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Non-Road Boards => Off-Topic => Topic started by: bing101 on October 06, 2018, 03:54:43 PM

Title: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: bing101 on October 06, 2018, 03:54:43 PM
https://www.cnet.com/news/geocities-dies-in-march-2019-and-with-it-a-piece-of-internet-history/


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMDSZWkEJYo


Note only Yahoo Japan is affected by this change to remove Geocities.


As far as I know for the past decade Blogging services like Blogger and Wordpress have killed off geocities and Angel Fire though.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: jon daly on October 06, 2018, 04:30:16 PM
I had no idea that Geocities still existed. I'm not sure if that's the site that hosted this, but seeing the name Geocities made me recall early homepages by people that include ones like a Jim Nabors Tribute page complete with unlicensed images of him and  a midi file of the Gomer Pyle theme on what sounded like a Casio.

It was stuff like that that made me mentally rhyme Geocities with atrocities.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: bandit957 on October 06, 2018, 07:52:12 PM
Every time I think of GeoCities, I think of the poorly designed page full of misspelled words where a guy tried to list all the times he saw someone blow a bubble with bubble gum in public, and the guestbook for it that was full of people arguing.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: abefroman329 on October 06, 2018, 07:59:52 PM
Quote from: jon daly on October 06, 2018, 04:30:16 PM
I had no idea that Geocities still existed. I'm not sure if that's the site that hosted this, but seeing the name Geocities made me recall early homepages by people that include ones like a Jim Nabors Tribute page complete with unlicensed images of him and  a midi file of the Gomer Pyle theme on what sounded like a Casio.

It was stuff like that that made me mentally rhyme Geocities with atrocities.
There was also one, inspired by the urban legend that Marilyn Manson was also Paul from The Wonder Years, that was a badly-Photoshopped photo of Marilyn Manson with the cast of The Wonder Years and a midi version of the Joe Cocker cover of With A Little Help From My Friends (the theme song to The Wonder Years).
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: bandit957 on October 06, 2018, 08:20:54 PM
I think GeoCities also had a John Denver tribute page. It was either GeoCities or one of the other sites like that.

Remember NBCi and the commercial that said, "Come on!"?
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: bing101 on October 06, 2018, 10:33:37 PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelfire


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripod.com


Wow how two decades have flew by very fast Angelfire, Geocities and Tripod were once the biggest names for blogging in the 90's Dot com boom but Lycos and Yahoo are not as big than they used to be. Two Decades later Geocities and Yahoo are now divisions of Oath/Verizon and Lycos are not as well know as they were in the past.


Geocities had to contend with Reddit, Wordpress and Google's Blogger for taking over the blogging hosting services and yes the App era and Social Media for taking over in the past decade.


http://www.angelfire.lycos.com/
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: mgk920 on October 07, 2018, 11:51:08 AM
My old Highway Features of the Week resided in a part of GeoCities for a while, too.

Sad to see them go, but I am also a bit surprised that they were still around.

Now, for a place for some of those strange tribute pages to go and hang out in....   :-o

Mike
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: NE2 on October 07, 2018, 12:01:31 PM
It's been closed for almost ten years except in Japan. Ignore clickbait-loving bing101.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: D-Dey65 on October 07, 2018, 12:23:10 PM
A lot of pages on GeoCities, Lycos, Angelfire, Tripod, and such are still trying to hang on. Jeff Saltzman's various pages hung around for a long time after Tripod collapsed.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090830220709/http://geocities.com/SoHo/Canvas/2228/cip/photocip.htm


Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: Beltway on October 07, 2018, 02:56:39 PM
My first two websites were originally on Geocites for the first couple years, before I got my own domains.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: jakeroot on October 07, 2018, 04:18:10 PM
Quote from: bing101 on October 06, 2018, 03:54:43 PM
Note only Yahoo Japan is affected by this change to remove Geocities.

That's a bit misleading. Japan is the only one affected, because Japan is the only country that still has access.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: freebrickproductions on October 08, 2018, 02:28:35 AM
A friend of mine had a GeoCities site years ago, and just a few short years ago I found out it was still up, must've been hosted on Japan's servers without anyone realizing it. Downloaded a bunch of pictures from it though.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: bing101 on October 08, 2018, 03:40:19 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblr

Tumblr is an Oath owned outlet that does blogging service that geocities once did.

Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: D-Dey65 on October 09, 2018, 04:55:30 PM
Quote from: bing101 on October 08, 2018, 03:40:19 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblr

Tumblr is an Oath owned outlet that does blogging service that geocities once did.


But I've seen dozens of Tumblr pages die off too.


This is why I reject the myth that "the internet is forever."

Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: abefroman329 on October 09, 2018, 04:58:02 PM
Of course it's not "forever," it's "only as long as the information is hosted somewhere."  However, it's entirely possible that your content is behind hosted somewhere outside of your control.  The Internet Wayback Machine would be one place.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: formulanone on October 09, 2018, 07:04:16 PM
Quote from: D-Dey65 on October 09, 2018, 04:55:30 PM
Quote from: bing101 on October 08, 2018, 03:40:19 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblr

Tumblr is an Oath owned outlet that does blogging service that geocities once did.


But I've seen dozens of Tumblr pages die off too.


This is why I reject the myth that "the internet is forever."

Nothing is forever, but if the information is deemed to be important enough by webcrawlers, it seems to stick around for long time. Media sites are crawled constantly. A personal webpage with limited other references to it on the rest of the web...not so much.

