{"id":1202,"date":"2009-10-26T14:44:10","date_gmt":"2009-10-26T21:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bspcn.com\/?p=1202"},"modified":"2009-10-26T14:44:10","modified_gmt":"2009-10-26T21:44:10","slug":"goodbye-geocities-7-retro-things-well-miss-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/26\/goodbye-geocities-7-retro-things-well-miss-forever\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye GeoCities: 7 Retro Things We’ll Miss Forever"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Chris Lesinski<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Logo\"Months after the initial announcement, today, it becomes official: Yahoo has shut down GeoCities<\/a> \u2014 one of the original kings of free web hosting services.<\/p>\n

Now, all of those GeoCities websites (excuse me, “Web Sites”) are coming down. It’s got me more tear-jerkingly nostalgic than Where The Wild Things Are<\/em>.<\/p>\n

No doubt, GeoCities started a revolution, but many of its ways have gone by the wayside. While Yahoo deploys the virtual demolition crews, let’s make one last toast to a few of the relics they’ll leave in the rubble.<\/p>\n

1) Under Construction GIFs<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"UnderIt’s absurd to think that putting up an \u201cunder construction\u201d sign on a web page was at one point an idea that was (pardon the pun) \u201cground breaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why did people make such a big deal out of being \u201cunder construction\u201d in the 90s? It’s not necessarily something you want to attract attention to. \u201cHey! See this fancy animated GIF? That\u2019s just a preview<\/em> of how impressive my site will be when it\u2019s done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly, putting up 37 under construction animations is definitely as impressive as your Family Matters<\/em> fan page ever got. (Except for when you added the auto-playing MIDI version of the intro song. That was awesome.)<\/p>\n

And why the civil engineering motif? Are you trying to tell me that a self-taught HTML geek is like a construction worker? I hope not. Making a website is about the furthest you can get from hard manual labor.<\/p>\n

See the other six retro things we’ll miss after the jump\u2026 <\/span><\/p>\n

2) HTML<\/strong><\/p>\n

The fall of GeoCities certainly won\u2019t be the end of HTML, but those homespun sites definitely hearken back to when HTML was the<\/p>\n

hot<\/strong>t<\/strong>est sh*<\/strong>t around<\/em>!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<\/p>\n

What you are seeing above is the “marquee tag” in action. Yes, there are actually specific tags in HTML for a scrolling marquee or blinking text. For those unfamiliar with basic computer programming, let me explain that: HTML makes it harder to add a hyperlink than to make text scroll horizontally across the page. That\u2019s where priorities were in the Netscape days.<\/p>\n

3) Guestbooks<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Sign<\/a>Ah, the guestbook. It was basically the first incarnation of \u201ccomments\u201d \u2013- a place to put your name down and provide some feedback. Only, back then, people hadn’t quite perfected the espousing of snark and unbridled-racism that make comments so exciting today.<\/p>\n

Here is an actual guestbook entry I came across, typical of most guestbook entries: \u201cVery good webpage you have here, and best greetings to all your visitors. You are welcome to visit my webpage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Could they be less constructive? Even a \u201cfirst\u201d or an ASCII middle finger is better.<\/p>\n

C\u2019mon! This is the internet. If you want to communicate with random people in other countries just for the sake of it, stick to HAM radio.<\/p>\n

(Click here to sign this post\u2019s guestbook<\/a>!)<\/p>\n

4) FAQs<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"FAAQ\"FAQ stands for \u201cfrequently asked questions\u201d but it usually turns into \u201cquestions I’ve obviously made up myself to give me an opportunity to provide information about things no one would actually ever ask questions about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say there\u2019s a site about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The first FAQ would inevitably be \u201cWhat is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?\u201d<\/p>\n

Who would ever ask that? And if they were asking that, how did they end up on the FAQ page?\u00a0 If you run a site about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and users have to go to your FAQ page to figure out what the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are<\/em>, you’re probably not running a very good Royal Canadian Mounted Police website.<\/p>\n

5) Webmasters<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Master\"\u201cClick here to email the Webmaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Okay, but only after you quit pretending your webmaster is a different person than you.<\/p>\n

Who came up with the name \u201cwebmaster\u201d? It probably went out of style because, for your average computer programmer, it brought back some sour memories from their old Dungeons and Dragons days.<\/p>\n

Need more proof it’s a silly title?\u00a0 Try putting it in a modern context.\u00a0 Can you image someone calling Mark Zuckerberg the webmaster of Facebook or Kevin Rose the webmaster of Digg?<\/p>\n

6) <\/strong>Take me to the top<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

On GeoCities, websites were often just one long single page of unedited drivel and found GIFs. Websites just kept going. Who needs more than one page when the web has infinitely long pages?<\/p>\n

So, every three paragraphs, a little hyperlink would offer to take you back to the top. Why? I\u2019ve only made it 20% of the way down your site and you want me to go back to the top to read that same 20% again? I’m not trying to memorize<\/em> every single track on every Limp Bizkit album: I’m just looking for that one specific song title to include in my death threat to Fred Durst.<\/p>\n

By the way, the “take me to the top” section of this post is self-reflexive<\/a>!\u00a0 Here’s to you, “take me to the top!”<\/p>\n

7) Visitor counters<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"HitVisitor counters were the most important part of any GeoCities page. In fact, I believe it was an unspoken rule that you could not remove your “Under Construction” banner until you had added a hit counter, thus making your GeoCities page “complete.”<\/p>\n

Before handling web analytics became a full-time job, the best option to determine your web-traffic was to put a counter right on the page.\u00a0 These counters had the added bonus of embarrassing your visitors when they would realize how few people had been to your site before them.<\/p>\n

But, back then, it didn\u2019t matter that nobody was visiting your site \u2014 you could always stuff the ballot by manually changing the number in the settings. If your friend’s counter said \u201c114\u201d you could be pretty sure that meant \u201c14.\u201d\u00a0 Why won’t Google AdSense let me do this?<\/p>\n

Luckily, even without GeoCites, the visitor counter industry will stay in business thanks, entirely, to eBay.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re going to miss GeoCities\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019ll miss the impossible to remember URLs. We\u2019re going to miss hand-coding our pages in Notepad. We\u2019ll even miss the ridiculously invasive ads. So pour one out for the hosting platform that took \u201cbright lights, big city\u201d way too literally.<\/p>\n

GeoCities \u2013- farewell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Chris Lesinski Months after the initial announcement, today, it becomes official: Yahoo has shut down GeoCities \u2014 one of the original kings of free web hosting services. Now, all of those GeoCities websites (excuse me, “Web Sites”) are coming down. It’s got me more tear-jerkingly nostalgic than Where The Wild Things Are. No […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1204,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions\/1204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}