Geocities has existed for as long as I can remember the internet, providing free themed "neighborhood" space to users starting in 1995 and encouraging us to become technological "homesteaders." It was a forerunner of blogs and social networking sites, bringing like-minded people together via link directories and webrings. At a very young age, and with a very slow modem, Geocities helped me make homepages and fan pages. It had me mucking around with HTML and its own creaky site-building tools. I was 13 years old, so it was the host of my anti-Dawson's Creek screed, Dawson's Creak, and later it made room for too many trashy stories-the kind where Mulder and Scully really, really like each other or Harry Potter's broomstick needs tweaking. But it was the first way I learned to publish myself on the web.

Its dawn-of-the-internet aesthetic-buzzy backgrounds, rainbow text, neon pagecounters, misaligned tables and ever-present "under construction" icons-have become a staple of web history and nostalgia. But beyond teenage shrines and the garish experimental HTML pages of old, Geocities has deep roots in user-driven creativity. There are innumerable fansites, self-published fiction, fanfiction archives, art galleries and group pages among the countless housed at Geocities.

While active sites may move their content, many of us have left behind Geocities graveyards stuffed full of old things, trusting them to always be there. But now the internet is failing us. It's time to take action and save your ninth-grade fanfiction before it is gone forever.

Yahoo! recommends visiting your Geocities page, right/ctrl clicking it, and saving the file that way. You can also login to your Geocities account, if you can remember it, at Geocities, and access the site's File Manager tool under the "Manage" tab to get the full inventory on what you have. Yahoo! also recommends, of course, upgrading to its monthly fee-based web hosting if you want to preserve your data in the same spot. In terms of free services, it suggests Tripod, Webs.com, Weebly, WebStarts.com, SynthaSite, and Wikispaces. Or, you know, you could just get a Tumblr.

Many online fannish communities will be dealt a blow when Geocities goes down for good. The idea of all the lost fiction, art, and man-hours lovingly given over towards advancing a particular genre obsession is bracing. It is a tragic day for the interwebs. So while you're taking the time to preserve your own content, take a moment to save some of the stuff you've loved in the past, too.

Although the nonprofit Internet Archive is doing its best to compile Geocities pages, it is nowhere near comprehensive. Stories by long-gone authors, carefully collected recommendation pages, lengthy manifestos and original art could vanish entirely into the ether today. Let's save what we can-the future will thank us. And they won't even have to scroll past multicolor backdrops and madly blinking graphics, more's the pity.

Kaila Hale-Stern lives in a self-selected corner of the internet populated by basement-dwelling anarchists and people who write stories about their favorite fictional characters. Her primary concerns are the duplicities of history, the scourge of pop culture, and not letting Mayor Bloomberg win the battle against cigarettes. She can be read here and reached here.

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18 comments

Why is GeoCities not accepting new customers?
Gee, I dunno, Einstein. Maybe for the same reason Sony's not selling a lot of Betamax players these days.

I'm a GeoCities customer. What's happening to my site?
Well, let's take quick stroll down Sunset Strip and see: Oh, right, jack shit! Apparently you're "super stoked for the imminent release of Fairweather Johnson." Jesus, is that fucking dust on your website? How is that even possible?

Will something happen to my GeoCities Free or Plus account?
Are you really this slow or is it the dial-up? You're done, dude.

Can I prepare for GeoCities closing now?
Yeah, do that. Hurry up and save your shit or else posterity will never know that you felt "alone/with a heart made of stone/because he'll never phone" back in freshman year.

When will I get more information?
We'll send you an e-mail telling you to "eat shit and die" in about a month or two. Of course, since the last registered e-mail address we have on file goes to a Hotmail account, you're probably not going to see it.

Does Yahoo! offer another free hosting service?
No, Yahoo! does not offer another free hosting service. And you know what? NEITHER DOES ANYONE ELSE. Seriously, don't ask around or anything, just trust us on this. We recommend our award-winning Yahoo! Web Hosting service, which includes a personalized domain name (such as widgetdesigns.com) and matching email, new site building tools, unlimited disk space and bandwidth, premium customer support, and more. IT IS THE ONLY OPTION EVER IF YOU WANT TO HOST A WEBSITE. [Cough]You fucking retard.[Cough]

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