Anything that became news in the past 15-20 years is duplicated and sticks around in some way. Pre-internet information is a bit more limited.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: vdeane on October 09, 2018, 07:48:07 PM
I've usually heard "the internet is forever" as a caution against sharing on social media, since anyone could copy it/share it themselves and soon you'd have no idea how many people saved/shared/etc. whatever embarrassing picture you posted.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: kphoger on October 10, 2018, 12:38:08 PM
Quote from: vdeane on October 09, 2018, 07:48:07 PM
I've usually heard "the internet is forever" as a caution against sharing on social media, since anyone could copy it/share it themselves and soon you'd have no idea how many people saved/shared/etc. whatever embarrassing picture you posted.

I usually hear it worded "Facebook is forever", not "the Internet is forever".
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: vdeane on October 10, 2018, 01:12:42 PM
There are other forms of social media, including Instagram, Twitter, etc.  Facebook is just one of them.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: kphoger on October 10, 2018, 01:17:16 PM
Quote from: vdeane on October 10, 2018, 01:12:42 PM
There are other forms of social media, including Instagram, Twitter, etc.  Facebook is just one of them.

That's true.  But that doesn't change what it is I hear people say.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: Henry on October 12, 2018, 10:04:42 AM
Quote from: abefroman329 on October 09, 2018, 04:58:02 PM
Of course it's not "forever," it's "only as long as the information is hosted somewhere."  However, it's entirely possible that your content is behind hosted somewhere outside of your control.  The Internet Wayback Machine would be one place.
I'm hoping that most of the GeoCities sites that haven't been included in the Wayback Machine will end up there eventually, given the impending closure. Either way, I will most likely have to start from scratch again.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: jeffandnicole on October 12, 2018, 11:03:37 AM
Quote from: kphoger on October 10, 2018, 12:38:08 PM
Quote from: vdeane on October 09, 2018, 07:48:07 PM
I've usually heard "the internet is forever" as a caution against sharing on social media, since anyone could copy it/share it themselves and soon you'd have no idea how many people saved/shared/etc. whatever embarrassing picture you posted.

I usually hear it worded "Facebook is forever", not "the Internet is forever".

Doesn't have to be social media either.  If your picture gets in the paper, either as the primary subject of that pic or in the background, that 'Internet is forever' holds true as well.  And that could be for good...or bad (ie: sitting at a cafĂ© with one's mistress!!).
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: jon daly on October 26, 2018, 09:26:44 PM
Speaking of Geocities, here's an example of what webpages looked like 20 years ago:

http://www.trainweb.org/railnet/

I'm not trying to pick on that pages webmaster (honestly!) I just stumbled upon that page while trying to find something else and the background nearly left me slightly blind.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: jakeroot on October 26, 2018, 09:31:34 PM
Quote from: jon daly on October 26, 2018, 09:26:44 PM
Speaking of Geocities, here's an example of what webpages looked like 20 years ago:

http://www.trainweb.org/railnet/

I'm not trying to pick on that pages webmaster (honestly!) I just stumbled upon that page while trying to find something else and the background nearly left me slightly blind.

Complete with some early noughties music that automatically downloads. Awesome. :-/
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: jon daly on October 26, 2018, 10:21:46 PM
So that's where those .wav files came from.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: Bruce on October 26, 2018, 11:07:05 PM
The Internet Archive's WayBack Machine effectively hopes to host copies of most webpages indefinitely, and it comes in handy when trying to revive dead links or go on a nostalgia trip. Also a worthy organization to donate to.
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: Stephane Dumas on October 27, 2018, 09:18:51 AM
Quote from: Bruce on October 26, 2018, 11:07:05 PM
The Internet Archive's WayBack Machine effectively hopes to host copies of most webpages indefinitely, and it comes in handy when trying to revive dead links or go on a nostalgia trip. Also a worthy organization to donate to.

I agree and there's also another website less known called Archive.is http://www.archive.is who play a role similar to the Wayback Machine.

And now we can archive ourselves some websites (minus audios and Youtube clips) on the Wayback Machine as well as Archive.is as explained in these videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWyLlIz_P_0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK_bp9_ZyQs

Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: bing101 on May 22, 2020, 02:03:35 PM

Dan Wood does a segment on the internet in the 1990's and parts of the early 2000's yes this includes geocities on the list.




Also there is a group called neocities where they try to make pages look like the web in the late 1990's early 2000's timeframe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocities)

https://neocities.org/
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: Stephane Dumas on May 24, 2020, 01:21:16 PM
I did some digging and thanks to the Wayback Machine, I founded archived remnants of former sites who was on Geocoties.
https://web.archive.org/web/20010517021649/http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Garage/6948/
https://web.archive.org/web/20010608055917/http://www.geocities.com/bourbonstreet/8610/la-inter.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20010515203657/http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Acres/2153/
Title: Re: GeoCities dies in March 2019, and with it a piece of internet history
Post by: ErmineNotyours on May 25, 2020, 01:06:37 AM
Quote from: kphoger on October 10, 2018, 12:38:08 PM
Quote from: vdeane on October 09, 2018, 07:48:07 PM
I've usually heard "the internet is forever" as a caution against sharing on social media, since anyone could copy it/share it themselves and soon you'd have no idea how many people saved/shared/etc. whatever embarrassing picture you posted.

I usually hear it worded "Facebook is forever", not "the Internet is forever".

If it's rare, one-of-a-kind valuable information, it will be lost.  If it's embarrassing, it will stick around forever.

My old Geocties web page: https://www.oocities.org/hollywood/Pavillion/2216/driveins.html