It's a sad day in Bilerico history; Yahoo announced today that one of the original free site hosting services, Geocities, will shut down later this year.
I was one of the original users to sign up for a Geocities account and build a homepage. It was, of course, awful. Animated .gifs, midi files that played as soon as you loaded the page, the whole works. I had a page about fantasy author Mercedes Lackey (her first fan site on the web), a page in memorial to a lover who had passed away, a page on my tattoos, and a page on gay Indiana.
When Jerame and I first met, I still used Geocities. Two days after we had our first date was my birthday and I was given my own URL based on my AIM and Geocities username - bilerico.com. At the time there weren't many stand alone URLs and buying the domain cost a small fortune. I quickly built a new homepage and Jerame helped me polish it up. (Hey, you had to code all that HTML yourself back then!) I ditched most of the pages when I made the switch to my new domain, but the gay Indiana section of the Geocities site still got quite a bit of traffic. And out of that, the Indiana LGBT blog was born a few years later.
Goodbye, Geocities. I'll always remember you fondly.
(The picture at right is from my original landing page from ten years ago.)
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14 Comments
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Sad to hear that. There were a lot of good transgender sites here as well.
Monica Roberts | April 24, 2009 4:43 PM
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Don't forget that Geocities founded by David Bohnett!
Eric | April 24, 2009 9:23 PM
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Lord Bil, that takes me back. A dear friend, the late Carol Yeager, had a page there for the women who frequented the #womynfriends channel on Q Net on mIRC chat. We all had our pictures and a biography there, as many of us had never met; womynfriends was a collection of Lesbian professionals from all over the world, including, at one time, a doctor at McMurdo Station in Antarctica(which she called "McQueerdo")
You could download Melissa Etheridge icons for windows 3.1, copy shortcuts for commands on IRC, etc from the site.
Long time ago; Q net is gone, #womynfriends is gone, "Yaygrrry" is gone, and now even geocities is gone......
MauraHennessey | April 24, 2009 10:08 PM
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See the "Interactive Bilerico" in the picture? That was for IRC chat. *laughs*
Bil Browning | April 24, 2009 11:00 PM
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That was a sweet picture and great memory. That was how we met, wasn't it? http://www.geocities.com/neighborhoods/westhollywood/something something. Pity they have to shut it down. Sweet memory, but technology advanced!
Kevin S. | April 25, 2009 12:27 AM
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Yup, that's how we met lo those many years ago. You came by the website and started talking to me on AIM. My God, Kevin... that was - what? - at least 12 years ago. You worked for Wal-Mart China at the time and I just thought it was too damned cool that I had a Chinese friend.
Bil Browning | April 25, 2009 8:48 AM
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let me guess...newnet!
MauraHennessey | April 25, 2009 12:28 AM
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This is actually making me nostalgic too! I was in junior high in the heyday of geocities, and I remember all my friends were making their little pages.
Animated .gif's... can we call them the precursor to YouTube?
Alex Blaze | April 25, 2009 6:03 AM
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Ah, GeoCities.... I had a site on Geo until I discovered that my ISP provided publishing space with my dial-up account. I promptly purchased a copy of PageMill and a scanner.
null | April 25, 2009 11:49 AM
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Oh so sad! I think everyone who's ever wanted a web presence must have gotten their start on Geocities. For a while it really was the best place for free webspace.
I remember coding my first page in Notepad for Geocities, using the HTML for Dummies book. ROFL.
Ah, memories.
Boi Polloi | April 25, 2009 2:28 PM
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I used Notepad too, Boi. And my preferred "learn HTML" source was "HTML Goodies." Oh, the fond memories of learning how to make a bulleted list... LOL
Bil Browning | April 26, 2009 12:54 PM
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My very first attempt at building a web page was at Geocities.Very sad to see it go.
But I now have many other sites to cheer me up.
Thank you Geocities for giving me a place to practice coding sites by hand.
Kitty Jellinek | April 26, 2009 12:55 AM
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Although Eric mentions Geocities founder David Bohnett, I also want to point out that Bohnett has been a major contributor to gay causes in Los Angeles, most particularly giving many thousands to the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Services Center, including but not limited to funding the establishment of a computer workshop area and a computer training room. Thank You, David, for all that Geocities money flowing into the LA gay economy!
A. J. Lopp | April 27, 2009 9:51 AM
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Bummer. GeoCities was the first dot-com company I worked for. I'll miss it and the wonderful Community Leaders who volunteered their own time to build a online families.
Farewell, GeoCities!
Vince in LA | April 27, 2009 12:21 PM
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