Edition #9: Thanks(?) for the Memories!

A Look Back at Geocities Site Hosting and How It Affected the TK Community

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It was recently announced by Geocities that they would be shutting down their free site hosting services as of Oct. 26th, 2009.  Geocities...or "Geo-shitties", as some of us used to call them...the free web site server that we loved to hate.  But, it was often our love and appreciation of the service they provided us that made us hate them.  

Many an old tickle site got their start through Geocities.  My own Tickle Chamber site moved there for a time as well.  A number of folks found them to be an easy venue for sharing their love of tickling.  Many others found those old sites to be a source of strength.  We weren't alone after all!  So, on those occasions when there were lots of visitors and the site would disappear for a few hours, we really hated it.  Bandwidth shut-down time was a reality that many of us learned to accept and deal with.  

Geocities unwittingly taught us to appreciate what we had by taking it away for those brief periods.  But, as daddy (AKA dally longhair from the old Hotel Tickle site hosted there) points out, that was just the beginning of what they taught us.  He shared the following thoughts in a recent thread....

Well Ann, as you know that is where Hoteltickle started and planted roots for it's entire run. My thoughts are this...first you have to thank  them for providing a FREE space for people to host sites. And on top of that, they had many useful tutorials and tools that helped teach  people HTML. Also they had neat applications that you could add like guestbooks, counters, forms, etc... and this was way back in 1997-98.  As the Hotel grew I needed more room and eventually bought my space from them which did two things. Got me more real estate and got rid  of the ad's! I think that was the whole lure of GeoCities...get people to build their homes there and make it easy for them to do, and then as  your needs grew they knew you would eventually pay for things instead of moving somewhere else! Worked on me! LOL The only complaint I  ever had was that one day my whole site vanished into thin air. I come to find out someone turned me in for violating terms of service saying I  had nude pics on the site which was NOT true. I made sure that every pic had some kind of clothing on the person so I fought it and got the  site back until I pulled the plug myself.  Overall, I think geoCities rocked and gave lot's of folk their start into the world of internet web site building.

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As mentioned, not everyone loved Geocities.  Many hated them with a passion.  The shutdowns and limitations were too many for some to accept.  It was simply too much of an inconvenience for many of us.  Upon learning of their closing, TickledToDeath shared his dislike of them as follows...

Good. Geocities was a total waste of time and energy. You would be able to post up and create anything you wanted within reason and then out of nowhere without warning rhyme or reason, your site was shut down. Good Riddance to them at Geocities "I hope you had the time of your lives'"

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New to the community and have no idea which sites were hosted where?  Just want a nice stroll down memory lane?  Take a look at the following list of sites that were once hosted by Geocities (site names linked to archive locations where available)...

There were a number of other sites still located there when Geocities shut down.  Some were still active while others had not been updated in some time...years in some cases.  Those sites that we were aware of have been saved  in their entirety as they appeared at the time of shut down.  Those that are not relocated will be made available in our own archives as soon as I can get them up.  (Site names will be linked to their location in our archives as I get them formatted and uploaded.)  They are...

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Love them or hate them.  Geocities is no more.  For the great sites they made possible, we salute you.  For the frustrations of shutdowns, bandwidth limits, etc., the salute would take a rather different form.  In either case, farewell and thanks for the memories!

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