Yahoo nukes Geocities

[Tribun]

The news

Before Twitter, before Facebook, before MySpace - heck, even before Friendster, there was a service known as GeoCities. For those who grew up on the Net in the 90s, it was about as close as you get to what we know today as social networks. It was essentially an organization of like-minded user-created homepages in different topical communities like sports, entertainment, and tech.

Yahoo bought the company near the peak of the dotcom bubble for more than $3 billion, which, along with the rise of alternative services, quickly spelled the end of GeoCities’ prominence. Today, it appears that the end of GeoCities is being made official, as Yahoo has closed the service to new accounts and posted an FAQ with some details as to how the shutdown will go.

It’s certainly not surprising that GeoCities is shutting down, as Yahoo has been in cost-cutting mode for months and the service would seem to have little fit in its current business. The company offers a fairly generic explanation of the move: “We have decided to discontinue the process of allowing new customers to sign up for GeoCities accounts as we focus on helping our customers explore and build new relationships online in other ways. We will be closing GeoCities later this year.”

If you’re not familiar with GeoCities, Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive overview of its rise and fall. But if you are familiar with it, it’s official end is certainly a bit nostalgic. I can still remember the URL of my GeoCities page (a Geocities Page of the Day, no less!), though somewhere between Yahoo acquiring the company and me going to college, it disappeared. In any event, share your favorite GeoCities memories in the comments!

After seeing for years that geocities was mainly a collection of really old websites, I think this won't hurt too many people.

[Isil`Zha]

hah, I remember when Geocities sites were everywhere... and I remember how shitty it was.

99% of the sites I ended up on that were on Geocities had at least one of the following problems:

1) The site was just very poorly done.

2) Horribly slow and unresponsive.

3) "This page no longer exists!"

Can't say there's anything I'll miss about it.

[General Zod]

Now if they could just nuke all those shitty Angelfire and Tripod pages still hanging around.

[JLTucker]

A site that I use occasionally is hosted by Geocities and will be affected. Only temporary, however. I contacted the creator and was told that a domain name will be purchased.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Um, as someone who has an ancient Geocities website... how can i transfer it FAST before i loose a bunch of old stuff????

[General Zod]

Um, as someone who has an ancient Geocities website... how can i transfer it FAST before i loose a bunch of old stuff????

They won't be completely nuking it for a few more months, so you still have plenty of time to get all your shit off there.

[Darth Wong]

Um, as someone who has an ancient Geocities website... how can i transfer it FAST before i loose a bunch of old stuff????

Copy it onto your local computer ASAP. You can find a new host at your leisure. Didn't you already have a backup?

[Isil`Zha]

Now if they could just nuke all those shitty Angelfire and Tripod pages still hanging around.

Gah, those were worse then the "Geoshitties" sites.

I haven't seen either of those in a long time either.

[General Zod]

Now if they could just nuke all those shitty Angelfire and Tripod pages still hanging around.

Gah, those were worse then the "Geoshitties" sites.

I haven't seen either of those in a long time either.

They still crop up from time to time when I google for something. Removing them would make my search results much less cluttered.

[Seggybop]

Geocities was always crap, but it reminds me of a time before the internet was filled with an enormously greater amount of far worse crap. Despite its uselessness, I'll probably miss it a bit when it's completely gone. Oh well, there's always archive.org.

[Isil`Zha]

They still crop up from time to time when I google for something. Removing them would make my search results much less cluttered.

oh, the worst thing about the angelfire ones is that 90% of the time, the page no longer existed.

Geocities was always crap, but it reminds me of a time before the internet was filled with an enormously greater amount of far worse crap. Despite its uselessness, I'll probably miss it a bit when it's completely gone. Oh well, there's always archive.org.

That's true... we traded shitty websites like Geocities, Tripod, and Angelfire for an internet filled with viruses, worms, trojans, and other douchebag fucks that try to do nothing but damage. Oh, and then there's the fraud and phishing (Conflikr manages to combine all of the above!)

[YT300000]

hah, I remember when Geocities sites were everywhere... and I remember how shitty it was.

99% of the sites I ended up on that were on Geocities had at least one of the following problems:

1) The site was just very poorly done.

2) Horribly slow and unresponsive.

3) "This page no longer exists!"

