Ancient Web: Professor Shoelace Built an Empire Around Knots
Ian Fieggen turned a personal website into an enormous specialist reference about shoelaces, knots, lacing methods, tiny Windows utilities, computer graphics, and whatever else he felt was worth publishing.
Part of the Ancient Web Collection.
Ian Fieggen looked at the Internet and decided the world needed a definitive shoelace website.
He was correct.
Fieggen, also known as "Professor Shoelace," has kept the site online for more than two decades. The homepage says it has seen around 50 million visitors, and its biggest section is exactly what the nickname promises: lacing methods, shoelace information, knot instructions, and the "Ian Knot," which Fieggen presents as the world's fastest shoelace knot.
That would already be enough material for one extremely committed personal site.
Naturally, there is more.
A personal website is allowed to contain a person
The site also has sections for Fieggen's old Windows software, computer graphics work, personal writing, family history, and a page about his father Chris Fieggen, an early computer programmer for ANZ Bank in the 1960s.
The software section preserves tiny Windows utilities such as JPGExtra and PNGExtra. The graphics section comes from decades of experimentation with computer graphics. The family section reaches into genealogy.
Nothing says these subjects belong under one modern content niche.
They belong together because Ian made the website.
That is one of the most useful things the old personal Web can remind a webmaster in 2026. A site does not always need to begin with a market category. Sometimes depth arrives because somebody keeps following their interests for twenty years.
And shoelaces turn out to contain plenty of depth.
There are practical tying problems, decorative lacing patterns, knot mechanics, common mistakes such as the crooked Granny Knot, and enough variations to justify an entire specialist reference.
The front page was updated in November 2025. It still looks and behaves like a personal reference site rather than a media property trying to capture a demographic.
The funny part is that "a website about shoelaces" sounds trivial until you need to know something specific about shoelaces. Then suddenly you are very glad Professor Shoelace exists.
Part of the Ancient Web Collection.
- Categories: Ancient Web
- Tags: #ancientweb, #personalweb, #shoelaces, #howto, #knots, #oldweb