Geocities Shutting Down Today

Paolo DF writes "Geocities is closing today. Its advent in 1995 was a sign of the rising 'Internet for everyone' era, when connection speeds were 1,000x or 2,000x slower than is common today. You may love it or hate it, but millions of people had their first contact with a Web presence right here. I know that Geocities is something that most Slashdotters will see as a n00b thing — the Internet was fine before Geocities — but nevertheless I think that some credit is due. Heck, there's even a modified xkcd homepage to mark the occasion." Reader commodore64_love notes a few more tributes around the Web. Last spring we discussed Yahoo's announcment that Geocities would be going away.

Comments

Internet Archived; Time to Move On

[eldavojohn]

Most memories of Grandpa have been archived. It's time to pull the plug. RIP you browser crashing old coot.

Re:Internet Archived; Time to Move On

[nametaken]

Meh, it paved the way for the horrors of design and content that replaced it... MySpace and blogs. We've still got those.

Re:Internet Archived; Time to Move On

[spun]

Except no one is writing their own MySpace layout, you just copy a bunch of CSS from some template site.

So rather than inventing their own ugly, people can copy-paste generic pre-made ugly. Ah, the wonders of progress...

Re:Internet Archived; Time to Move On

[sopssa]

I'm annoyed. Geocities was a convenient place for me to dump files I needed to access from home or work. It was also more customizable than Livejournal or Facebook.

http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1416685&cid=29855905

First off, I think we should disclose who we work for. I work for the a defense contractor that builds tanks. You probably work for RIAA or some other content company.

And still we wonder why secret stuff leaks :)

Re:Internet Archived; Time to Move On

[Canazza]

People *made* Geocities pages? I thought they just typed random stuff in MS Frontpage...

Re:Internet Archived; Time to Move On

[Beardo the Bearded]

IIRC, I was under the CapeCanaveral directory, number 9799. I haven't even checked it in years.

I used Sizzling HTML Jalfezi and hand-coding to make my Geocities page. When they brought in the WYSIWYG editor, I was still using notepad to edit my pages. Those HTML skills have paid more than one bill and translated very handily to XML.

But that's not all. The skills I learned kludging my way through Geocities (and with Jalfrezi) still get used today. I write a handful of websites for the volunteer organizations I'm with, and more than one employer's website has been upgraded with a few of the things I learned from GC. It was a great sandbox where you could learn the basics of the web framework and HTML coding. Yeah, you couldn't host fark or /. on there, but it let you see how tables worked, what a page of animated GIFs looked like, and how to insert javascript into a website. Hey, I wore teal clothing because it was in style. Don't mock the GIF / MIDI that was the style at the time.

Finally, and this is the best part, it indirectly put me into contact with a woman I'd never met. After a little bit of contact, we went on a date. Long story short, we've been married for eleven years and have two kids.

We joke that the Internet (and I will capitalize it until they give away all my parts) created life.

Re:Internet Archived; Time to Move On

[Reverend528]

I'm annoyed. Geocities was a convenient place for me to dump files I needed to access from home or work.

The internet is not just something you dump something on. It's not a big truck.

N00b thing?

[pclminion]

Let's not get all full of ourselves here. We might go way back, but to say that the majority of Slashdotters were online BEFORE Geocities is probably stretching it. I was on the Internet before 1995, and I don't think of Geocities as a "n00b thing." 14 years ago isn't exactly a blink of the eye.

Re:N00b thing?

[LWATCDR]

Has it been that long?
Can someone help me install Trumpet Winsock so I can get my Windows 3.11 system in the internet using PPP?

Re:N00b thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen - sure, Geocities lowered the barrier to constructing content (in the sense that you didn't need a shell account or to know how to use one), but you still needed to figure out HTML. You still needed to be a little bit geeky.

The full "social networks" that came after Geocities, those are what lowered the barrier to the degree where it's a "n00b thing."

Re:N00b thing?

[flitty]

"Winsock"

That word is a swearword to anybody who was new to networking at the time.

Re:N00b thing?

[Lumpy]

Sure can! There's a Pirated copy of the latest version on the BBS at 455-343-2121 use the username: P1rat3s and the Password of :arrrrgh! It's under the utilities section.

They only have 3 lines so try late at night or keep redialing.

While you are there try the new linux thing. You can download the first disk set of yggdrasl there. It's really cool!

