Comments for Flee Geocities Before It Closes Forever

Flee Geocities Before It Closes Forever

2009-10-24T20:00:01Z

Before Blogspot and Wordpress, and even before Google, there was Geocities. But no more. If you have files or content stored on Yahoo's GeoCities service, be sure to back up or move or it by Monday. That's when the service, an early free web host and nerd training ground, closes down forever. It's like part of my lonely, geeky adolescence is about to die.

Yahoo, of course, suggests that GeoCities holdouts move their sites to Yahoo's paid web hosting service for only $10/month.

Do you have a free or cheap host that you like and can recommend for GeoCities refugees? Share recommendations in the comments.

End of an Era: GeoCities to Close This Month (Thanks, mac-phisto!)

Comment from trujunglist on 2009-10-26

2009-10-26T23:59:21Z

webs.com has free hosting with an easy to use visual basic-like interface for creating your terrible, eyesore sites that no one will ever see! enjoy!

Comment from pot_roast on 2009-10-26

2009-10-26T20:18:50Z

Sadly, one of the biggest reasons that Geocities is being shuttered is because of rampant abuse by spammers. Spammers/scammers/phishers were creating Geocities pages and spamming out the URLs.

Damn spammers screwing up everything. :|

Comment from mcs328 on 2009-10-26

2009-10-26T19:15:03Z

[xkcd.com]

I think that this sums it up nicely.

Comment from theblackdog on 2009-10-26

2009-10-26T18:39:06Z

Wow...I wonder if my old website exists there. Of course, I shouldn't look at it at work because it was dedicated to how to use Napster.

Comment from jheri curl juice on 2009-10-26

2009-10-26T18:28:17Z

@Laura Northrup: Gah! Out, Out, HTML code of the Devil! *splashes holy water*

Comment from Covertghost on 2009-10-26

2009-10-26T18:00:28Z

I, for one, won't miss all the seizure inducing sites people always made with geocities/tripod/angelfire.

Comment from PencilSharp on 2009-10-26

2009-10-26T17:48:57Z

For folks who were hosting their files on GeoCities:

Aside from asking "What are you thinking?!", a good free alternative might be SkyDrive, from evil old Microsoft. You get 25 Gb of storage, with a 50Mb limit per file. 25 gigs will hold a LOT of zip files...

and animated GIFs...

Best part: most folks with GeoCities accounts probably still have active Hotmail accounts, which is all you need to get your online space. It's the only reason I still use mine...

Comment from Bearded Rapper on 2009-10-26

2009-10-26T09:09:38Z

Moment of silence, please.

Comment from dmuth on 2009-10-26

2009-10-26T07:50:21Z

I'm a big fan of NearlyFreeSpeech. They only charge you for bandwidth and disk space that you use, so a small site that doesn't get much traffic will literally cost pennies a month.

Comment from kaceetheconsumer on 2009-10-25

2009-10-26T02:10:32Z

I had my first webpage on Geocities. I moved out when the ads went from a banner here or there to animated banners everywhere plus popups and floatovers. That's about when I decided it was worth it to pay for my own space that could be ad-free.

Comment from Andy - The Digitante on 2009-10-25

2009-10-26T01:08:32Z

If you want a full featured host that is EXTREMELY INEXPENSIVE, you really can't get better than Nearly Free Speech dot Net. I've got my blog hosted, email forwarding, and the whole package and it costs less than a dollar a month. You only pay for what you use.

[www.nearlyfreespeech.net]

Comment from Ptath on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T22:40:25Z

Another good host is Siteground. They offer a lot for a sub-$100 host, and also offer other premium services that can come in handy when you expand, such as database hosting and transfer and security certificate.

All this is swell, but the cherry on top is a support team that actually answers email and tries to be both helpful and accomodating. I would stay with them another 5 years just for that.

Comment from Ptath on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T22:34:47Z

@thewriteguy: No grief and sadness: All of them animated GIFs, rotating cubes, autostart MIDI music and sparklers have evolved, are now MP3, Java and Flash, and live on MySpace pages...

RIP blinking text, however not by the same hand...

Comment from floraposte on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T22:24:15Z

@floraposte: Whoops! I thought people were saying that your link didn't have sound, but it does. Oh, well, now there are two visuals.

Comment from floraposte on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T22:06:46Z

@Traveshamockery: Yes, the work of webpagesthatsuck.com just became much harder.

