The Fan History wiki has been trying hard to preserve Yahoo! Geocities since it is due to close before the end of October 2009. Although Fan History is covering sites that are within the fandom realm, like fan sites, fan fiction sites, fan art sites, and the like, there are other places too that are trying to preserve more. AboutUs.org even covered this issue, so you know if they mentioned it in their article GeoCities is Closing: Here’s How to Wiki-fy Your Sites , it is important enough to pay attention.
The reason behind this is that there will be a lot of sites lost due to the fact that the owner may have long abandoned their site even though people actually visit it to get relevant information. Although Yahoo! offers paid services for their hostees to move to, GeoCities has been a great tool for many to just be able to have a website. Other than the paid services, Yahoo! recklessly redirects their hostees to choose other sites as if it was no big deal.
Although most of the places like Fan History and the Internet Archive, you can help with this, even if it is or is not your website.
If you did have a site at Geocities that is currently up, put some type of notation that it have moved and provide a visible link in your anchor text. I have done so at my old and ancient site – Petals In The Wind (as an example.) You can then go to the Internet Archive site and have them preserve your site. If you know of any websites that should be documented, but only have time to make a list, you can contact me and share your list, or contact the site owner Laura Hale on Twitter. In at least doing this people will be able to find your content if you have since moved it. Already, I am aware that Fan History has documented over 5,000 websites so far on GeoCities that are fan related.
Have you heard of the GeoCities Preservation projects? What do you think of GeoCities closing, even if you might not have used their services?
Sigh…my first website was on geocities…1994 or something…
I haven’t used Geocities since like 2000 but I use to love it. I created all my Backstreet Boys fan pages on it. I started building websites with their page editor and then slowly started learning HTML. Ah, good memories.
I have not in some time myself, but I used GeoCities for almost 6 years before I got my first domain and webhosting. I have to give them credit for allowing me to use their services for free to be able to be how I am today.
yes, my own was back in 1998 from my first yahoo account when they did the street URLs rather than use your yahoo ID at the end of your URL.