Recently, Geocities shut down for good. I suppose I should refer to them as Yahoo Geocities, since at the time of their demise they were, technically, a Yahoo property, but having been one who used them way back when it wasn’t shameful to admit… I suppose I’ll always just think of them as Geocities.
I happened upon the sad news by chance, on the very last day it was possible to get in there and save old files. And so, one day not that long ago, I spend an afternoon in the file manager at a very old Geocities site that almost no one who knows fracas has probably ever heard of before. I deleted, saved, transfered and reminisced until there were no remaining files, and then I logged out for the last time, saying goodbye to the first real site I’d ever created online.
Which brings me to this post, and the question I hope will inspire you all to chatting here again.
What (and where) was the first site you ever created online?
Are you an old timer who remembers using services like Geocities and Angelfire to build a site we thought was spectacular even if it did use left column graphics bar backgrounds, and blinking text? Sites where we proudly displayed our Bravenet guestbooks and links to our free message board forums at InsideTheWeb or Voy? Or are you young enough that you don’t know what it was like before Blogger and Wordpress made having a site as simple as a few clicks?
Do tell us about your first time… and don’t be shy, we really do want to know!
I had a Geocities site – it was rubbish! I didn’t really know what I was doing and I thought I was cool because I had my own website – not that anyone really saw it lol. I then moved to Livejournal and bounced between there and Blogger till I met CJ who told me about Wordpress – I tried Typepad but it was expensive lol
Yeah, I had a geocities site too… I went online before it shut to see what was on there and found some of my old uni files and some embarrasing photos… ahhh the joys of free hosting… pointless crappy websites
I think the best thing about the sites back in the day was the guest book… Ihad comments from all over the world… (pictures do speak a 1000 words) from people Ive never met… it was just a bit of a blast..
Alas, the days of geocities. My first (and two after) were on angelfire. The third still appears to be there now. And boy did I think that website was good. Of course in reality it sucked compared to wordpress’ default template. But I had extreme youth on my side.
I started on a tiny half meg of space on a unix server in college coding HTML by hand. Then I moved on to geocities and had a pretty good site there but that got lost to the wind and time as I forgot every connection to it. Geocities did do me well though because when they went IPO I bought them and made some cash. I also remember how much fun I had making pages on Geocities. I wish I still had those files somewhere.
I may be old in real time but I’m a babe when it comes to virtual existence ……. therefore, and not for the first time, I have no idea what you’re talking about …… ho hum ……
gosh this pains me to say and I know I will hate myself in the morning … but I can ID with DP on this one [oh and I am no where near as old as he is btw!!]
OMFingG!
Our company was going SO anti-geek, we resorted to networking with others under pseudos to protect our jobs.
The Mysterytecs:
~Slicker~, Captain Trasher, LadyJ, HarryHex, Syrus The Virus, and Pinky
Contributors
DarkDraven, Sir Oracle
“I do one thing. I do it well. I slick hard drives.”
…I haven’t been known by that name for almost a decade. Why do my eyes water?
Sorry, but yes. Angelfire was used. Not only my cell of geek techs, but other teams were using it as well.
When we were at work, it wasn’t possible to connect to personal server space…if caught we faced not only losing our jobs but not able to work locally for two years due to contracts signed.
Sorry, flashbacks. :shrugs:
How about ancient old timers who set up stuff on local bulletin boards using their Atari and then went big time with their Commodore and graduated to their North Star? GeoCities and AngelFire were bleeding edge then. Life is so much easier today.
…you forgot TRS-80 Model I’s and a cassette recorder.
I feel you.
LOL to everyone! Reminiscing is so much fun, isn’t it?
I can only go back to about the mid-nineties though. (And I am not revealing the screen names *I* used back then.) Before that, I’d have loved to have any of that stuff WBentrim mentions, but was a teen on her own, worrying about paying rent instead. And heck but then we had three young uns and a 486 cost about as much as a car.
Though they’re considerably less expensive now, I’m looking forward to when computers are so inexpensive that we have them in every room like our televisions. But I guess that part belongs as a comment to Kevin’s post.
Without being over nostalgic, although it was definitely more than 25 years ago, I clearly recall the night my 4 & 6 year olds were on the Atari on a “gaming” bulletin board and they came in to ask me,”Dad, what’s our sexual orientation?” Needless to say I nearly hurt myself getting to the computer to discover that they had broken out of the kids bulletin board and were unknowingly trying to get into an “adult” bulletin board. Interesting that the more things change, the more they are the same.
@WBentrim: It was a hard pill to swallow that many of the local BBSs were being run by closet case swingers for their own purposes.
Seeing as they were old enough to be my Uncles or Aunts made it gross. rotf
It was the younger ones who’d get in to phone phreaking and the likes of social engineering into systems.
@WBentrim – Those darn ‘adults’ online. When my oldest was young and pokemon was new, the thing the p0rn providers were doing was registering domain names that had to do with pokemon, and redirecting those sites to their p0rn sites. One kid we knew had been searching for pokemon cheats and got a very reputable looking list from a reputable search portal (at the time) only almost half the links on the list were redirects to p0rn.
What a world we live in!
@JohnC – Something tells me I should be glad you’re on my side. LOL…
@Fracas: I R inohcents. In Oh Cents!
The days when my boys saw questionable text are certainly eclipsed by what my grandchildren can inadvertently access. On the flip side, every technological advance has some excess, unwanted baggage but the plus parts of increased communication, world wide access and unlimited venues for self expression certainly outweigh the down sides of progress. As always,it is the parent’s responsibility to parent and over see, it is not the fault of the technology.
