This isn't the best website to make your point because the website uses tables and hard-codes widths. Had it taken the simpler approach of no hard-coded widths, then it would be both desktop and mobile friendly with even less effort. It's like 5 pages of content, even the sidebar is superfluous.
Tables + hard-coded sizes in the HTML are the opposite of simplicity. It was a big hack, not something I look back with a smile.
Was it easier back then though? Because now you have all of these website creators that let you make a website with no coding needed at all. It seems way easier now, just with less motivation for anyone to make a website of their own now that social media is such a big thing
I don't think it was easier, but there was less pressure to get it right, so the barrier to entry was lessened.
Now one has to worry (they had to worry then, it just wasnt as publicly well known or visible) about accessibility, identity theft, domain theft, natonal and specific laws that must be worked around, scams, marketing, lawsuits, etc.
Back then you'd just throw up your geocities site about (Fox owned) X-files Scully fan-fic and be on your merry way; now you have to worry about an ad somewhere generating revenue from you having had posted Scullys' face, prompting a foreign script-kiddy to harass you with threats of legal tattling if you don't pay his bitcoin ransom, and when that's all done you receive a DMCA complaint from Fox to forward the revenue or take down Scullys' face, anyway.
One can see why domain experts are more prevalent now. There's a lot more ways to shoot yourself in the foot.
Website creator suites have just about always existed, well at least since the internet had any level of popularity, anyway.
I haven't seen a statement this wrong since someone last said they like Internet Explorer 6.
Web design back in those days (around 2000-2005, say) was terribly frustrating. Getting, for example, such a column layout to work across browsers involved either tables or a thousands tricks to get it working in CSS, in more than one browser. And those were the times we still believed in semantic markup, making frivolous tables and divs almost sacrilegious.
Today, it isn't uncommon for a website developed on, say, Firefox to flawlessly work in Safari and Chrome as well. Back then, you were about halfway done when it worked in one browser, because the other one needed different set of abominable tricks for its different set of bugs and inconsistencies.
Expectations also weren't quite as low as you make them out: All the cool kids did Java applets or Flash, two very annoying plugins, non-free binary blobs hiding their code and content from the world, but occasionally letting anyone who sends the right handshake remote-control your browser.
Tables + hard-coded sizes in the HTML are the opposite of simplicity. It was a big hack, not something I look back with a smile.