Re:N00b thing?

[c0d3g33k]

Hey look - it's a low UID reunion!

Re:N00b thing?

[Andy Dodd]

I don't see any low UIDs, young grasshopper...

Re:N00b thing?

[MobyDisk]

I think you misunderstood the n00b comment.

I don't think they meant that people who joined the internet during or after Geocities are n00bs. It meant that Geocities was a way for n00bs to join the internet. Geocities was a point of entry for people who wanted a web page but didn't know HTML, or know what an ISP was, and couldn't pay monthly fees. It was a place where the tag found popularity, full of obnoxious backgrounds, and embedded sound effects. It was a place for n00bs.

Basically, it was like MySpace.

Re:N00b thing?

[commodore64_love]

I hate using MS-DOS with the Windows overlay.

On a Commodore all you need to do is shove a cartridge in the rear and run an ethernet cable into it. Plug'n'play in 1982 baby! ;-)

Re:N00b thing?

[dunkelfalke]

Trumpet Winsock wasn't exactly a problem, every computer magazine with a cd had it and Netscape Navigator 1.0 on it. But I had to download the Internet Access Kit and the PPP driver for OS/2 Warp at some BBS.

Aah, what a time. Back then IBM WebExplorer was a decent browser and MSIE was not even in planning.

Re:N00b thing?

[Skuld-Chan]

I do remember when geocities came online. I was still using Windows 3.1 (really hadn't played with linux much) and had a shell connection to a Solaris machine run by Oregon EDNET (compass). If you search around google you'll find references to that.

Anyhow I thought it was cool they were basically giving away website space for free. The original version of it wasn't a banner, popup encursted nightmare - those came later, probably when someone who worked there woke up one day and asked themselves how it was going to make money.

For sure - my first website ever was on geocities.

Re:N00b thing?

[Amorpheus_MMS]

I'm sure fourteen years must be close to an Internet Millennium.

Re:N00b thing?

[br00tus]

I agree. In 1993 I heard about lynx and the World Wide Web, but when I checked it out and compared it to UMN's UNIX gopher client and gopherspace, it did not compare well at all, gopherspace was far superior with much more content, search engines like Archie and Veronica etc.

In November 1994 Netscape released its first beta, in December its first full version. For me, this was really when the web began to look more interesting - Navigator was well-made, there was graphical content and so forth. Also, don't forget, Navigator could use the Gopher protocol (my Firefox still can - Aerv.nl. From early 1995 on, you began to see an explosion of web content.

As far as hosting - in early 1996 I began working at an ISP which charged $50 a month for 10 megabytes of disk space, and the use of CGI, email and so forth was extra. And we were real cheap compared to some local competitors - people came flooding in to use us. Geocities began offering free (with advertising, a Geocities URL etc.) web pages in mid-1995, I created one in October 1995, as I certainly could not afford to shell out $50 a month for my web page back then. There was nothing really n00b about Geocities, Craigslist's web page did not have HTML as a job requirement when Geocities launched, in fact, Craigslist did not have a web page until 1996, the year after Geocities launched.

Re:N00b thing?

[Megaweapon]

"Slashdot? Pfft. It'll never last."

Slashdot of yore didn't last. Slashdot of mindless fanboyism killed it. Now with 30495% more JavaScript as well!

Re:N00b thing?

[clintp]

Get a haircut, hippie. And get off my lawn.

Damned kids these days with their nostalgia...

Re:N00b thing?

[afidel]

Some of us predate UID's and only got one to banish John Katz from our homepage.

Re:N00b thing?

[skeeto]

I am not a number! I am a free man!

Re:N00b thing?

[toofast]

Is that you, uncle Clint?

Re:N00b thing?

[sjames]

N00b is relative. In those days, to become a n00b, you had to first know the internet existed (many were blissfully unaware), then figure out Linux or Trumpet winsock. Being a bit geeky was a prerequisite for n00bdom on the net. Then AOL came along and lowered the bar for becoming a n00b (and thus the quality of n00bs).

Re:N00b thing?

[jayspec462]

I was an AOL user, you insensitive clod!

Me, too!

Re:N00b thing?

[Chris Burke]

I am not a number! I am- Oh wait, I'm number 6130. Ha! In your face number 6131!

WTF Yahoo!

[clinko]

WTF! Didn't they see my gif saying my site was under construction!

Re:WTF Yahoo!

