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Remember Geocities? Now you can recreate it

Let’s break out the Comic Sans and get our guestbook on.

FOR THOSE OF us over a certain vintage, Geocities was part of our first foray into the web.

Back then, we were all chugging away on Windows 98, peering at big grey monitors. The dial-up wheeze was a constant companion, floppy disks were in and no Publisher document was complete without a feast of clip-art.

Times have certainly changed – but Geocities is back with a vengeance, under the reincarnated moniker NeoCities. Users can set up a page under a NeoCities domain, with up to 10MB of space to build on, allowing the user full customisation with HTML, CSS, Java, images and text.

The Daily Dot reports that NeoCities founder Kyle Drake views the project’s purpose “not to inspire nostalgia” but to help bring back “our platforms for creativity and rich self expression online.”

Geocities began in 1994, a place for early internet users to form communities based on shared interests. Yahoo bought the site in 1999 for the eye-watering figure of $3.5 billion in stock but it subsequently took a sharp nose-dive, and Yahoo closed it down in 2009.

Here are just a few of the reasons we’re really happy to see Geocities resurrected.

Under construction

Jason Scott of The Archive Team made this collection of  Under Construction GIFs available on Geocities, shortly before the platform was shut down by Yahoo.

A Geocities page was a constant work in progress, which presumably goes some way to expain why Under Construction was such a popular sight.

Old school GIFs

GIFs are now a staple of the internet experience, but in the time of Geocities they were still a distinct novelty.

Anyone remember the dancing baby GIF? How did we let that become a thing?

Image: 11 points

Or perhaps the deeply pointless flaming line?

Image: 11 points

Blinged out cursors

It certainly wasn’t enough to simply have GIFs and Under Construction stickers on your Geocities. You also had to bling out your mouse cursor. Obviously.

Image: Geocities

One page, ten fonts

Running fade-out rainbows to your text was also acceptable. But it HAD to be Comic Sans.

Image: Wonder Tonic

Guestbooks

Indispensable. How else would you know who had been stopping by?

Guestbooks were a staple of the web back then.

Image: Geocities/Buzzfeed

Another essential addition to your site was the hit-counter. Nothing on the internet since has been as thrilling as watching your Geocities hits rise.

Image: QuickMeme

Will you be setting yourself up a NeoCities page for old time’s sake? Did you have a Geocities back in the day?

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