In 1997, a first Linux installation on a DEC x386 turned into printed HOWTOs, kernel compilation, dial-on-demand networking, web serving, dynamic-IP workarounds, and an early personal domain.
From consumer to participant
The important memory is less about any particular technology than the shift in perspective: operating a domain and a server made the Internet feel like something a person could participate in directly rather than merely consume through somebody else's service.
A very 1997 workaround
With a dynamic address, a script could generate an ASP redirect page and FTP it to a conventionally hosted server so the public address pointed back toward the machine at home.
The thread that survived
YourFeed is partly an attempt to make that older sense of participation approachable again without requiring somebody to become a 1990s Linux administrator first.
A project origin story, not a claim that every later design decision was already present in 1997.
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