[CharlyFoxtrot]

At least they archived all the "under construction" gifs (WARNING: clicking on that link may be dangerous to your mental health.) If anyone's interested this metafilter thread has the story of the guy who created the first of these gifs about halfway in.

check the source.

[jointm1k]

Heck, there's even a modified xkcd homepage to mark the occasion."

<HTML WEB="2.0">
<HEAD>
<TITLE>

...

</HTML>
GOTO 10

Re:check the source.

[Tony Hoyle]

I liked the

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE='SCHEME'>(define (eval exp env) (cond ((self-evaluating? exp) exp) ((variable? exp) (lookup-variable-value exp env)) ((quoted? exp) (text-of-quotation exp)) ((assignment? exp) (eval-assignment exp env)) ((definition? exp) (eval-definition exp env)) ((if? exp) (eval-if exp env)) ((lambda? exp) (make-procedure (lambda-parameters exp) (lambda-body exp) env)) ((begin? exp) (eval-sequence (begin-actions exp) env)) ((cond? exp) (eval (cond->if exp) env)) ((application? exp) (apply (eval (operator exp) env) (list-of-values (operands exp) env))) (else (error "Common Lisp or Netscape Navigator 4.0+ Required" exp))))</SCRIPT>

Too bad

[DogDude]

I think it's too bad. Geocities really did make it easy to get a web page online, and is arguably, still one of the easiest ways for *anybody* to get information out there. The beauty of the early web was that there was a lot of weird information that was often maintained by a single person with a passion for, say, peanut butter flavored roller skates. I see the web becoming increasing homogenized today, with lots and lots of interlinking, and less interesting, weird unique content. Despite their annoying JS ads, I'll still miss Geocities.

Re:Too bad

[Aladrin]

I don't think there's less unique content. I think there's -more- non-unique content. You're just having trouble finding the unique content because you're traveling in the well-known circles. I still find plenty of things that only return a few results in Google that are actually for what I want.

And the fact that things are repeated isn't bad, either. The other day I wanted to know how to thicken honey. I buy 'spreadable' honey at the store, but I prefer the taste of some other more earthy honeys and want them spreadable. Turns out it's called 'whipped honey' by most people and you actually don't -add- anything to it. Because there are a dozen or so sites about it, 1 of them actually managed to hit enough that my keywords found it. If there had been only 1 site, I probably would still be wondering a year from now.

Re:Too bad

[smellsofbikes]

I've heard a lot of people make the claim that the Internet is less interesting than it used to be, because there are less people making webpages about peanut-butter-flavored roller skates, but I wonder if that's true. I think it's more an issue of dilution: there are 100x as many people online as there were 10 years ago, and almost all of them are boring mundane people making boring mundane webpages, so the interesting (and, in my judgment, *useful*) pages are just much harder to find. But for all the people who *want* to read about the latest celebrity mishap, the Internet is probably becoming *more* useful. Speaking as someone who has more than my share of weird micro-interest webpages online, and has since 1996, I'm getting consistently increasing traffic and when I do a search on the sort of subjects my pages are about, I find consistently increasing numbers of similar pages, but neither the interest nor the other pages are increasing at anywhere nearly how quickly the Internet as a whole is increasing. I figure we're just getting lost in the noise, which is fine as long as the info is still out there. However, if people have evidence that the little weird quirky pages are actually disappearing, rather than just getting swamped, I'd love to hear about it.

Ah Geocities, farewell

[ZekoMal]

I'm a noob I s'pose; geocities was my entry into the internet. For me, that was how I learned all the HTML codes: I would type in what I thought would look good, check out the end result, then go back and fix it up. Most of the content wasn't that good, but you could find all sorts of little gems with enough searching. Can't even recall how many custom Doom/Heretic levels I found thanks to geocities...

Goodbye, Jesux

[hondo77]

I'm going to miss Jesux, the born-again Linux.

So Long and Thanks for all the Blink Tags!

[Kagato]

So Long and Thanks for all the Blink Tags!

Re:XKCD

[agentgonzo]

XKCD has a lovely tribute to it today as well.

... which it says in the summary. I know a lot of people on here don't RTFA, but to not read the summary either??? What exactly do you read?

