Geocities Closing?

Midori · Post by **Midori** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 1:07 am

I was floored when I just saw this on the site saying they are closing "later this year"

talk about shook I guess it's a good thing I've been trying to move off their site!

Shard · Post by **Shard** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 1:16 am

Well that's absolutely fucktardly.

Looks like I'm gonna have to speed up moving everything off of the individual sites, though I'll have to investigate whether or not my actual droppin-the-fork site will be affected since it IS through geocities....

Midori · Post by **Midori** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 1:48 am

urg I'm sorry shard that sucks even more. I'm going to try freehostia.com I hope it works!

As soon as I saw that I was like fuck! I'm going through my geocities pages saving all the html page uploading them to the new place with ftp, to see what images/backgrounds I'm missing.

I mean I've wanted to go geocities free for some time now and use ftp because I makes stuff so much easier to change every page without waiting on sever and then one can upload the changes so much sooner but. Talk about time limits. I mean can they be any more vage then some time 'later this year'

That could mean two months from now or until the begining of next year.

But this also mean let everyone know I moved no my dragons aren't abandoned! every damn dragon I own... evil it ish...

Kitsuneko · Post by **Kitsuneko** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:42 am

O_O! Crap. I've got at least eight different geocities accounts, and about half of those are filled up. It's gonna take forever to move everything!
So does anyone know a place with a good drag-and-drop editor like Pagebuilder, or am I gonna have to actually learn HTML? *facepalm*

Post by **Dray** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:14 am

@.@ Wow, what a giant pain in the arse for so many people. All of the old sites like that Gem Dragons adoption place are going to go poof forever, too! D: *urge to save abandoned dragon adoption species info rising*

Post by **StarFyre** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:40 am

Holy wow... I know I was working on moving all my dragons (slowly) to my silveredmagic.com account, but.. yeesh!

Since they say they'll be "sharing more details this summer", we've probably got a few months to do our job of saving websites and dragonries.

Speaking of which... something like Yakima's Pern-listings (with additional species information, since most of them were distinct species) should probably be made for all the old non-Pern dragonries that are going to die. If she doesn't want to do it, I can take care of it this summer (since my stated purpose for the summer is to be a bum and relax) if the rest of you will help with collecting notes and things. (I lost a lot of my links in computer transitions, so except for a couple of sites, I don't remember that many anymore.)

What's with all the old classics shutting down? Jeez...

Note: It looks like paid accounts are still open for getting bought, thus I'm not sure exactly how this will affect you, Shard.

TyGryph · Post by **TyGryph** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:56 am

This means we lose Gallimim forever.
And also Sapphire Weyr, unless one of it's caretakers resurfaces between now and "later this year"
And all of the records for Talor Cliff and other closed places that left records standing. (Vella Crean...)

This SUCKS.
Because a lot of the "retired" people who have left their dragons to gather dust on Geocities and aren't paying attention anymore... are going to lose everything.

*goes to send an email to her old Ryslen updates mailing list*

TyGryph · Post by **TyGryph** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:00 am

This means we lose Gallimim forever.
And also Sapphire Weyr, unless one of it's caretakers resurfaces between now and "later this year"
And all of the records for Talor Cliff and other closed places that left records standing. (Vella Crean...)

This SUCKS.
Because a lot of the "retired" people who have left their dragons to gather dust on Geocities and aren't paying attention anymore... are going to lose everything.

*goes to send an email to her old Ryslen updates mailing list*
[Edit]
Or not. My work computer and Yahoo! Mail are not getting along today. *mutter*

dracosinfernoweyr · Post by **dracosinfernoweyr** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 9:41 am

Holy crap are you serious? D: So many pages to move! Links to update! Guess I know where half of my free time is going after exams. >.>

JKatkina · Post by **JKatkina** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 11:03 am

I propose, perhaps, a Save Geocities' Weyrs Initiative?

Save what we can of the sites that are disappearing, those of us who have the webspace, and re-upload them on safe grounds, with a disclaimer letting people know they aren't really ours.

Post by **Dray** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 11:24 am

As in, save them part and parcel how they looked before, instead of just information mining? XD Quite possibly brilliant.

