Last week we heard that silver-age internet legend GeoCities would be closing down forever. Although that’s no great loss in itself, it’s a bit like finding out the really crappy pizza place you used to go to when you were a kid is being demolished. If you could just have one more greasy, poorly seasoned slice to remember what it was like…
Well, in GeoCities’ case, you can. TechCrunch readers submitted what they felt were the most (or their most) shamefully designed GeoCities pages on the whole site. I’ve collected the links here so you don’t have to troll through the comments.
Some of these have autoplaying music and whatnot, so be careful. They’re all SFW as far as I could tell, but not necessarily safe for eyeballs.
http://www.geocities.com/mister_s_13/
http://www.geocities.com/soho/1469/flw.html
http://www.geocities.com/doowopp21/
http://www.geocities.com/takoda_magick/
http://www.geocities.com/hankmcintyre/
http://www.geocities.com/skashow/
http://ar.geocities.com/coventgardencattery/
http://www.geocities.com/mike_priller125/
http://www.geocities.com/fastmanfunnay/
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Horizon/5384/
http://geocities.com/fischma01/
http://br.geocities.com/vfdesigner/
http://www.geocities.com/a1pyro/
http://www.geocities.com/mvopsu/collegefootball.html
http://www.geocities.com/stonehedgefarms/
http://www.geocities.com/lionscave1/?200923
http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Downs/4455/
Two that don’t really count are this great tribute by a Redditor, and Strongbad’s The Cheat website. And of course, my personal favorite for years now. Feel free to leave your own in the comments.
That pizza place analogy is dead on. Sure, there’s newer and better now, but back then, GeoCities was the place to be. May not have been the prettiest thing in the world but it got the job done.
RIP, GeoCities.
RIP GeoCities…..My first free website
I really thought Yahoo bought them out a while ago.
if i was epileptic vfdesigner site, wouldnt have been healthy.
Indeed, RIP Geocities… I had my first site up there in 1995 and even won a few awards – and not just the ones every user gave to each other but the proper geocities ones. Looking back at the winning page through the internet archive is a cringeworthy experience now though…
We are forgetting how revolutionary GeoCities’ concept was back in Web 1.0. It was a great concept, easy to use and even more importantly, was the first social networking site to adapt to the new idea of online advertising. My first banner campaign I ever managed was for GeoCities’.
It is a saddly reminder that nothing lasts forever…
Geocities taught me the basic concepts of websites and HTML. I remember waiting minutes and minutes for their Java Applet web page editor to download so I could modify my site. I also remember the obsession with hit counters and the thrill of seeing the counter tick up.
The MySpace of 1997.