As always,it is the parent’s responsibility to parent and over see, it is not the fault of the technology.
[Disclaimer: I do agree parents have to step up to the plate. The first posts written for FMB (by me) were part of an ongoing 'tips for parents' weekly feature to give parents more info and the means to keep tabs on their kids.]
I do have to point out that it is not possible to tp ‘parent and oversee’ all the time.
A.) Our kids go to their friends’ homes and those parents don’t always have the same rules for computer use, nor do some of them even understand the full scope of the dangers to their kids because they haven’t stepped up to the plate regarding technology. Case in point: My 13 yr old is not allowed facebook. More than 3/4 of his entire grade is on it and has been since they were 11. Some of the girls have been sent photos of male body parts and worse… I will keep this light because it’s not my blog, but you get the point. It is impossible to know what your kids are doing at someone else’s house.
B.) My teen was able to view ‘tubgirl’ from school. It was discussed in a classroom conversation and some in the room didn’t know what ‘tubgirl’ was so one kid got on the computer and called it up to show everyone. Likewise for ‘two girls one cup’. As a parent, how am I supposed to oversee that?
C. ) Places that operate like 4chan make life hell for even those who do oversee their kids’ activities. Teens are awful. One of my kids had a disagreement with another teen. That teen went to 4chan and because there are no consequenses for actions there, posted my kids’ cellphone number with a nasty offer. My kid was tormented for days by callers from the site.
I’m not blaming technology. I’m a huge user and fan of the internet, but we do need to get a handle on things that are spiraling so out of control it’s scary. It’s not very often that I try tell another adult they aren’t doing enough to ‘oversee’ things and they agree and step up to the plate. Usually I get told off. They’re too busy putting every stupid detail of their own life and problems all over facebook… so telling their kids to me wiser online would make them a hypocrite.
/rant from opinionated old bag.
Fracas, well said. My sons had the first cyber cafe in the area. Being my sons, they had heard the responsibility lecture so often that they rigorously policed the patrons. The restrictive software I found was often circumvented but with tenacious patching we were generally able to keep the kids off of the worse sites. We also had zero tolerance for bullying, both cyber and normal. A good chunk of the patrons were the less socially adept kids who were often targeted as victims in school. The boys realized they were creating the appropriate atmosphere when one of the more “geeky” kids was accosted on the street and the mixed batch of jocks,goths and nerd patrons stormed out of the place to defend their “geeky” friend. A friend of mine recently chaired a bar association symposium on sexting. The kids just don’t understand that once it is on the web, it is there forever and so are the consequences. Sadly I too have been told to mind my own business when trying to “advise” parents of kids on computer issues. One mom got totally outraged when we came across a wealth of porn on her 13 year old son’s computer when it was in for repair. I explained to her that it was not my tech’s job to police that stuff but if it was that blatant I felt obligated to notify the parent. She paid her bill but I lost a customer. Would I do it again, sure but then I have been wacked in the head by the windmill so often I don’t even know when I am tilting anymore.
“I have been wacked in the head by the windmill so often I don’t even know when I am tilting anymore.”
LOL… I love that one. I made you twitter-famous for it.
http://twitter.com/therealfracas/status/5958063498
I just noticed how many typos were in that rant of mine… good thing DaddyP isn’t here to notice them. How would it look for his fracretary to be so lax in her standards? I’ll never get a raise if he sees this (much hand-wringing and fretting going on now….)
I’ll cover for you hun ..
Great post. I started writing on a personal website in 1995. I started it free at Geocities, and I didn’t even have my own computer. I accessed the page through California State University Fullerton’s computer lab. As I recall they had MAC’s. I’ve since become a PC guy. Geocities separated sites into categories based on broader interests. Because mine was literature and writing (I was an English major in my last semester at the time), they gave me an “Athens” addy.
I remember advancing through the other websites and finding sites ranging from highly busy with too many graphics moving to standard written sites where the personal webmaster seemed more conservative. I remember my first webpage was a diatribe on what my named meant (Damien) and a history of how the “Omen” portrayed it in a false bad light. Seems like 100 years ago! Geocities had an extensive help system that taught me basic html, ie: item in bold and how to make a link, colors, pictures, etc. It was web design for the average joe, and I used it to post the little things going on in my life (and occasional big ones).
It was so exciting to learn new tricks, like how to post an animated GIF next to something, how to use a background image, etc. I sent my updated pages with “ecolumns,” as I used to call them, to family and friends on my address list. It was a great way to connect with the people I knew and loved. While with Geocities, I also learned a lot of code secrets from Dynamic Drive. That was the first chapter. After that came PhPBB, Frontpage, and eventually blogging on Wordpress.
If I started commenting on typos and grammatical errors in this thread I’d be an old man by the time I’d finished ……. hang on a minute …….. I am an old man ….. where’s my tea?
[WBentrim's 'windmill tilting' extension is wonderful - I know the feeling]
@Damien: Forgot about DD, and I think it was called ‘milkDocs’. Used to be a lot of great HTML online tutorials. You could code in notepad and do a quick search on the edge of your seat!
I think it’s fair to say that we’ve all each individually forgotten more syntax than our combined neighbors have learned through verbal rhetoric.
Hence…DP’ll always have job security. (giggle snort)
I’m going to seek comfort with drink ….. [snuggle port]
I’ve erased several comments now, and have determined I should just shut my mouth at this time lest I guarantee myself never to be rewarded with that raise…