Ten years ago, my cousin opened my eyes in the world of internet. I remember having SpiceGirls.com as the first website that I ever went to. Later on, I learned that I can search for pictures and information via search engines like Yahoo, MSN, Altavista among others. I am truly amazed on how a scanner works. I even compared it into a xerox machine only that the printout will be in the monitor. As a big fan of the Spice Girls, I wanted to make my own fansite for them.

Starting today, Geocities is already a part of web history

The problem is, I don’t have enough money for the hosting and I am completely clueless on how to buy domains and how to find a good host. Thank God there were free webhosting places around like AngelFire and Tripod. What annoyed me was the pop-up ads. I needed to look for a better host and tenen… GEOCITIES came in the picture!

I remember bringing all my magazines, songhits and posters of Spice Girls in my grandfather’s office just to have them scanned. I told him that I’ll be making a website. Since I don’t have any computer at home, I always bring at least 10 diskettes with me where i can save my files. What I usually do is transfer them in the hard disk of the internet laboratory at the college library and upload them to Geocities then delete the files on the diskette again. In short, Geocities served as my online storage of files.

What was the first Geocities site I made? I forgot the complete URL, but the site is all about Geri Halliwell. During that time, I was still depressed with the fact that she left the group and eventually became happy for her when she released her debut album called ‘Schizophonic’. I made this intro page wherein when you click at the image, it will lead you to the homepage. The homepage had a lot of colorful marquees like this:

Welcome to Geri Halliwell Central! Thank you for visiting my page! Don’t forget to sign the guestbook!

I added that site in a number of webrings. I participated in a number of Yahoo!Clubs (now called Yahoo!Groups) and even created and founded a number of clubs for each member of the Spice Girls.

FQD Batch 2004 Website - Marquee - Image -Marquee -Link Layout

When I reached high school, I became a fan of Cogie Domingo which prompted me to make a fansite for him. I collected some of his pictures,completed his biography, asked other fans to take screencaps of his tv shows and so on. Yeah, I created more fansites including one of Tanya Garcia, Jade Lopez and yes, Assunta de Rossi T_T

Welcome to my Homepage! - Very Xtina-ish!

And oh, I have my personal site too! The main page is like my online journal (errr… blog?) and I have different sections such as profile, biography, photos (divided into 20 links LOLOLOL), links, stories (i used to write short stories in my notebook and eventually type them and publish it online), songs (yeah, i used to write songs too haha), polls (i forgot which poll service i used waaaah) and of course, the guestbook 😛

Geocities is Closing - October 26, 2009

Just last May, Dreamhost announced that Geocities is shutting down this year. I had mixed emotions that time. I am happy because I have the chance to get a number of Unlimited Hosting for Free with my Geocities accounts (I have around 8). Sad, because deleting Geocities is like saying goodbye to my high school memory.

Yesterday, Kuya Ederic plurked about the last day of Geocities. I was busy tagging photos at work that time. He gave us a link that we can download and use to get the backup of our Geocities sites, but for some reason, the said link won’t work at my end. I ended up opening some of my accounts and manually saved some photos. I saved almost all the important photos that I scanned and uploaded way, way back.

I never thought that this day will come. Years ago, when you look for something at search engines, webpages hosted by Geocities usually appears at the first page. With the emerging web trends like blogs, free webhosting services such as Geocities just died. Suddenly, everyone thought Geocities sucked and eventually, all its users left the place we all once called our ‘online home’.

Geocities taught us how to be patient in coding. Talk about manual coding of HTML codes! I used to memorize all the tags and feel amazed whenever I see the output of my tag. Geocities used to be the best and a lot of our webmasters today owe a lot to Geocities whether they admit it or not.

Jade Lopez Online - The last site hosted by Geocities

To Geocities, Thank you for hosting our first works online. Thank you for not adding pop-up ads way back unlike Angelfire and Tripod who kept on annoying its visitors with blinking ads. Thanks for giving us a big bandwidth limit and for being a storage of our most kept memory for the past years.

I heard that Yahoo is permanently deleting Geocities today, which means there’s no back-up or whatever. Files will no longer be retrieved later on. All you can do is save your files or upgrade into a paid webhosting package. This kinda made me sad. It’s like saying goodbye to an old friend whom you unconsciously took advantage of but still remained as a friend by keeping your most treasured memories for a long time. Today, Geocities is now a part of history and we all have to say Goodbye… for good.