winds of change...
Written: Dec 09 '01
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The Bottom Line
Average service provider offering average service. Low opinion of non-paying users. Okay for personal homepages, not good for more than medium traffic due to bandwith limitations.
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| Full Review |
About a year after I had joined Geocities I was rather perturbed to notice that it had been bought out by Yahoo! and felt a little worried by what it would mean for the service. It turns out I had every right to be worried.
Though the service itself is still relatively user friendly, similar to the way it was before Geocities was swallowed up by the big-name ooze, and the interface remains similar and fairly well laid out, there have been a number of innovations, so to speak, which were not so pleasing. Though the amount of space provided to users has gone up, I don't like the fact that homepage URLs are tied to yahoo IDs. I preferred the old system of 'neighborhoods' for all that the URLs were incredibly long; it gave a feeling of community and were also useful as a way to find out what the content of the site was.
Though Yahoo have offered some innovations that make web design a little easier I personally feel, as someone who puts a lot of time and effort into trying to learn HTML and making sure the code for my own pages is working, that the templates offered to make web design 'easy' are rather annoying, though to some they may be useful. All the same I feel that innovations such as that do not benefit someone who's new at HTML who is left with the impression that even the basics are too hard to master; it also seems to assume, if you ask me, that everyone who isn't paying for web hosting is a neophyte or a moron. I personally find the service to be a lot better if you ignore as many of the bells and whistles as possible and stick with the basic 'advanced HTML editor'.
There are far too many adverts on these sites. Though that is the case with many free servers and it's not as bad as some, I preferred the advertising bar Geocities put on the site which you could position anywhere rather than the ad popup square which makes trying to design a site which uses frames decidedly aggravating. On top of which the constant exhortations to upgrade to Geocities Premium services get annoying when all you're trying to do is build a personal web site. My experience with Yahoo! Geocities has not been so good I'm prepared to pay them for the privelige. One of the only reasons I stick with the service is that I'm used to it and at least I know what to expect from them. The lovely new bandwidth limitation (punishment for webmasters who dare to become too popular?) seems to have been added in order to get as many suck-- er, customers to sign up for their services as possible.
A word of warning: I have had files become corrupted during upload and others getting randomly deleted whilst using this service, making process of creating and maintaining a website a lot less pleasurable than it has to be. Next time I start up a site, which I am planning on doing soon, I'll be starting up elsewhere rather than sticking with Geocities - the bandwith limitation was the final nail in the coffin.
Recommended:
No
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About the Author
Member: kaoru kun
Location: Somewhere in England
Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me: Fangirlchan, geek and part-time Goth who likes listening to Japanese cross dressers sing.
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