Farewell, GeoCities, and thank you

I read that Yahoo is shutting down the GeoCities service later this year. They have already eliminated the ability to sign up for a new account on the service.

I don't use GeoCities anymore, but I used to use it. My first website was set up on GeoCities in January of 1997 (my senior year in college). That was before Yahoo purchased it. But GeoCities was a free service, and a few of my friends had their own pages, so I jumped onto the bandwagon.

My initial page was little more than a list of my own bookmarks. Storing that on an online server made it easy for me to find no matter what computer I used at college. But I added more information, and Corfy's Corner gradually grew into the site it is today.

I still remember my original web address, not that it is valid anymore: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/3275. Don't bother going there now... you will get a "Page Not Found" error.

At some point, I did start paying GeoCities (or perhaps it was Yahoo GeoCities by then) $5 a month to get a slightly increased site storage (I think it went from 10 MB to 25 MB... a lot of space at the time), a somewhat easier address (http://www.geocities.com/corfmaj... again, don't bother following it), and more importantly, the removal of ads. Eventually, I discovered that 1&1 would give me significantly more storage (at the time, it was 500 MB, it is considerably more than that now), my own domain name, the ability to run my own scripts, numerous email address, and a lot more for the same $5 a month. It was a no-brainer. I moved my site back in 2004, and have been with 1&1 ever since.

While I haven't been with GeoCities in over five years, I still have a soft spot in my heart for the service, and I will be sorry to see it go.