I didn’t think the upcoming closing of Geocities would have much of an effect on me. Like everyone else who was on the ‘net 15 years ago, I did have a Geocities page at one time. Even back then, it wasn’t my “real” website, but just another free service and another excuse to post some pictures of my Rottweilers (my very first Rottweilers) and a link to my real website. It disappeared a while ago due to inactivity and I barely even noticed.
I help maintain websites for a few friends, and the ones who started out on Geocities have long since moved either to my VPS, to Yahoo! Small Business Hosting, or to one of the many discount web hosts who charge less than $10 per month and whose names I barely remember.
All around the ‘net, people are either wallowing in overly sentimental reminiscences about their first websites at Geocities, or else snarking about how bad the service was. Archive Team is in the process of saving as many Geocities sites as possible. They say they’ve already archived everything from 1999 and before.
I didn’t think any of this affected me. Until I was looking through my Rottweiler bookmarks and realized that one of the sites has a photo and story about my dear departed Jake’s sire Aiko. Obviously that link won’t work whenever we reach “later this year.” I don’t know if the web site owner plans to archive or move his site. I’ve never saved the photo and story (just for personal use of course), and I would be very sad if I could never see them again.
So check your bookmarks and see if anything you cherish is out there on Geocities. Just in case.