Today is a sad day for many people in my generation.  Today, Geocities is shutting down and going offline forever. I still remember when I first signed up for the website–erm page.  I knew I wanted to make my own video game webpage. So naturally I reserved my “home” in the Times Square / Arcade neighborhood.

Neighborhood? What?!

Yes, before Geocities was bought out by Yahoo.  Before it was free to have a URL link geocities.com/yourname. Before you had 5 megabytes of space to play with.  You had to find a city and a neighhood.  After you found the right neighborhood, you would need to find a vacant “home.” Each home had a different number, just like real home addresses do now.

I still remember my first URL on the internets. http://www.Geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arcade/7733 . Yup.  It was “TimberWolf’s Website.”  It had to be one of most bad ass websites on the internet at that time. Well, in my mind at least. I mean, come on! It had animated Lemmings, explosions, Link Exchange, TimberWolf Net Mech graphics, and 3D animated text.  What more could you ask for.

It was also noted that you scren had to have a screen res of at least 800×600 and you were using IE or Netscape.

Back when I was in high school, I would anxiously await for that lunch bell to ring.  Once it rang, I’d run to the library to be first on one of the 3 computers that had internet access on it.  For 30 minutes, I would update my website using HTML I had learned (well, copied) from other websites. Once I was done, I’d show it off to my friends.  Of course they weren’t impressed. But I was.

Thank you, Geocities. With your advanced editor, I’ve learned the basics of the internet and HTML coding. I will miss and remember you always. =(