Comment from floraposte on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T22:05:48Z

@Révolution: Wayback Machine? [www.archive.org]

Comment from floraposte on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T22:03:33Z

@Trai_Dep: My gift to you:

Comment from floraposte on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T22:02:01Z

@pecan 3.14159265: Aw, angelfire. I remember when that was equivalent to a Warning sign on a Usenet poster.

Comment from Traveshamockery on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T21:53:53Z

What about the blink tag? Won't SOMEBODY think of the blink tag?!?!?

Goodbye, o land of scrolling marquees and animated rotating globe .gifs.

Comment from morganlh85 on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T21:31:01Z

I always used Angelfire when I built my silly teenager phanpages lol

Comment from FrugalFreak on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T21:13:25Z

I'm gonna miss the wavz files.

Comment from Kimaroo - 100% Pure Natural Kitteh on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T21:11:42Z

@Trai_Dep: I know, that lil song gets stuck in my head.

Comment from t0ph on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T20:56:08Z

@Papa Midnight: Yeah, HostGator has been good to me. I pay like 10/m for unlimited domains etc, and they are pretty quick on support tix when I needed changes made.

Comment from Papa Midnight on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T20:55:41Z

@zekedms: I've had issues with Dreamhost in the past with a blog I used to run with a friend. It was not even bandwidth intensive. Nothing more than a high impression small news blog running off a customized Wordpress installation. Dreamhost kept interrupting our service for numerous reasons which made absolutely no sense so I won't even bother to regurgitate them here. What I will say though is that Dreamhost caused us s many problems. We were offline for a consecutive week at one point. It just was not worth the hassle. I'd avoid them at all cost.

Comment from Papa Midnight on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T20:51:38Z

Using Host Gator myself. For their low price, and pretty solid service, I can't complain.

Comment from Papa Midnight on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T20:50:14Z

@piratealice: Same. Geocities inspired me to move so far in the field of HTML. Back then, every one was competitive as hell with designs.

Comment from Papa Midnight on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T20:49:29Z

@Trai_Dep: "If you would prefer another target - a military target? Then name the system!"

Comment from Dondegroovily on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T20:29:51Z

@seamer: Geocities was never king of anything, and is not even a comparison to Google, which you yourself kinda admitted when you said Yahoo was the top search engine back then.

Comment from PsiCop on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T20:08:44Z

I currently have a couple of sites on BlueHost. It's not free, and it may not even be the cheapest hosting service; but the prices are very reasonable, include a domain, customer service and tech support are good and responsive, there's been no downtime to speak of, and with the SimpleScripts package, it's very easy to set up a genuine blog, wiki, or CMS right from within your browser. This means that non-technical folks can get thinks set up easily, almost as easily as going to Wordpress.Com or Blogspot or any of the other major free hosts.

Comment from stickystyle on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T19:11:08Z

dreamhost is offering two free years of hosting for geocities refugees.

[blog.dreamhost.com]

Comment from piratealice on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T13:05:28Z

@socalrob of the 24 and a half century:

I have much respect for the Athens neighborhood. *sigh* Geocities inspired me to learn html.

Comment from Trai_Dep on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T11:14:10Z

@Kimaroo - No Stars Upon Thars: The original version, if memory serves, featured an Alvin & The Chipmunks type of song autoplaying in the background. Which, of course, kicked it straight over from simply awful to simply awesome.

Comment from LatherRinseRepeat on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T10:58:31Z

If you guys are looking for another free webpage service, give FreeWebs a try. The interface is pretty easy and the banner ads aren't too annoying or intrusive like on Geocities.

[www.webs.com]

Comment from Keat on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T08:41:26Z

I've been with HostPC for over a year. They're reliable, inexpensive and the staff frequent the company forums fielding questions from customers.

Comment from GIClutch on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T08:28:51Z

I had a geocities page back in the day. These days I use www.lithiumhosting.com $30/year gets me 1.5GB storage, 30GB of bandwidth a month, unlimited email, php, mySQL, etc., and domain registration with my information private.

Comment from DrLumen on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T08:28:16Z

Back in the day, no self-respecting nerd would have been caught without a Geocities address. But, later on, no self-respecting nerd would be caught with one! ;)

As lame as most of Geocities had gotten, I'm sorry to see it go. I haven't thought about it in years but I consider it a cornerstone of the early WWW.

R.I.P.

