The Blogosphere has been abuzz over the past few days, with remembrances of the halcyon days of the internet viewed through the lens of atrociously-designed GeoCities sites. If you missed the xkcd GeoCities tribute, you'll have to be content with a screenshot, as it was a limited-time engagement. (Update: a mirror) The Archive Team is working on saving as much of GeoCities as possible for future generations. The internet is ephemeral, and, like ancient civilizations, it seems we're constantly building our new cities on the ashes of our old cities, but, this being the internet, in a much faster cycle. Like anthropologists who get excited about pot shards or shriveled woven sandals found in a cliff dwelling, a lot of internet old-timers like me get pretty nostalgic about how the internet used to be, and think it's worth preserving, or at least commemorating.
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2006-03-18
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2009-04-24
Member since:2008-07-15
24 as well, and while I feel rather whistful about the internet as it was, it's not Geocities or the rest of that crap I remember in a positive way. Geocities, tripod, angelfire, etc... all full of pop-up adds to the point where by the time you found some actual useful content you'd pretty much given up on it for the day anyway. You know what I miss the most? A google ad-free internet, where every site wasn't slammed with ads all over the place. Sure, there were pop-up ads but they weren't everywhere except on hosting places like geocities. No, google ads are far more far-reaching and even more annoying, and what's worse is a lot of ad blockers can't catch them all... and then every other advertiser followed google's lead. Arrrgghhh! Oh, and Flash wasn't so far reaching and used for sites where it wasn't needed. That's what I miss, not the ad-ridden, virus-infested hosting services.
Member since:2005-10-12
Member since:2008-06-30
Member since:2008-01-07
Member since:2007-03-26
I'm 27 and I couldn't care less.
I had a Geocities account beck in the 1 year of it going live and even I was glad to move away to another free host that offered more space and faster bandwidth.
In my opinion Geocities was a great concept, yet still one of the worst free hosts around.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2007-01-18
I can understand getting kind of nostalgic about geocities, but nostalgia tends to imply that the memory is positive. I've been to plenty of geocity sites in my day, but as a rule, geocity sites were hideous and I'm glad that they are no longer the norm.
<wishful thinking>Now if only flash would die, maybe we could still have good-lucking sites...</wishful thinking>
Member since:2005-11-10
Member since:2007-01-22
Member since:2005-11-10
The modern spyware era didn’t begin until 2001. But yes, those few years of running IE taught me a lot about what I know of cleaning PCs and locking down Windows. I started using Firefox full time with v0.93. Korea is still stuck in 2001~2003 because of the Microsoft monopoly. 99.9% people use Windows and IE because there is no other choice. It’s a real major concern. To think it used to be like that (and how much things have changed for the better) just because of Firefox.
Member since:2007-01-22
Member since:2008-08-25
Member since:
2007-02-22
If you looked at 'View Source' that day, the website was obviously hand-coded HTML. Yes, HTML, from back when it was a literal text markup language and not a minimal wrapper for a designed-by-committee page layout schema.
The only way it could have been more 90s-tastic is if the site's code had a <meta> tag with the words "AOL Page Generator 8.0" somewhere in there.
Edited 2009-10-27 21:15 UTC
Member since:2006-11-08
Member since:
2009-10-04
It's xkcd, not XKCD!
Also, there is a mirror at http://sean.raptorswithhats.com/geoxkcd.html if you can't live with just a screenshot.
Member since:1997-10-01
Member since:
2005-11-10
My own contribution to the era.
http://commodoreweb.camendesign.com
Yes, this was real. Major lols.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2008-03-10
For some reason it doesn't make me sad... Sites like those were used for drive by downloads and all sorts of crazy botnet activities. They are a nightmare to control as many of their hosted sites are good but there's quite a few that aren't.
Like:
zhigablog.freehostia.com/boo/bot.exe - Which hosts a Zeus download.
Or this one, which up to recently it was hosting a Zeus config file.
wchessmanva.tripod.com/temp.jpg
RIP GeoCities, I'll sleep sounder with it around.
Member since:
2006-11-19
Could someone please explain how is Geocities fundamentally different from facebook or myspace?
As far as I can tell, all of them are for creating personal websites, right? It just seems like facebook might have better built in tools for creating sites, whereas, with Geocities, you used your own html editor. So, any fundamental differences???
So, why is facebook the biggest thing around today, and Geocities is dead?
Forgive me if I just don't get this facebook thing, perhaps I spend too much time every day writing neural simulations, and not browsing for the latest Indianapolis Colts or Pacers fan sites, or whatever fan sites people post on facebook.
Member since:2005-12-02
As far as I can tell, all of them are for creating personal websites, right? It just seems like facebook might have better built in tools for creating sites, whereas, with Geocities, you used your own html editor. So, any fundamental differences???
So, why is facebook the biggest thing around today, and Geocities is dead?
Forgive me if I just don't get this facebook thing, perhaps I spend too much time every day writing neural simulations, and not browsing for the latest Indianapolis Colts or Pacers fan sites, or whatever fan sites people post on facebook.
