geocities is gone

[Haoie]

Homepages sure went the way of the dodo.

[RCBH928]

Why is it getting so much hate?
I loved the geocities era, it was real internet to me.
You can actually do web-browsing and all the flashing gifs and guest books made everything personal and you can feel that you are going from one person to another.

Now everything is a blog of the same template, and we all visit the same websites:
google, youtube, hulu, flickr, ..etc.

It was exciting learning HTML back then, now any site has to have complex php, flash, blog, and a lot of other stuff I don't comprehend . I recall when having a some pictures on your site meant it was very advanced media was.

btw, is xoom's unbelievable 5 mb hosting plan for free still around?

[Octopod]

Why is it getting so much hate?
I loved the geocities era, it was real internet to me.
You can actually do web-browsing and all the flashing gifs and guest books made everything personal and you can feel that you are going from one person to another.

Now everything is a blog of the same template, and we all visit the same websites:
google, youtube, hulu, flickr, ..etc.

It was exciting learning HTML back then, now any site has to have complex php, flash, blog, and a lot of other stuff I don't comprehend . I recall when having a some pictures on your site meant it was very advanced media was.

btw, is xoom's unbelievable 5 mb hosting plan for free still around?

I agree with you 100%. Old internet was really cool.

[Hobie-wan]

Why is it getting so much hate?
I loved the geocities era, it was real internet to me.

Well yes, back then it was possible to have a 'modern' looking page without needing expensive tools for content creation on a homepage site. But too many pages were full of broken links, clashing colors, animated gifs, flashing text, and annoying midi music that if you were lucky there was an easy to find control to turn it off.

Now we have pages that are full of broken download links, clashing colors, flash animations, and annoying music. Oh... wait.

Myspace seems to be the new poster child for everyone's horrible pages. I try to avoid it entirely, but most of the time if I do end up there it makes me want to jam pencils in my eyes.

btw, is xoom's unbelievable 5 mb hosting plan for free still around?

Tripod is still going and the free version gives you 20 megs.

[Incognito D]

I suddenly miss the days of 1999 when getting a shot of the internet at school (and later at home) meant trawling through pages with eye-scorching backgrounds for horrible Pokemon cheats that would never work. (Anyone remember Bill's Secret Garden or Pokegods?)
Either that or it was just to download pictures of wrestlers.

[Ack]

Ah, the good old days, when I could still download ROMs from the Cult of Kefka, Yahoo was considered the best search engine, and it took over 12 hours to download the shareware version of a game.

[the7k]

A shame. Many of my favorite Japanese artists had Geocities pages. Wonder what'll happen to all of them now...

[RCBH928]

I really don't hate the gifs, midi, and all that stuff. I loved it, and still do. Everyone will if they know why it is appreciated.
to me, myspace profiles is a LOT worse than geocities era, you can make a real page to page comparison if you want.

I think one of the best things about the internet back then was personality and originality.
If you are wondering what does that mean, it means that every site(even personal ones) took pride in being a different place with different content. They had their own sources.

Today all the news sites are links from one blog to another, until you find 1 source. Go ahead, type a celebrity name. You will find one/few pictures that are dominant over all websites that mentions him. Because every one just copies the information.
Really don't even bother to search, 90% of the sites contain the same exact information about anything. Today every news website is reporting what the other news website reported, wtf!?

One beautiful thing about those days that I think everyone forgot is paying for the internet by the minute like a cellphone. I don't know about USA but where I am up to 2001 or so , it was dialup. It made logging on the internet a very special thing and a novelty (as opposite of today where everything is connected to the net 24/7).
I recall logging on websites, and if it was a long read I disconnected to save money on the bill

[Hobie-wan]

I recall logging on websites, and if it was a long read I disconnected to save money on the bill

Haha, I remember back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, a friend logging onto AOL (1.x or maybe 2.x) for 'flash sessions'. This would get you on long enough to grab emails then log you back off.