Remembering GeoCities, the 1990s Precursor to Social Media

[steve2470]

I had a GeoCities personal site, so this is pure nostalgia for me. I got it in 1996 or 1997.

https://www.howtogeek.com/692445/remembering-geocities-the-1990s-precursor-to-social-media/

If you used the Internet in the ’90s, you probably remember GeoCities. This popular web-hosting service was active in the U.S. from 1994-09 (and until 2019 in Japan). It hosted tens of millions of personal websites at its peak.

What Was GeoCities?

In the mid-1990s, the World Wide Web (as it was called at the time) was a new frontier. Ordinary people could publish any kind of information—no matter how niche—for worldwide consumption.

However, it took some fairly beefy computer servers to handle web server software at that time. And those servers required expensive, speedy network connections, so website hosting was costly at first. A customer would pay a monthly fee (like $10) to rent a few megabytes of space on a remote web server—or they might get some web space with an ISP subscription.

Web publishing was primitive back then. To publish a site, you’d typically edit an HTML file in a text editor, and then upload it (along with some images) to the web server via an FTP client and a lot of patience.

[sharp_stick]

1. I archived a Geocities group

page that I was part of. After reading this I might have to see if I can dig it up. I'm not sure if I can find it but I think I'll take a look.

[Susan Calvin]

2. I don't know if this is still the case,

But for lots of years after the demise of Geocities, you could still find my page that some group or other archived.

[Wellstone ruled]

3. At last check,

no one has posted on the GEO site on our Claim. Always check to make sure some dumb ass does not destroy it.

[LeftInTX]

4. I had an AOL Hometown page

Then, I got a Google Site. (Classics)

Now I have to upgrade to the "New" Google Sites. It took me two years to figure out how to get my New Google Site verified, so it could be found on the web. Two freak'n years. There are no instructions on Google nowadays. You can't upload the little html files like you can do on Classic Site. It turns out that in order to validate the new site, I had to remove "home" from the URL. Nobody told me! There aren't any instructions anywhere!

I miss these fun websites. They were easy to use and you could cut and paste javascript and html. I liked it.