From “I'd like to Post an Ad.”
to “post an ad”

The December 1998 capture is the oldest we found, and it is almost all text. Besides the posting links there are two short lists. One is about the List Foundation itself: Thanks sponsors!, Policies, Mission, About us and In the news. The other is the classifieds: apartments for rent, housing wanted, community, biz ads, for sale, events, tech events, five kinds of jobs and resumes.

The calendar link is labeled event calendar (Java applet). Three names sign the page, Nancy Melone, CEO, Craig Newmark and Philip Knowlton, above the date 25 November 1998.

The site had started in San Francisco in March 1995 as an email list.^[1] Newmark later said he had been going to call it San Francisco Events.^[2] Then, he recalled, he realized he could turn all of this e-mail into Web pages.^[3]

By January 1999 the tab says craigslist. The links haven’t moved. One new line, in red in the middle of the page, is about the mailing list the site grew from:

The page’s code also holds a notice, commented out in this capture’s HTML: New Posting Guidelines Effective December 1, 1998. Newmark said 1999 was the year he decided to run craigslist as a company and began charging for job postings in the San Francisco area.^[4]

In March 2000 the page gets its first blue sidebar and gray category blocks in our captures. The sidebar calls the site San Francisco Bay Area online community and holds a search box with four choices: jobs, resumes, housing and other. To the right, the categories sit under gray bars in bold blue links. A new group, internet jobs, lists web/info design, engineering and business. Under it all, a big blue banner says activist postings encouraged!

The small links tell you what kind of place this was. 2/3 party pictures sits in the sidebar. A line at the bottom offers a Sneak-preview : our new people-matching technology, and a green link explains here's the deal with the new categories.

That year Newmark handed management to Jim Buckmaster and kept working in customer service.^[5] In June, Boston became the first craigslist city outside the Bay Area; seven more US cities followed in August.^[1]

Buckmaster also started using poems on craigslist in 2000, strictly for the fun of it, as he told an interviewer in 2009. Each haiku was written for one part of the site, often to take the place of an error message.^[6] WIRED quoted one that could appear when you tried to post a message similar to one you had already entered:^[7]

None of the poems shows up on a homepage capture. The word haiku does, four years later.

The February 2001 page is the craigslist most people would still recognize. The name sits at the top left as a bold, underlined link. Under it are a yellow search craigslist box and a gray column of links; to the right, gray headings over columns of blue links: community, events, personals, housing, sale / wanted and jobs. Small red new tags mark recent additions, among them political forum, furniture and skilled trade / craft. The gray column advertises tickets onsale for 2/14 craigslist valentine party.

A list on the far right shows how far the site had spread: the five Bay Area regions, then Boston, Chicago, DC, Los Angeles, New York City, Portland, Sacramento (tagged new), San Diego, Seattle, Sydney and Melbourne.

By March 2002 a calendar grid fills the left column, with best-of-craigslist and contributions appreciated below it. The top link now says post a classified listing. The discussion forums get their own list, 19 of them, from parenting and cuisine to queer, romance and writers. In February 2004 that link becomes post to classifieds, and it keeps those words in every capture through 2018.

The 2004 forum list also has a new name in it: haiku. The 2002 list had none.

In February 2005 the San Francisco page counts its own listings. Several headings have a number in parentheses: for sale (91315), personals (58252), housing (30613), and (2502) beside the event calendar. The right side is a wall of city names, from albany and albuquerque down to separate lists for europe and asia.

In February 2006 the tab stops saying online community. It now reads craigslist: san francisco bay area classifieds for jobs, apartments, personals, for sale, services, community, and events. The left column adds a red > Katrina Relief <, a craigslist factsheet, job boards compared and list in space, next to links it already had in 2005, such as craigslist T-shirts and download firefox.

The January 2007 page adds my account at the top of the left column. Further down, under avoid scams & fraud and job boards compared, are lawsuit dismissed and defend net neutrality.

