My recollection is that for every interesting personal website with carefully compiled albeit idiosyncratic information, there were 10 sites along the lines of "Mikey's Ultimate Web Site!!!" with animated "under construction" GIFs, marquee tags, a guestbook script, and about ten webrings.

For better or worse, the closest thing today to the feeling of the old personal webpage era is Tumblr. The kids get up to some crazy stuff over there.