Comment from BytheSea on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T08:06:49Z

envy.nu is half-decent for free hosting. It'll be yoursite.envy.nu. There's a bar at the top but it's less obnoxious than the slider on the right that Geocities had started doing.

*sigh* I have so many old fanfic links on Geocities that are stll good - star trek, x files. Stuff from the dawn of the interne.

Comment from catastrophegirl on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T08:04:59Z

@Kimaroo - No Stars Upon Thars: well, not without geocities for easy web hosting

Comment from Kimaroo - 100% Pure Natural Kitteh on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T08:01:45Z

@Trai_Dep: Why, oh why, did I click it? WHY?!

Comment from Kimaroo - 100% Pure Natural Kitteh on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T08:00:54Z

@catastrophegirl: Are you trying to tell me that there is hope for him?

Comment from catastrophegirl on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T07:49:29Z

@Kimaroo - No Stars Upon Thars: once upon a time my mom asked me 'does the disk [3.5 floppy] go in the drive with the label up or the label down?'
now she has her own website, has archived the entire family history photos back to daguerreotypes, and no longer chides me spending money on higher speeds and bandwith

Comment from Kimaroo - 100% Pure Natural Kitteh on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T07:41:41Z

@catastrophegirl: Lol. That does sound awkward. And it would never happen to me.

I just have vivid memories of trying to get my dad, via phone, to understand what the desktop was.

He called me with the question: "How do I get them thangs off my screensaver?!"

Which, after a long, long... loonnggg conversation ended up really being, "How do I get the icons off my desktop?"

Phew.

Comment from R�volution on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T07:41:32Z

To be honest, I'm concerned about this. Suddenly, there will be a lot more error 404s on the internet. I can't think of anything that would cause an issue now, but I just KNOW that I'll be looking for something a month from now, and I'll get an error 404...

Comment from catastrophegirl on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T07:33:18Z

@Kimaroo - No Stars Upon Thars: well it does get a little awkward to have your dad send an email about the amount of junk photos cluttering up the server when they don't have active links to them right now. oops.

Comment from Kimaroo - 100% Pure Natural Kitteh on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T07:27:05Z

@catastrophegirl: Awww.. my dad is the total oposite.. lol. He did pay for my domains and things like that for a good while though.. He liked to encourage my hobbies, as long as they were creative and legal. lol.

Comment from Kimaroo - 100% Pure Natural Kitteh on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T07:22:32Z

@pecan 3.14159265: I was sitting here trying to figure out what google string I needed to find my old Angelfire site. I never found it.. it's probably gone : /

Probably for the best, really.

Comment from catastrophegirl on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T06:02:41Z

i can't recall if my geocities page still exists or not. the link to it was last seen in a bookmarks folder in a desktop that quit working in 2007.
but it's ok, for the last few years i have had the best web host ever.
recent customer service conversation went a little like:

admin: "don't forget your domain renewal is up next month."
me: "ok, thanks, i had forgotten it's been two years already"
admin: "do you want me to renew it for you?"
me: "thanks but remember i have a real job now, i think i've got it."
admin: "ok. by the way, your mom wants to know what you want for xmas"

geek dads are awesome

Comment from Mariushm on 2009-10-25

2009-10-25T05:26:08Z

@Nick1693:

I've head a great experience with icdsoft.com For 6 dollars a month for quality shared hosting, you can't go wrong.

Comment from Danj3ris on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T04:48:44Z

Thank you consumerist for reminding me of this fact. I just downloaded a large amount of old poetry and photos from my geocities account that would have been lost forever.

Comment from drumbum on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T04:46:45Z

@veronykah: Same here. I just downloaded my first webpage, created 9 years ago.

Comment from veronykah on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T04:04:16Z

Yahoo keeps sending me these alerts about Geocities closing.
I learned to write HTML from my geocities page I made in high school.
Weird thing is, I can't find it anyway....did they already delete some awhile back? Its nowhere to be found....
Sure it would be pretty amusing to see now...15 years later.

Comment from montusama on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T04:01:02Z

@joshuadavis:

I paid on time, I had two. One was an image broad that I never went to visit, sometime before it went down I visited and it was full of spam. The other was a blog that I never updated. I did receive an email about the image broad domain having illegal material on it.

Comment from socalrob of the 24 and a half century on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T03:48:30Z

@VeeKaChu:
Remember the animated email of "Email Me" link. Yeah I'm guilty of ALL of that. Much respect to Geocities and Tokyo Flats neighborhood.