Source code

[Travbrack]

Check out the source code, good stuff:

{HTML WEB="2.0"}
{SCRIPT LANGUAGE="QBASIC">IF $BROWSER = "IE" THEN GOTO 50{/SCRIPT}
{TABLE BORDER="5" CELLPADDING="5" SHELL="REGEDIT.EXE"}

R.I.P.

[ari_j]

I am hopeful that any information I may need that was only ever hosted on some guy's Geocities site (probably in SiliconValley) has been archived. There is a lot of it, from information about microcontroller programming to Old English word lists and grammar lessons, that up to last week I ended up at some geocities.com address for. It hosted a lot more than just nested blink and marquee tags.

Got to give credit where credit is due...

[sean_nestor]

Say what you want about aesthetics, but Geocities gave a lot of young people (myself included) their first taste of web design. Long before cookie-cutter social networking sites made web coding languages trivial, services like Geocities and Angelfire were giving people all the tools to build a personal web site with. Sure, they weren't all winners (by a long shot), but there were enough diamonds in the rough that I still have a soft spot for the days when a lot of young kids actually bothered to learn HTML and CSS so they could make their page look a little nicer.

We often overlook the idea of using web sites as a form of expression, but that's exactly what a lot of the self-made websites were back then. And I remember seeing a lot of really amazing layouts being made by people who otherwise had no interest in anything techy, a little after CSS hit the mainstream.

Say what you will, but Geocities got a lot of young people - myself included - to get their hands dirty with web design. I, for one, will miss it.

Marking the occasion

[macbuzz01]

Based on the design, it looks like slashdot is marking the occasion too....what....it always looks like this?

Re:XKCD

[bertoelcon]

I have seen people not even read TFT. (The Full Title)

Re:XKCD

[Plunky]

"Reply to This?"

Just gives an empty box, what do I type?

:wq

hmm

^D

meh

^X^C

nope.. ah, "Submit"?

Geocities lead me to my wife

[Christoph]

I got an email from a stranger in the Philippines asking for help with a document she found on my website. I responded (somewhat begrudgingly), she thanked me. I followed a link to her Geocities homepage in her signature line, and (seeing her photos) began emailing her.

http://www.geocities.com/balene46/Photo_Gallery.html

We've been married four years now.
http://www.cgstock.com/personal/arlene_gregerson ...and have a great toddler.
http://www.cgstock.com/athena

Thanks, geocities.

Re:Geocities lead me to my wife

[Cunk]

So now that Geocities is shutting down does that mean your marriage will be annulled? Check the TOS. I'm pretty sure it does.

Sucks, dude. :(

One of the greatest lessons ever learned...

[Antiocheian]

Geocities made me realize that it is not the medium people lack, but the talent. I would see thousands of people trying to communicate a message and it was really sad to find out that their message would be best if it wasn't communicated at all. Painters with no skill, musicians with no muse, writers who couldn't write an interesting paragraph etc.

I remember I was so optimistic about the freedom of expression and what I experienced in Geocities still remains one of the most bitter experiences about people in general. Perhaps the most. Seeing all those ungifted people patting each other in the back, refusing to accept what they created was trash it was disheartening every day.

I was raised with the philosophy that "whoever thinks freely, thinks well" and it was in Geocities that I discovered how false that is. I am thankful for that, but did it have to be so blunt?

Re:One of the greatest lessons ever learned...

[Eil]

I hear you. There was a time I thought that Slashdotters, given their ability to create a free account or post anonymously, could one day shape the ideas of millions through their multitude of Informative or Insightful opinions. Instead, all we got were a bunch of jaded windbags complaining incessantly about how mediocre everyone else in the world is.

I felt a great disturbance in the Internet

[Dahamma]

It's as if millions of awful websites suddenly cried out and were suddenly silenced. But no one heard them because no one has actually viewed any of them in years.

Oh SiliconValley Peaks #3737

[EkriirkE]

I remember picking my neighborhood page, throwing up useless junk about how much macs suck and PC rule, animated GIFs for IChat, ICQ and webring. Then I wrote a program that drew visitors to my page and got me recognition in the weekly geocities digests for my traffic and a couple free tshirts (I still have one in the plastic wrapper, the other I wear as casual). They gave me more webspace and bandwidth as well. Then a year or so later Yahoo bought them up and started doling out vengeance against those who had active sites. This is when GeoCities truly died. All that we saw between then and now was postmortem random nerve firing. Yahoo routinely would shut down my site with tales of "Bandwidth exceeded"

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