![\"user-pic\"](\"/css/images/default.gif\")
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.
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.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-537475-100x100.png\")
If Angelfire closes next I'm going to hold a vigil and sob quietly for my adolescent memories.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-483565-100x100.png\")
@pecan 3.14159265: Aw, angelfire. I remember when that was equivalent to a Warning sign on a Usenet poster.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-498964-100x100.png\")
@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.
@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!)
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-917643-100x100.png\")
@Nick1693: Actually, I'll edit the post to turn this into a space for hosting recommendations. I bet our readership has some great ideas.
@Nick1693:
I've head a great experience with icdsoft.com For 6 dollars a month for quality shared hosting, you can't go wrong.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-242944-100x100.png\")
@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.
@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.
@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?
@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.
@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!) =)
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-55601-100x100.png\")
@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?
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1087083-100x100.png\")
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.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-552772-100x100.png\")
@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.
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.
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.
@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...
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-251907-100x100.png\")
@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!\"
@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.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-317042-100x100.png\")
@socalrob of the 24 and a half century:
I have much respect for the Athens neighborhood. *sigh* Geocities inspired me to learn html.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-105855-100x100.png\")
@piratealice: Same. Geocities inspired me to move so far in the field of HTML. Back then, every one was competitive as hell with designs.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1221274-100x100.png\")
I think it is time we demonstrated the full power of this station. Set your course for Geocities.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-16563-100x100.png\")
@chrisclaus: \"No! GeoCities is peaceful! They have no weapons or long-term hosting contracts. You can't possibly...\"
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.
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.
@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.)
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.
@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.
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!
@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.
@floraposte: Whoops! I thought people were saying that your link didn't have sound, but it does. Oh, well, now there are two visuals.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1342997-100x100.png\")
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.
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 :(
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1226904-100x100.png\")
@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.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1426948-100x100.png\")
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.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-944941-100x100.png\")
But now where am I going to go for home made Dawson's Creek and Marcy's Playground fan pages?!?!?
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-531646-100x100.png\")
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.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-77175-100x100.png\")
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.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-3320-100x100.png\")
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.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-389492-100x100.png\")
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
@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.
@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.
@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.
@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
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...
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.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1269364-100x100.png\")
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.
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.
I've been with HostPC for over a year. They're reliable, inexpensive and the staff frequent the company forums fielding questions from customers.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-34412-100x100.png\")
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.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-782863-100x100.png\")
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.
Using Host Gator myself. For their low price, and pretty solid service, I can't complain.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-757497-100x100.png\")
@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.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-368496-100x100.png\")
I'm gonna miss the wavz files.
I always used Angelfire when I built my silly teenager phanpages lol
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-326654-100x100.png\")
What about the blink tag? Won't SOMEBODY think of the blink tag?!?!?
Goodbye, o land of scrolling marquees and animated rotating globe .gifs.
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.
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.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-808630-100x100.png\")
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.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-396185-100x100.png\")
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.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-433752-100x100.png\")
Moment of silence, please.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-306389-100x100.png\")
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...
I, for one, won't miss all the seizure inducing sites people always made with geocities/tripod/angelfire.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-131723-100x100.png\")
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.
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. :|
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-159466-100x100.png\")
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!
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1251335-100x100.png\")
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!
@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.