Comment from socalrob of the 24 and a half century on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T03:47:08Z

@Nick1693:
I can reccomend to everyone to stay away from Vizaweb. I paid for their service for 2 websites back during the Tech TV / Leo Laporte days when he advertised for the service.

They host cheap but on overloaded servers that crash constantly and their tech support is the pits. Their service was down for days at a time. While they do give you a semi-large amount of space for only $36 a year, its just not worth the hassle of your site being down for weeks at a time with no refunds.

Comment from yume_ryuu on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T03:32:57Z

Oh man, thats where all the Sailor Moon websites used to be. If Angelfire closes I dunno what I will do! I still have a few websites there I think that need to be backed up.

Comment from Bluth_Cornballer on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T03:29:06Z

But now where am I going to go for home made Dawson's Creek and Marcy's Playground fan pages?!?!?

Comment from Trai_Dep on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T03:10:43Z

@Trai_Dep: And, in honor of Laura's hamsters, I include:
[www.webhamster.com]

Comment from csparks on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T03:08:42Z

Kinda odd my first post is going to be on webhosting, as I was originally referred to this site from webhostingtalk.com

I just signed up with hawkhost, and I would suggest them for paid services.

Is Tripod free hosting still around? Hell, is Tripod still around? /me goes to check it out.

Comment from seamer on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T03:04:18Z

Geocities was king way back before Google claimed superiority over the whole net, and when Yahoo! was still the #1 "search engine", even over Altavista or Lycos.

Oh, the naked pictures that came out of Geocities before the crackdowns began :(

Comment from flugennock on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T03:04:13Z

Or, as my buds and I used to call it... GeoShitties. Maa-aan, that sure brings back memories -- none of them good.

Before there were the tacky, luser-infested desolations known as MySpace and FaceBook, there was GeoCities, running a close second to AOL as your world headquarters for n00bs, suckers, and dumbasses...not to mention a favorite spoofed domain for spammers everywhere.

I reached a point around '99 or so where I had geocities.com in my automatic shit-can list alongside yahoo and AOL as Domains Almost Certain To Be Spammers. I was 99 & 44/100% confident that I could automatically trash any email coming from geocities.com knowing I wasn't missing anything important. An email address from geocities.com back then was like a neon sign around a 'Net user's neck flashing "I'm an idiot sucker n00b."

Hell, I didn't even know they were still operating. I thought they'd been consigned to the Great Bit Bucket In The Sky years ago. Huh. No big loss.

Facebook and MySpace are the modern descendants of GeoCities.

Comment from Nick1693 on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T02:56:24Z

@joshuadavis: My personal solution for PHP config issues (certain things on/off) is usually .htaccess or php.ini, but I can see how some would find that confusing (myself included, most of the time.)

Comment from Trai_Dep on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T02:49:39Z

@chrisclaus: "No! GeoCities is peaceful! They have no weapons or long-term hosting contracts. You can't possibly..."

Comment from Nick1693 on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T02:45:09Z

@Laura Northrup: Glad to hear that!

I had to contact Bluehost once to change some CNAMEs for Google Apps. (Oh, cPanel.) Apparently they're all at company HQ in Utah. (Hope I never see a post about them here!) =)

Comment from Trai_Dep on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T02:42:21Z

A friend of mine was a midling-to-upper management employee who was there when they were bought off by Yahoo!, who grossed $21 million post-purchase (on his behalf, Thanks, Jerry!)
I think it's time I call him and demand he create a trust hosting a site featuring autoplay BoyBand .wavs, raining spangles and The Hamster Dance. Because, for the ages, there should always be hamsters dancing on The World Wide Web (aka: Information Superhighway).
Whoo hoo, Backstreet Boys are BACK!

Comment from Laura Northrup on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T02:39:33Z

@Nick1693: I've had nothing but good interactions with Superb via e-mail and phone. Draknet is a smaller company, but my friend who recommends them has had great interactions with them.

Comment from Nick1693 on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T02:29:15Z

@Laura Northrup: I'm with you on the moving = huge task. When I had Byethost, phpMyAdmin broke. I just asked support to email me a copy of my databases. Their script installer enables clean URLs automatically, forcing me to find their .htaccess any copy it to my new host.

Also, I looked at those hosts. They seem ok, but I guess the real judge is their treatment of customers. Have you had any interaction with Superb's CS?