Shard · Post by **Shard** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 11:45 am

I've got a lot of Aden and Gallimim already saved, actually. Since they were removing some sites back a few years when the index pages hadn't been updated - that's how I lost access (in part) to my old genrehopper site.

But yeah I think actually one idea would be to find some of those ancient ANCIENT link sites that show off all the cyberpet areas, and find the ones which are somewhat relevant on geocities. I'm sure some of those are long, long dusty and dead anyway but if they're going to actually vanish, JESUS what a stupid thing... :/ I mean, Hometown and now this... :/

Post by **StarFyre** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 12:06 pm

Well, I don't have time to assist at the moment (gimme another three weeks, then I gotta make sure all my stuff is saved (grumble mutter grouch grumble, I know I said I wanted to get all that moved, but not with an unspecified timelimit hovering over my head!)), but I can offer up the silveredmagic.com server if things need posting and aren't given homes elsewhere.

Hmm.. that's a thought...

*shrugs* If I end up playing host to some, I might buy up a higher-level plan and get subdomains for myself. Set up something like oldweyrs.silveredmagic.com

Thought for another day. Back to being antsy about presenting today (HURK... a presentation that I care about...)

Kendarath · Post by **Kendarath** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 12:20 pm

From what the help page the little notice directed us to, it sounds like "Web Hosting upgrade" will remain (thankfully, that's what I've got, and I think you've got the same thing, Shard?).

Which means I have lots of space to offer to the saving-the-old weyrs project.

Yakima · Post by **Yakima** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 12:58 pm

Anyone is welcome to help with that Weyr Archive project. *shrugs* That's what I intended anyway.

I only save the records, but the site can be modified to save hatching stories and flights, too. I want to move it OFF my account and onto one that those of us interested in working on it can update easily. That way if I go *poof* someone can still get to it, eh?

But yeah, that sucks. Glad I got my own domain a few years back.

Post by **StarFyre** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 1:30 pm

Hmm.. if you want to move it to a joint account, a brief look-up of free hosting shows this:

atspace.com provides ad-less webhosting, 50MB of space, unlimited bandwidth, free domain and subdomain hosting, ftp account, email accounts, etc... there is NO server-side scripting language support here

50webs.com is similar to atspace, 60MB of space, unlimited bandwidth, ftp account, an email account, etc.. also no server-side scripting language support here

freehostia.com is similar to those above, but with 250MB of space, 5GB/month of bandwidth.. databases and server-side scripting language supported here (Note: requires a credit card or paypal account for verification, never charged)

100webspace.com shows a small banner ad at the top of the page, 100MB of space, 3GB/month bandwidth, and a full-pack of everything and anything you'd need to do practically anything online (databases, scripting, webmail, etc)

Shard · Post by **Shard** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 1:32 pm

Yeah I just was on the phone with geocities support, and upgraded to the "unlimited" options - it's the same monthly cost, so I'm not worried about that.

What it appears they're doing, is removing the Pagebuilder structure entirely, eliminating it in favor of their hosting option builder instead, and apparently that won't allow anyone to use the normal Geocities for a while, since it only uses Pagebuilder. It's kind of confusing. However, she said that they don't have a date in mind and they will be taking it reasonably slow about it. I asked her to pass on that since Hometown / AOL slaughtered their sites and never even bothered to tell people, PLEASE please please send notification to *everyone* as early as possible. Hopefully they'll understand the need for such a thing.

This does mean that there's time, though gah... >_> Glances at list of geocities sites I have... *dies*

lethe_katherine_gray
zora_domina, t32rf
istvansanger, cynthia_sanger
apogee_elf, abode_elf_dollz, snowfall_elf, otherforest_elves
raanatani, ritatull, usagi_shimai
crazy_doc_sanger, carramba_high, carramba_high_alumnus
genrehopper, dawnlight_creator, dawnlight_blackstone, kshau_protectorate, kshau_dragons, weyrleader_shard, protectorate_riders, protectorate_wings, k_p_flightzone, kshau_furries, all_pern, winter_gather, buenos_weyr, baeris_kshau_masterhealer, healing_den, healing_den_flitters, vanya_sengihr, ablan_cherry_festival, paveh_hold, many_o_me, the_endings, the_endings_crew, caerlord_qalam, caer_paniya_folk, islands_of_alskyr, dun_keiba, kazoku_no_ryu, saxxon_of_dragonhope, dragonhope_weyr, dav_n_bri, talon_city, alabaster_riders, zekiran_immortal, world_of_zekira, invader_woz, dragonmasters_of_zekira, fuzzy_zekira, planet_twenty, planet_twenty_dragons, planet_twenty_realm, ferilon_farm, ferilon_ranch, ferilon_genes, egyptan_breeder, egyptan_refuge, w_d_beeblebrox, karen_kenobi, finder_fan, bugtown_broad, superhero_dollz...

