For those who wish to reminisce or those who are simply curious at how the site has evolved over time.

http://web.archive.org/web/20000101000000*/http://gamedev.net

I liked the 2005 black and 2006 white because of the information density.

I know it is more common to have big fonts and lots of white space, but with the current forums by default I can only see about 3 posts on the screen at once. I used to have a custom CSS file that shrunk the white space to give about 4 posts at once but it became difficult to maintain after each site update.

Pulling at one nearly from random, contrast this conversation from 2005 with today's rendering of the same. In 2005 I could get the question and three full responses on my monitor. In 2016 I can fit the question and slightly more than one single response.

Oh, lol, I assumed those were going to be forum snapshots. I pretty much never use the main page so I don't actually have memories of most of those, despite being an active member of gamedev the whole time.

As far as the forums go, remember the version that used green crystals for some of the icons? I always wanted to see a black background version wit a more developed blue or violet crystal theme.

You will find that most of the snapshots will actually let you travel deeper into the website as it was at that time i.e. into forums and topics themselves.