There was a time when websites could be genuinely unique.
Back then, design wasn’t dictated by SEO checklists, Core Web Vitals, or “best practice layouts”. You could open a site and immediately feel like someone had designed it - not just assembled it from the same handful of patterns in slightly different colours.
That freedom has mostly gone.
Today, a lot of websites look the same because, in many ways, they have to. SEO, performance, accessibility, and usability are all important, but the side effect is a web full of very sensible, very similar layouts.
That doesn’t mean we don’t miss the fun stuff.
When Flash Ruled the Web (and Why It Died)
If you were building sites in the 2000s, you’ll remember Flash.
Flash let designers and developers do things that were impossible at the time:
- rich animation
- interactive experiences
- full-screen storytelling
- genuinely playful interfaces
Some of it was awful.
Some of it was brilliant.
But Flash had serious problems:
- poor accessibility
- heavy CPU usage
- security issues
- and, ultimately, no future on mobile, especially once Apple decided it wasn’t happening on it's new iPhones
Flash dying was probably the right decision for the web.
But something got lost with it: the sense that websites could be experiences, not just pages.
A Client Sent Us an Idea…
Recently, a client sent us a concept that immediately triggered that old feeling.
Our first reaction was genuinely:
“Wow… that’s cool. That feels like old-school Flash.”
The difference this time?
- It works in a modern browser
- It doesn’t rely on dead technology
- It respects how the web works today
(Although yes, we’ll be honest, our demo is much happier on desktop than on phones.)
Still, it scratched that same itch:
interactive, visual, slightly unnecessary… but memorable.
A Proof of Concept (For Now)
We built a proof of concept to see how far we could push the idea.
It’s not live on a client site yet.
It might never be.
But it was too cool not to share.
So we’ve embedded the demo here as a standalone experiment, a reminder that even in a very SEO-driven world, there’s still room to build things just because they’re interesting.
How We Built It (High Level)
Without going too deep into the weeds:
- The globe itself is rendered using WebGL, via Three.js
- A globe abstraction layer handles arcs, rotation, and camera movement
- Location data is driven from JSON (so it’s easily swappable later)
- Everything is packaged as a self-contained widget, isolated from WordPress to avoid conflicts
- Interaction (hover, click, labels) is handled outside the globe where possible to keep alignment sane
It’s very much a proof of concept, not a product, but it shows what’s possible when you mix modern browser tech with a bit of curiosity.
Where This Could Go Next
Right now, this is just a proof of concept, a standalone demo built to explore an idea.
But if this ever became a real product, the obvious direction would be a WordPress plugin.
The idea wouldn’t be to hard-code locations or visuals. Instead, the plugin would let site owners manage everything from inside WordPress:
- Add, edit, and remove locations
- Control map points, labels, and descriptions
- Attach links, contact details, or supporting content
- Decide which locations connect to which (arcs, routes, regions)
- Drop the globe into a page or post using a shortcode or block
All without touching code.
The heavy lifting, the WebGL, rendering, and interaction, would stay neatly packaged behind the scenes. WordPress would just handle the content and configuration, which is what it’s good at.
Whether this ever turns into a finished plugin or not, the experiment shows what’s possible when modern browser tech is combined with a familiar CMS, and that interactive, visually interesting features don’t have to be locked away in bespoke builds forever.
Why We Still Care About This Stuff
At Bollabo, most of what we build is sensible, structured, and designed to work hard for our clients.
That’s the reality of modern websites, performance, SEO, accessibility, conversions. All important. All necessary.
But underneath that, we’re still designers.
We spend most of our time deep in code now, solving practical problems and building robust systems, but we still care about how things feel, not just how they function. We still notice when something is visually interesting, playful, or a bit unexpected.
Sometimes, building something just because it’s cool is reason enough.
And every so often, those are the bits people remember, the moments where a website stops feeling like a template and starts feeling like something with personality.
That’s why we still enjoy making things like this.