Yes, those are ALL my geocities sites. FUCK.

Kitsuneko · Post by **Kitsuneko** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 2:12 pm

I know, after thinking about it, I've determined that my total geocities accounts are more like 15-16, rather than eight. D: Better get started, eh?
Freehostia sounds good, I think I'll have to check that out. And see if my brother still has a copy of Dreamweaver. Hmm, gonna be busy this weekend.

Shard · Post by **Shard** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 2:27 pm

They're not going to be doing anything until later this year, but it's definitely something to keep doing in the background.

>_> *glares at older accounts all made in page builder*

Unyko · Post by **Unyko** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 4:05 pm

GYAH.

Epic fail on geocities' part. Darnit, I have to hurry up with my moving accounts, too. >.<

jess d · Post by **jess d** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:09 pm

Crap... this is going to take a while

I only have 7 accounts, but I am really picky about the free sites, and i really don't like a lot of the ones I've looked at

I've been thinking about getting my own space, but I need to figure out finances >.>

dracosinfernoweyr · Post by **dracosinfernoweyr** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 9:29 pm

I have a question for anyone who has switched to freehostia already... how the hell do you create a simple HTML page? I build all my pages straight from basic HTML and I have no clue how to create one in all this complicated stuff. D:

Midori · Post by **Midori** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 10:02 pm

Open a text file...
past your html in it
then go select save as
then write it as such filename.html
it should save as an html page.
upload in the control panel or with an ftp program.

dracosinfernoweyr · Post by **dracosinfernoweyr** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 10:12 pm

Oy. *facepalm* I kinda-sorta had it figured out, I'm just a moron and have never used anything but geocities to make webpages before so I freaked and thought I'd never figure it out, all my pages would be bahleeted.... XD; Thanks!

Teach me to panic before I've taken the time to poke around a bit. >.>

Midori · Post by **Midori** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 10:53 pm

Lol, no big I remember when I started not using geocities for the first time it's big leap at times. Or it seems like it. What I did for my account is basic I went in to my geocities html editor and just copied the whole html this and saved it in hnote pad as an html file. then moved all the images. Images where the big thing. Talk about lots of them x.x

Yakima · Post by **Yakima** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 1:53 pm

If you have Word, you can create web pages with it, too. That's what I'm using for the Weyr Archives because it's faster and keeps me from doing really fancy things that I do for my other websites.

Of course, I have an older version of Word that's like...ancient, but it works.

Shard · Post by **Shard** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 2:16 pm

(that also includes unreadable curvy quotes when viewed with certain browsers... lol)

Actually if you KNOW any html at all, it's very easy to just save the geocities page and then strip out what is not needed.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 3:25 pm

Gah, I feel for all of you people.

Thankfully, I'm over here in the contingent that A) never touched geocities with a ten-foot-pole once they figured out that pagebuilder was not html-friendly and B) now owns her own chunk of webspace.

But I will feel bad for you all, and if anyone wants to volunteer a derelict agency for saving - or two - I'll host some on my discalced.net space quite happily.

Yakima · Post by **Yakima** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:46 pm

Shard wrote:(that also includes unreadable curvy quotes when viewed with certain browsers... lol)

Heh, oh, yeah. Well, maybe it's just the version of Word that I have. It is very old.. Word 2002. Very out of date.

Shard · Post by **Shard** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 7:18 pm

Notepad is great, if you do know html. Because it, unlike WORD or WORDPAD, doesn't insert weird symbols that are not html or other basic ascii code. Learned about wordpad's insertion of things when I was working for the computer company, doing a web site and some cutting and pasting for their tech manuals. Discovered that it does indeed insert all manner of invisible crap. Notepad works great, because it's just plain vanilla old text.