Important notice: GeoCities is closing.(RIP CompuServe)

[Tab]

Source: Email from Yahoo

Dear Yahoo! GeoCities customer,

We're writing to let you know that Yahoo! GeoCities, our free web site building service and community, is closing on October 26, 2009.

On October 26, 2009, your GeoCities site will no longer appear on the Web, and you will no longer be able to access your GeoCities account and files.

What You Need to Do
If you'd like to move your web site, or save the images and other files you've posted online, you need to act now by choosing one of the following options:

• Move your site to Yahoo! Web Hosting.
We know your files are important to you, and we want to make moving to Web Hosting as easy and affordable as we can. For a limited time, you can move your files automatically, take advantage of terrific features like a personalized domain name and email, even redirect your GeoCities web address to your new site — all for only $4.99 a month for a full year.

For more information and complete terms, please see our special offer now.

• Download your files to your own computer.
With your pages and images saved offline, you can re-create your site with any hosting provider.

To quickly download your published files, visit your GeoCities web site, right-click on each page, and choose Save Page As... from the menu that appears. Choose a location on your computer to save your files, then click OK or Save. Learn more about downloading your files.

Don't Wait
Please be aware that after October 26, your GeoCities files will be deleted from our servers, and will not be recoverable. If you'd like to save your files, you must download them now or move to Yahoo! Web Hosting. If you need assistance, please visit the help center.

We want to thank you for being a GeoCities customer, and hope you continue to enjoy our other Yahoo! services.

Best regards,

The Yahoo! GeoCities team
Please do not reply to this message. This is a service email related to your use of Yahoo! GeoCities. If you have questions, please contact Yahoo! Customer Care. For your protection, Yahoo! will never ask you to provide your billing information via email. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of Web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.

Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

No link yet.

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R.I.P. CompuServe

Geocities is what remained of CompuServe. CompuServe, Love it or hate it, was the first major BBS (Bulletin Board System) similar to the Internet (which technically existed, athough the WWW did not). Users had accounts and, once logged in, could send email to millions of other CompuServe users (preferably not at the same time), join social communities (on cooking, car repair, parenting, dating, whatever), chat online (instant chat!) all the stuff you can do now.

Bought out by AOL, then Yahoo and corrupted into GeoCities (using the CompuServe server farms and funding it with these annoying GeoCities ads, many people had free GeoCities web pages and free "web rings" for quite some time). The clock was ticking, though, and the address became distatesful to have and ultimately the days were numbered. At the end, Geocities was but a bare shell of the great CompuServe and its octal pair addresses (72037,70779) that doubled as usernames.

- Tab

[ixion]

1. The end of an era

I first logged on to CompuServe in 1982. That is eons ago in interweb years.

[sandnsea]

2. Google killed Geocities

and Angelfire and all the other free server spaces. They clearly banned it from their cache, while allowing millions of shit pages filled with google ads to remain.

[L. Coyote]

6. Not true

[high density]

16. I think Yahoo had the biggest hand in killing Geocities.

They bought it and then didn't invest anything in it to keep it current or competitive with 'new' things like MySpace. It's not the first time Yahoo has bought something -- perhaps so that nobody else can buy it -- and then let the service fall through the cracks.

[JonLP24]

3. I never had a GeoCities account myself

I did create an Angelfire website entirely from scratch with only HTML on a Webtv many years ago. I as a 13 year old got my mom interested in web design she eventually went to school and got a degree in web design.

My page probably doesn't exist anymore as I left it unattended years ago but I learned a lot on my own including creating a frame or sidebar with links which is essentially another website on a website to create that appearance.

RIP GeoCites. :cry:

[The River]

4. Maybe I Should

go rescue the web page I created 15 years ago
and haven't visited since?

[slackmaster]

9. 15 years ago was pretty much the Dawn of Time for the Web

Please do rescue it and post a link here if you can.

I've been running commercial Web sites professionally for more than 10 years and feel like an old-timer.

[The River]

11. That Was at Least 4 Computers Ago

Any address info I had is long since gone. Counting backwards
to my daughters 1st year in HS it would actually be 14
years ago. I do remember that most of the themed sections
were still mostly wide open and HTML was still simple enough
for me to understand.

[HopeHoops]

5. At least they are giving warning - AOL closed HomePages last Oct - NO WARNING!

Yes, this is true - All AOL HomePages web sites vanished on Oct 31 2008. I received NO e-mail warnings at any screen name and I never saw anything on the login screen to warn about the shutdown. Boom - 9 years of search engine wealth shot to hell. We had an educational site that was regularly at the top of certain searches. I have all of the content and am rebuilding it on another server, but that really pissed me off.

[L. Coyote]

7. I have two GeoCities IDs and sites, with just redirects to my domain

Got my web start web authoring on a college server, then GeoCities.
They were a great service in those days long ago.

RIP

[wysimdnwyg]

8. Less spam?

I seriously hope this means I will stop getting much of the spam that infects the inbox of my yahoo mail account. I signed up for a Geo-Cities account some 12 years ago. Whey they were absorbed by Yahoo, they linked the two email addresses. I tried for over a year to get Yahoo to deactivate the GC email, but they couldn't (wouldn't?) do so. 90% of the spam I get is sent to that address. I really hope they turn that damn thing off.

[Tab]

10. TWO NOTES

I should have put "Important Notice" in quotes as it was thte title of the Yahoo missive, not my estimation of what constitutes important, but alas the editing period has expired.


Second, (72037,70779) is not a proper octal pair. I rattled that off the top of my head when I wrote this, noticed it later, and wondered if anyyone old enough and wonky enough would pick up on it. Sadly, none yet (or maybe no one's just not reading this thread). There's still time! I can't fix it anymore (editing time expired) but you could still point out how it violates the numbering rules. Or go back and play on Timex Sinclair. Like I care.

[dnbn]

15. 9 is not an octal digit. n/t

[Tab]

18. Yay, indeedy!

For th explanatory benefit of all others, what has happened is that dnbn has correctly identified that the digits appearing in a CompusServe octal pair (which must be octal themsevles, or base 8) need to range from 0..7

There is no 9 in an octal number. You'd have to go up to base 10 for that (our numbering base of choice for most things non-computer or non-scientific).

[Thor_MN]

12. I had a Compuserv account, after I quit Quantum Link.

Damn, I'm old...

[David__77]

13. I have a page I've wanted to take down for years.

But I've been unable to, because I do not remember my login. I guess this will take care of that.

[Akoto]

14. Oh, this saddens me.

I grew up when the internet was first building steam, back when not many people knew about it. It has always been very much a part of my life, especially now, when I'm mostly bedridden with bad health. GeoCities dying feels like another piece of the old days going kaput.

Still the internet, but not quite the same as it used to be. :(

[bikebloke]

17. I've had Geocities site for 10 years

But a couple years ago they started making you jump through so many hoops just to maintain your own site, that I pretty much abandoned it. Though I have an stats counter from another source. It still gets about a 100 visits a month.

My creative juices have since migrated to video and vlogging the results.