Can't say there's anything I'll miss about it.

4) The same 200x200 graphic tiled over the entire page.

5) A very loud 30 second MIDI clip that abruptly stops and loops over and over again.

6) Coloured text! Look at the HTML!

[General Zod]

All of those fall under "Very poorly done"

[Phantasee]

I had a whole bunch of them, I remember. I put all the text in blink tags to annoy the one kid in my school who used Netscape instead of IE.

[Isil`Zha]

Now the only use for IE is to download Firefox.

I was amazed how IE8 utterly failed to follow standards still, scores a 20/100 on the acid3 test...

[Sriad]

Um, as someone who has an ancient Geocities website... how can i transfer it FAST before i loose a bunch of old stuff????

Copy it onto your local computer ASAP. You can find a new host at your leisure. Didn't you already have a backup?

Yes, it's good practice to always have (at least) one local backup of all important content on any website you run. I don't know how Geocities hosting works, never done it myself, but if there isn't an easy way to save all your content provided, you could just use the Save Page feature of Firefox (and I assume many other web browsers) to save each page individually.

[Crazy_Vasey]

Using wget to fetch the whole website would be easier than saving each page individually. wget -r -np (index page of geocities site) should do the trick. There is a Windows version you can download and install very easily if you need it

[General Zod]

Look how far the web has come since then. Now we have so many new ways to display obnoxious crap people ten years ago could only have dreamed of*!

* Yes, I know most this stupid shit existed back then too, but at least few used it.

You forgot Myspace. Myspace is the Geocities of the 21st century.

[charlemagne]

You forgot Myspace. Myspace is the Geocities of the 21st century.

I wanted to say the very same thing, everyone who had huge-ass ugly sites on Geocities in the 90s now does the exact same thing on Myspace. It's as if only the color-blind and the aesthetically challenged are allowed to open accounts there. But then again, Myspace profiles are even ugly in default settings.

On topic, it is kinda sad to see one of the cornerstones of my early internet years go down, but I can't even remember the last time I visited a page on Geocities, so I'm not terribly affected by this.

[Akkleptos]

Hmmm... I remember those. But I still use my starmedia orbita account from 1998 to host my SDN signature and post pictures... There's also a site there, but it hasn't been updated since... I think 1999 (I don't recommend the lame thing).

[EDIT: Nothing happened in Y2K, BTW]

Granted, it doesn't have anything that even remotely resembles "speed", but it's been there the whole time, and it doesn't nag about hotlinking or anything, AFAIK.

[General Zod]

Hmmm... I remember those. But I still use my starmedia orbita account from 1998 to host my SDN signature and post pictures... There's also a site there, but it hasn't been updated since... I think 1999 (I don't recommend the lame thing).

[EDIT: Nothing happened in Y2K, BTW]

Granted, it doesn't have anything that even remotely resembles "speed", but it's been there the whole time, and it doesn't nag about hotlinking or anything, AFAIK.

Photobucket will do the same thing, except better since it's a dedicated image host.

[salm]

Ah, back in the days when every website a had a visitor counter.

[LMSx]

Just today I remembered and checked in on an old Angelfire site I last worked on about 9 years ago.

....I promptly deleted everything because that shit was embarrassing. Up until I discovered PhotoBucket though, it was a useful repository for images.

And then just for nostalgia I tried my ezBoard account. Oh, the early 2000s.

[Akkleptos]

Photobucket will do the same thing, except better since it's a dedicated image host.

Oh. It was only that I thought they were the ones with the... issues. But I read some reviews, then went and got me an account. Thanks.

And then just for nostalgia I tried my ezBoard account. Oh, the early 2000s.

*chuckle* I have one of those, too! It's still running and every now and then some idiot poor misguided soul posts there!

Which reminds me... I have to go and do some cleaning up there... someday.

[RogueIce]

Hmmm... I remember those. But I still use my starmedia orbita account from 1998 to host my SDN signature and post pictures... There's also a site there, but it hasn't been updated since... I think 1999 (I don't recommend the lame thing).

[EDIT: Nothing happened in Y2K, BTW]

Granted, it doesn't have anything that even remotely resembles "speed", but it's been there the whole time, and it doesn't nag about hotlinking or anything, AFAIK.

Is that chick still your girlfriend?