Saturday, 25 April 2009 - 3:58 PM EDT

It is funny their users use to think of us angelfire users nothing but misfits. Now some of them may want in. 

Sunday, 26 April 2009 - 11:22 AM EDT

I hadn't heard about that. Do you know what led them to that decision? It has to be tough being a host server considering tougher music copyright enforcement, server attacks, spambots, etc.

As for how I feel, I don't know. I have a geocities account but never really liked it especially after they did away with ftp for free accounts. The one thing that's clear to me is that if know html and/or have a good offline builder you can work with, then it really doesn't matter who the server is. Your site can be hosted anywhere unless you need something special like php. And if you have a domain name you should be able to point it anywhere.

Monday, 27 April 2009 - 2:20 AM EDT

Hi CW,

I also have a Geocities account, and agree that the restrictions for ad-supported memebership are very tight, regarding bandwidth and FTP (as you mentioned).

However, there are millions of Geocities members, including me, who are very disappointed in learning of their closing down the operation.

Let me give you a prime example: There is a fellow in Mexico, who hosts an excellent site @ http://www.geocities.com/jesusib/ which I am linking to, on one of my Angelfire pages: https://www.angelfire.com/ri/georgev/

He has done a tremendous amount of research on that site, and it has been online for years and years.

Here is a quote from his 'about me' page:

"I am Jesus Ibarra and I live together with my wife Alejandra and my daughter Rebeca in a farm in  San Miguel Allende, Mexico, where I grow artichokes and raise sheeps. My hobby since I was a young boy has been to read about the kings and queens of Europe in all periods of History. One of my favorite monarchs is Queen Victoria so  I have decided to create a web page to put in it all what I know and what I have read about her and her family."

Now multiply Jesus Ibarra by several million folks (Google has 44,000,000 million links for Geocities), and you will understand the severity of the situation.

Sure, a site can be hosted anywhere, but who is going to change all those hundreds of links, on other webpages, accumulated over the years?

Why is Yahoo closing it down? Your guess is as good as mine.

Best,

-tom-

Tuesday, 28 April 2009 - 7:10 AM EDT

tom- that's another way of looking at it and that's why a domain name can help since they can be pointed anywhere. There's no guarantee any host will be up and running forever. It's unfortunate for those on geocities but something that is not unheard of. I think one of the earliest hosts I ever used was hotbot which died when lycos bought them out. C'est la vie, as they say:) and something all site owners should plan for in a worst case scenario.

Tuesday, 28 April 2009 - 9:20 PM EDT

I had a site there once I forgot the address, must be the detour on that street ...lol.

Too many hosts went down it is not the first one, the main problem is the sites owners who depend on online site builders even with a backup it is useless when they have to move to another host.

I am not sure if yahoo is going to help sites owners to move to another hosts like any other descent hosts did.

Simple and humble angelfire out lasted lots of them.  

Thursday, 30 April 2009 - 2:33 AM EDT

CW wrote: "It's unfortunate for those on geocities but something that is not unheard of."

Hah! I have also seen many free homepage servers go down over the years, but nothing on the huge scale of Geocities. I fomd it strange, that they are unable to turn a profit with the advertising, but I admit to being rather ignorant of the finer points of web hosting. It would be great, if Lycos could incorperate the whole operation, retain the existing URLs, and just insert their own advertising banners etc.

At least we have the assurance from Lycos: "Some of you have expressed concern that your Angelfire account is going away. That's not the case at all. Angelfire, Tripod and Lycos are NOT shutting down. Your free/paid sites are fine". (Angelfire Club Blog: Sunday, 18 January 2009)

David wrote: "I am not sure if yahoo is going to help sites owners to move to another hosts like any other descent hosts did. "

Comment: Apparently, the Geocities administration wil be giving out more details re the closure during the summer.

-tom-

Thursday, 30 April 2009 - 5:24 AM EDT

There's no immediate fear of Angelfire or Tripod closing down. We have some great things planned for this year (PHP support has been launched on Tripod and Angelfire will have some new tricks soon too.) I know that we'll try and make it easy for Geocities users to move across, but I don't have any more details on that yet since much depends on how Yahoo decides to actually do the shutdown.

JP

Sunday, 3 May 2009 - 3:49 AM EDT

Hi JP,

Making it easy for Geocities members to transfer their files to Angelfire would be great; but 'even greater' would be if Lycos could arrange to have all the defuct Geocities URLs redirected to the new angelfire pages.

-tom-

Saturday, 23 May 2009 - 7:18 PM EDT

Glad I'm at angelfire. It doesn't always go smoothly but at least they never suddenly pulled the plug like GeoCities, or AOL pages, or cinema.lycos.com