Comment from zekedms on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T02:25:02Z

Tragic indeed. I still end up on old Geocities pages looking for information!

But $10 a month for Geocities? Dreamhost is $10.95 or less and adds to your bandwith and storage max weekly as a reward for sticking with them. Buy a domain and never look back, I didn't.

Comment from joshuadavis on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T02:24:49Z

@montusama:
I had a problem with 1&1 "stealing" my domains too. We had a billing dispute (about the upcoming cycle) and as a result they decided to take my domains, despite me being paid up at the time.

Comment from joshuadavis on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T02:22:54Z

I've always been happy with GoDaddy. I've never known my website to go down (unlike 1&1 and JustHost). And their platform seems pretty fast.

However customer support is good, but only for very basic issues. If you have a problem with some weird PHP configuration option Godaddy selected then you're SOL.

Comment from UGAdawg on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T02:19:53Z

I love using Lunarpages and haven't had any issues. It is paid. They have plans from 2.95 on up. I currently use the 4.95 a month service. I get a free domain name for life. You pay in full for the year and they have really cool application suites that are installed using wizards. You can build your own Wordpress blog without needing to know code.

[www.lunarpages.com]

Comment from VeeKaChu on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T02:16:54Z

@thewriteguy:Reminds me of themid-nineties, when a full third of personal webspaces had some variation of blinking/digging "Under Construction" gifs, as well as an invitation to "Let me know if there's any way you think I can improve this site!"

Comment from Laura Northrup on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T02:04:53Z

@Nick1693: For what it's worth, I use [www.superbhosting.net] and have been happy with them for five years, but am looking into switching to [www.draknet.net.] I have some really complex stuff (like a 30,000-image Gallery installation) that make moving a daunting task.

Comment from chrisclaus on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T02:01:19Z

I think it is time we demonstrated the full power of this station. Set your course for Geocities.

Comment from Nick1693 on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T01:57:00Z

@Laura Northrup: Probably. I'd be interested in hearing about some good hosts.

Comment from thewriteguy on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T01:55:54Z

I felt a great disturbance in the Web, as if millions of animated GIFs of sparkly stars and hearts, and dancing hamsters suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

Comment from benbell on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T01:55:26Z

[www.tripod.lycos.com] Still exists

Comment from montusama on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T01:41:21Z

I never used my geocities site except for a few things there and well that was about it, only a few times. I did the dreamhost hosting promotion though I don't use it, I don't really like how the webpanel for dreamhost is done. I had 1&1 but my domains were taken down without any notice and for months I was still paying for it without any luck from tech support or even after emailing the legal department several times. I finally canceled. I will never use 1&1 again. I doubt.

Comment from Laura Northrup on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T01:40:09Z

@Nick1693: Actually, I'll edit the post to turn this into a space for hosting recommendations. I bet our readership has some great ideas.

Comment from Laura Northrup on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T01:39:15Z

@evilrobot:

Where do animated .gif's go when they die?

A very special hell.

Comment from Nick1693 on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T01:35:29Z

@pecan 3.14159265: I used the free version of Byethost before I finally sucked it up and paid for Bluehost.

(I know this isn't the space for hosting recommendations, but Bluehost bills all at once, so be prepared to spend $100/year instead of $8/month!)

Comment from evilrobot on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T01:32:58Z

@pecan 3.14159265: I traded many a VHS and cassette tape through the dial-up, hand-coded hell that was Angelfire.

Where do animated .gif's go when they die?

Comment from pecan 3.14159265 on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T01:22:41Z

If Angelfire closes next I'm going to hold a vigil and sob quietly for my adolescent memories.

Comment from Kogenta on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T00:43:18Z

@humphrmi: I remember when geocities just used those ads that appeared at the bottom of the page. Then yahoo came, and then they started using intrusive looking ads and everything and pulled features etc.

I downloaded my web site before they killed ftp access for free accounts and haven't really touched them since.

Comment from Megalomania on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T00:36:16Z

I'm sure part of the reason is that no one really uses it anymore, and so they were just paying to keep up a bunch of stuff no one even remembered they had put up. Going to lead to a bunch of broken links, though.

Comment from humphrmi on 2009-10-24

2009-10-25T00:34:59Z

The funny thing is, the paid web hosting service that they offer is the same service that GeoCities offered for "premium users" before Yahoo bought them.

So, technically, they're not closing down GeoCities - just the free part.

No more free webpages for you!