In case anyone missed the announcement, Geocities is closing it's doors on Oct 26th. That means all content will not be accessible after this time. For myself, I have mixed feelings. It was already on it's way down when Yahoo! acquired them, and since then, has fallen into disrepair and neglect. It was one of the first free hosting services out there, if you didn't mind your page overrun with ads and links to other sites. Still, I created a lot of my very first web pages on that thing, and there are some useful pages that will go missing forever because the creators no longer give a shit. There is one page in particular I will be trying to download in its entirety this week, and a site I need to transfer to my own hosting, but other than that, cest la vie, you had a good run, Geocities.
I had a goecities page a llooong time ago, but got tired of the ads. There's nothing worse than more than half your page being taken up by ads that you care nothing about. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Bad rubbish? While the pages have seen their time, services like that were revolutionary in their day. Free publishing world wide paid for by ads = bad rubbish? You might not like the ads, but you obviously liked it being free to you.
ahhhhh but haven't you heard...... Everyone wants it free with all the bells and whistles included. So no ads.
Geocities was a bit like Hotmail--a nifty free intro to the Internet. The thing is at least Hotmail is a place to dump junkmail. I guess if you were a young web developer, Geocities is still a neat way to demo a website concept to a prospect--that's what I did for my brother's bar years ago--but it doesn't really have as much of a reason for existing as Hotmail still does. (Although both were ruined when their time passed/they got gobbled up by the megacorps.)
Why doe Yahoo do that? Buy up stuff, just to let it fail and discontinue it later? I have a Dell DJ. It's interface with the computer is Music match Jukebox. Oh, that's right, Yahoo bought MMJ and discontinued it. I'm using an old version now.
Many of the purchases at that time were caused by companies buying everything they could get their hands on in the hope that one of them would be the next big thing.
That's the thing I'll miss GeoCities for, not because it was real awesome or anything, but because it gave me a free place to try out my website building skills. It's a little sad that will no longer be an option to people who are new to that kind of thing.
I remember some of my favorite sites were Geocities sites way back a loooong time ago. I made a website there six years ago, but nothing much came out of it.
Welp, it is now Oct 26th and Geocities is still open! When something says it will close on a certain date, I sort of expect that it will be CLOSED, not the last day of operation.
It has begun! A few geocites websites are now no longer accessible. If you know a subdomain or a smaller page of the main site, you still might be able to access it, but a bunch of main sites are now no longer there. Geocities is officially drawing it's last breath. Hold me.
First they came for Tripod, and I did not speak out—because I did not use Tripod; Then they came for Homestead, and I did not speak out—because I did not use Homestead; Then they came for Angelfire, and I did not speak out—because I did not use Angelfire; Then they came for Geocities, and I did not speak out—because I did not use Geocities; Then they came for my free hosting service—and there was no one left to speak out for it.
angelfire's still around. And if you miss the days of animated gifs, autoplaying music, and tiled backgrounds, you only need to go as far as Myspace.
I think he was using poetic license. Our Toastmasters site is on Homestead. I guess it is a pay service now, but it is still around.
