list contains many surviving sites from this era. Few are this unwilling to become normal.
Good.