Facebook is not for designing websites, it is for personal blogging and playing the mindless games that exist on it. Same thing as MySpace is, there is not really any difference between the 2. Why it is the biggest thing around I have no idea whatsoever.
Member since:2008-10-26
Facebook has relatively rigid limitation on the format and content of your personal page. Basically you get to have text and various application gadgets. You do not get multiple pages or even layouts as complicated as tables. More importantly, Facebook is not really intended for general informative content; the custom content of a person's Facebook page is generally a small amount of biographical information. Facebook is mostly for communication (its internal IM, forum-type "comment" streams on all of the content, public and private directed messaging).
On the other hand, Geocities seemed much more focused on hosting actual content. Sure, there were probably a ton of personal web pages with just biographical information and possibly blog-like updates, but the sites that actually came up on searches contained actual content on some topic the author was interested in. I remember regularly running across Geocities web pages that actually had useful content years ago. Now general information searches usually get me to Wikipedia instead of random websites.
As for why Facebook (well, social networking sites in general) is popular: there is no other easy way to share discussions, photos, interesting links, etc. among many friends.
Member since:2005-08-18
Member since:2005-07-06
Facebook originally had stricter membership... for colleges/schools and that sort of thing. Then they opened it wide to everyone.
There is a new site for companies-only. You register with your work email address and everyone with the same "@company-name.com" are instantly "friends." It's an interesting site. None of the glitz, just made for passive communication.
Member since:
2005-11-13
There are things I miss about the internet's days of old, but Geoshitties is definitely NOT one of them. If you get nostalgic about the horrible web pages that were on that site, just go look at some of the horrible profiles on Myspace, and you will see that not much has changed.
As long as HTML (and by extension, Flash) exists, people will find a way to do craptastic things with it.
Edited 2009-10-27 22:22 UTC
Member since:
2005-10-12
Looks like the course syllabi I posted are in the archive. My apologies to the FOSS community for the footer; I was young and ignorant:
<td align=center>
<CENTER><FONT size=1>Best experienced with<BR><A href="http://www.microsoft.com/ie/default.asp">
<IMG alt="Microsoft Internet Explorer" border=0 height=31 src="./ie_animated.gif" vspace=7 width=88> <BR>
Click here to start. </FONT></CENTER><BR></td>
Member since:
2005-07-12
I learned a lot from GeoCities, namely, scabs do form over eyeballs.
GeoCities did contribute much to the internet, though, and not just tasteless page design. It paved the way for all the social networking sites and services we have now. For better or for worse, it play a large part in the migration to this always-on digital lifestyle. I never used it myself, of course. My own ISP provided me a whopping 15MB of storage, way more than GeoCities' 2MB they offered at the time.
One think I'll never understand, however, is how so many people thought magenta and chartreuse were complimentary colors.
Member since:
2006-01-04
Member since:
2005-07-06
To get the full geocities experience, just take a skim through the website of "Bud Uglly Wab Designs:
http://budugly.com/archivebud/bud9806/bud.html
(WARNING: may cause ocular bleeding - the goggles, they will do nothing. If exposure does not result in immediate laughter, or at least cringing, then subject should NEVER be allowed to work as a designer)
Member since:2005-09-21
hahaha soo true, that is what I remember most about Geocities in one page. So many obnoxious colors and animated gifs it was ridiculous, and don't forget the people who used animated gif as their background, it beat my poor 486dx 33 into submission every time even with my spiffy #9 imagine 8mb card, and 8mb upgraded ram. *sigh*
Member since:
2009-10-28
Like Airwolf? Here's someone who found a novel way to save some geocities sites:
http://archive.airwolf.tv
And there's no annoying sidebar anymore. Long live chartreuse!
Edited 2009-10-28 02:22 UTC
Member since:2005-09-21
Member since:
2006-04-19
WikiMedia sites are in fifth place (under Facebook) in pops. Their main characteristics are easy editing (and discussion) of the presentation of the page and easily recalling the historical presentations (and discussions).
The irrational exuberance (I might share with the author) for historical access to old web site graphics and interfaces might come from the philosopher in us hoping we'll get an opportunity to find the meaning of some other aspect of life, buried in the patterns of any process of historical development.
Because computing offers an excellent memory and search algorithms, we should keep all content for the sole purpose of later analysis by theoreticians researching the process of development.
For example, compare "worst" web sites with "worst" aspects of other human developments in real societies. The top worst web site linked by the article was a face in the clouds. Why is that so bad? When did self deification ever offend anyone? (Hint: plenty of times.)
I read OSnews because I think computing developments in general are an an excellent source of analogy to human societal developments including artifactual excavations. I have hope in some future for the valuable analysis of all of it.
Member since:
2008-08-27
I can't remember anything on GeoCities that actually worked. I do remember countless search results in Altavista, Lycos, Infoseek and Yahoo pointing to webpages from GeoCities, only to find a dreadded "404 Not Found" or a more stylized (yet similar in nature) message once I clicked on those links.
So for all those useless clicks on search engine links, from the bottom of my heart: Good Riddance, GeoCities!
