[Joker]

Yes, I know we had a semi-related news story about this yesterday, but I figured that the death of Geocities deserved a more official send off. The other thread was more about www.xkcd.com giving a tribute.

The flashing banner ads, questionable color schemes and omnipresent "Under Construction" signs of GeoCities are no more.

The personal Web-hosting site, launched in 1995 and owned by Yahoo Inc. since 1999, was to be shut down by Tuesday.

It's a move that will scrub from the Web a significant, albeit dated, piece of Internet history and the pages where millions first tried their hands at coding and designing.

GeoCities, in its heyday, was an online hub for Internet communities, connecting related pages through "web rings" that predated the massive footprints of MySpace and Facebook by nearly a decade.

For some, creating guest books, visitor counters and streaming HTML marquee tags on GeoCities was a stepping-off point into a new digital age.

Carrie Musgrave, a professional photographer from Toronto, said she got two Web-design jobs by showing off her GeoCities creation: a U2 fan page she coded by hand in her college library in 1998.

"There were a bunch of people who applied and they all had computer science degrees," she said of one of her interviews. "I showed them my U2 page and ended up getting the job."

She said she didn't think about the site for years, but after hearing news of GeoCities' pending closure, was surprised to find that her page, where she once got messages from fans thinking it was the band's official site, still existed.

"It's humorous somewhat to go back and look at it -- it's so simple compared to what Web sites are now," she said. "It almost seems innocent."

As the Web evolved, visits to the largely stagnant GeoCities declined sharply and had continued to fall in the months since April, when Yahoo announced the site would be closed.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/26/g...ef=igoogle_cnn

[pellea72]

Originally Posted by Joker

Now we have MySpace with Flash ads, questionable color schemes and omnipresent over-construction that will make your Web browser cry "No more!"

[waffenwars]

oh man, I had my first web site on geocities and it was as horrible as any other site there. It even had midi sound. I was young and stupid, the web was new. rip geocities

[Serpentu]

Goodbye sweet prince.

[mr_charisma]

I wonder what percentage of the www was Geocities back in its heyday? Seems like a bit of a shame to turn off what was such a big component of the web. Back in the day, there was no blog software. If you wanted a web page (yes, page), you opened up FrontPage Express or Netscape Composer and filled it with misaligned tables, animated gifs and horrid colours.

RIP Geocities. You will be missed, in a satirical, nostalgic kind of way.

[merlin379]

Originally Posted by mr_charisma

I wonder what percentage of the www was Geocities back in its heyday? Seems like a bit of a shame to turn off what was such a big component of the web. Back in the day, there was no blog software. If you wanted a web page (yes, page), you opened up FrontPage Express or Netscape Composer and filled it with misaligned tables, animated gifs and horrid colours.

RIP Geocities. You will be missed, in a satirical, nostalgic kind of way.

And Frames!! omg everyone had them i even made a site like that with the exchange banners on top ah good times

[mr_charisma]

<font color="pink"><blink>Blinking text was the coolest</blink></font>

FrontPage express didn't support frames I think. However, there were a bunch of online frames generators that would make the frameset html page for you, you just needed to tell them how many rows/columns you wanted.