From 2008 we follow the San Francisco page at its own address, sfbay.craigslist.org, and its August 2008 tab begins craigslist: SF bay area. The name at the top left is a plain blue serif wordmark in regular weight. The numbers beside the headings are gone.

The left column starts with post to classifieds, my account and help, faq, abuse, legal, and further down come avoid scams & fraud and personal safety tips. The services list still includes erotic, and the gigs list ends with adult. The forums begin 1099, gifts, pets, apple, haiku.

The September 2009 and June 2010 captures keep this page almost unchanged. Three months after the 2010 one, the adult section made the news.

In May 2011 the page stops at a fixed width. In our 1440-pixel window the whole grid sits in the middle, with white margins on both sides; through 2010 it started at the left edge. The wordmark now sits above the left column, centered, and the search box has a category menu set to for sale. The services list ends with therapeutic, travel/vac and write/ed/tr8. erotic is no longer on it, and neither is adult under gigs.

The captures from 2012, 2013 and 2014 keep the centered columns, while links in the left column, some categories and the footer change. They miss two days when craigslist.org looked different:

The June 2015 tab drops two words, classifieds for, and now reads craigslist: SF bay area jobs, apartments, personals, for sale, services, community, and events. The footer says © 2015 craigslist. That month craigslist bought back the 28.4% stake eBay had held since 2004, and both companies said their lawsuits would be dismissed.^[12]

In May 2016 the event calendar starts its week on Monday. In 2015 its first column was still Sunday.

By June 2017 a language menu set to english sits at the top right, above a narrow column titled nearby cl: bakersfield, chico, fresno, gold country and on down the list. Personals still has its block under community, from strictly platonic to missed connections and rants and raves.

The June 2018 page has no personals. In its place under community is services, and missed connections moves into the community list itself, next to rants & raves. In the left column, terms of use carries a small new tag. The tab loses a word too: jobs, apartments, for sale, services, community, and events.

Craigslist had taken personals down that March, after Congress passed the bill known as FOSTA. Its notice said: We can't take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we have regretfully taken craigslist personals offline.^[13]

In June 2019 the top link of the left column changes for the first time since our 2004 capture. post to classifieds becomes create a posting. The June 2020 capture shows the 2019 grid.

TechCrunch reported on December 4, 2019, that craigslist’s official iOS app had been released the day before, with Android in beta. That was almost 25 years after the email list started in March 1995.^[14]

In May 2021 two links in the left column carry a small new: craigslist app and privacy policy. The sections are arranged as in 2018, though services gains health/well and some forum and sidebar links change. The November 2022 capture keeps that arrangement, and in June 2023 a magnifying glass appears in the search box, beside the gray placeholder search craigslist it already had.

Across these captures, the link for posting changed its words six times:

The link for posting near the top of each capture, listed at the first capture that shows new words. In 2000 a second link said post a job.

In May 2024 a purple peace sign appears on the page, to the left of the blue wordmark.

The sign wasn’t new to craigslist. In August 2009 WIRED described the peace sign that adorns the craigslist Web address, and Buckmaster said it was the only topic he could remember the two of them disagreeing about: Craig thought it was associated with the hippies and that hippies were discredited.^[7]

The posting link now says post an ad, in green, with a pencil-and-paper icon. new posting and my account move to the top right of the gray header bar, and the calendar week starts on Sunday again.

In June 2025 the wordmark turns purple to match the sign, and a map pin appears before SF bay area.

The February 2026 capture swaps the header links for three small icons labeled faves, post and acct. The footer has one row of seven links, help, safety, privacy, terms, about, app and sitemap, and © 2026 craigslist on a line below. Scroll down to the forum list, and between garden and help is the haiku forum, still there 22 years after our 2004 capture first showed it.

In December 1998 the link said I'd like to Post an Ad., in the first person, with a capital P and a period. In 2024 it says post an ad, lowercase, next to a pencil.

In between, craigslist added a peace sign, cities on several continents and an app, and it took personals away. The event calendar from the 1998 page is still in the left column in 2026. It is a grid of dates now, not a Java applet.