GeoCities to Close, A Part of My Web History Evaporates

Published April 23, 2009 @ 15:14 in Memories

yahooGeoCities is closing later this year. If you were on the web in the late 90s, you knew GeoCities.

I cut my web page teeth on GeoCities, signing up for a free account over ten years. I remember when my GeoCities page got tied to my Yahoo! member name, shortly after Yahoo! bought GeoCities in 1999.

The cause and effect on GeoCities prompted me to learn HTML. I had a taste of simple web development and I wanted more control. I wanted to hand code, and the rest is history.

I haven't really thought about GeoCities in years, but I'm sorry to see it go. Another part of my personal web history is evaporating.

7 Responses to "GeoCities to Close, A Part of My Web History Evaporates"

Kirsten
April 23, 2009 / 20:49

I had totally forgotten about my Geo page... I just went to see what was still there, and saved some files for posterity. Wow. That goes way back in the "nursie" online history.

I started as "soon2bnurse97" because I was in my last semester of Nursing at Fanshawe... and when I graduated, I couldn't be "soon2b" anymore, so I just changed to Nursie. I was a Community Leader for Heartland and Silicon Valley, a frequent "porch person" in the Heartland Front Porch chatroom, and when GeoCities when public with their IPO, I found myself about $1500 richer thanks to the stocks they gave their volunteers.

Sad to see Yahoo is closing the free websites.

The_Voice
April 24, 2009 / 01:09

I had a couple pages, but the one I'm most proud of from back then, was my high school newspaper's website, started from scratch by me and a buddy of mine, we used frames, and javascript, and horrible graphics ;).

You can still see it at: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/1805/

Toronto Mike
April 24, 2009 / 07:46

That's an awesome example of what the web looked like back in the day. All we're missing are those spinning animated gifs of the mailbox and a "best viewed in IE" or "best viewed in Netscape Navigator" icon.

I never should have taken my old sites offline. I have a few on that web space you got from Rogers when they were @home.

I remember they gave me a 10mb chunk of space for every user on the account. I built tributes to Dukes of Hazzard, Mr. Mugs, Homer Simpson, Bill Barilko. Only the Bill Barilko tribute survives to this day.

Dizz
April 24, 2009 / 11:17

I still have nightmares of their "WYSIWYG" editor, and attempts to copy the code and move it over to another web provider.

Regardless, I'll miss them.

The_Voice
April 24, 2009 / 13:29

The "Macnews Mail" icon *was* a spinning animated gif of a mailbox when the site originally went up :)

I still can't use a WYSIWYG HTML editor... to this day! I get frustrated with trying to get it to do something, and inevitably edit the HTML.

Roshan
April 24, 2009 / 21:54

I have a few accounts with them and I've used Geocities to store images online for which I would link to various posts in my blog. This is sad. My affiliation with Geocities goes back to 1999! It's a sign of the times, a reminder of the recession (like we needed one) and a shame for all of us who first started hosting html pages in their free services.

SilentGuardian
October 10, 2009 / 22:21

i remember you Mike....i was SilentGuardian from the time the porch first appeared until it finally disappeared forever. it's a pleasant surprise to find my old friends from the porch.....i miss each and every one of you dearly....we were all more than just friends...we transgressed those bonds and became family.
i wish you well my friend.

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