Yahoo! Geocities
Written: Jun 08 '02
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| Full Review |
This service use to be great. I started with them in June 1997 because I really needed something to do to occupy my boredom and figured this was a great way to do it. Okay, in 1997 you got 2 MB's of space but back then that was enough. Also, in 1997 they had a Community Leader program which I got involved with and actually became Liaison of SunsetStrip (if there are any old CL's from their reading this - "HI"). But all of this changed when Yahoo! bought Geocities in 1999 including the fact that they did away with the CL Program entirely which upset a lot of users because you had to send to their automated help services (see below for more about this).
Anyway, a lot has changed and this review will be about what it's like their now and not back when the service was excellent! Before 1999, I probably would have recommended them and given them 5 stars but as you can tell today that is not the case at all.
Getting Started
Now you will of course need a Yahoo ID - which is not unusual for any Yahoo property. If you already have an ID from Mail or anything else under Yahoo then you are already to get started. If you don't have a Yahoo ID this is your chance to get one - they are great and allow you access to a lot of other options under Yahoo!
I would really recommend that anyone out there get a Yahoo ID because they are so simple to use and stay with you the rest of your life - you can't say that about many things in your life can you. Personally I have had mine since the beginning of 1997 and I have no intention of giving that up anytime soon.
The only problem for you might be that you might not be able to get the exact name that you want because there are so many users (and you can have sub-accounts as well) so many names are taken but if your are original this might not be a problem for you at all. You web address will be very simple for you to remember and give to your friends, it will be http://www.geocities.com/username - very simple right.
Account Types
There are five different account types for you to choose from. Yes they do have a free one still but very few options that are offered with this account type. And if you ever want customer service with a free account then you are pretty much out of luck.
Here are the account types:
Free
15 MB's of free space (you can buy more later even with a free account.
Access to the rest of the Yahoo! Community
Geocities World Report
Yahoo! PageBuilder
Geocities Plus
25MB Web Site
No Advertisements (like you will get on the free space)
5 GB of data transfer a month
FTP Access (you don't get FTP access with the free account)
Remote loading (again not offered with the free account)
Tools to build web pages
This account is $4.95 a month.
Geocities Pro
Your own domain name (www.your-name.com)
25MB web space
10 GB Transfer per month
5 e-mail accounts
5 subdomains
FTP Access
This account is $8.95 per month
Geocities Webmaster
Domain name
50 MB web space
20 GB transfer per month
10 e-mail accounts
10 sub-domains
Customizable site search
Password Protection
20 pro-design SiteWizards
This option is $11.95 per month
Geocities Advantage
Domain name
100 MB web space
25GB transfer per month
Business edition e-mail for your domain
Customizable site search
20 pro-design SiteWizards
PHP Support
Password Protection
Snapshot back-ups
Access Logs
And more
This option is $19.95 per month
Now that you see your options we will talk about the free space for the rest of this review. Although I have not used the paid services for my site (which I have no deleted from Yahoo! Geocities because of the many changes) I have heard that they have much better customer service for their pay customers (and from what I have been told the more you pay per month the better service you will get from them). Now that is not insulting to Yahoo! because most companies work exactly in this same manner and do give lesser service to free customers.
Ads on your pages
Because you are not paying for their service you do have to understand that they need to make some money from your site so they do have an ad on your page. It's a small ad box that will appear in the top right corner of all your pages. Removing this or putting code in your pages that block this will cause you to be in violation of their Terms of Service and you are risking your page being deleted.
HTML or PageBuilder or Yahoo Page Wizard
Any of these are fine for you to use to make your page. This is up to your and also determined by if you know HTML. I'll say this, the PageWizard and the PageBuilder make very generic pages and if you have seen some you might think that they start to look the same - although I have seen literally hundreds of pages made with these as a CL so please don't take that too personally to anyone who has used these to make their pages because most people won't be going through hundreds of Geocities pages a day.
If you don't know HTML and want to learn, getting a page at Geocities is a great way to start. You can learn more at www.htmlgoodies.com which I think is a great way to get started. You can also use Netscape Composer to make your pages and upload them that way - I use to recommend this way to a lot of people who wanted more unique looking pages.
So this option is up to you.
FTP Access
Nope not with the free account. If you have the free account you need to use their EZ Upload feature which I find to be horribly slow and bad to use. This is one of the reasons that I did not leave my page up. Sometimes this would get stuck half-way through upload and then I would have to start again especially with larger files. So this is a horrible part of using their free service.
Conclusion
Yahoo! Geocities does allow for a new expression of yourself with your own webpage and they also allow you to use their many templates (but be careful because they are not very unique if everyone is using them). Their free service is a good way to get yourself started and get into making your own pages, this can be a great start and I know many people who have their own sites now and companies now that started this way.
The advantages do outway the disadvantages of using their service but for me there were too many changes that made me miss the way that Geocities had been and made me miss the CL Program and everyone that I meet during that time.
Recommended:
No
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About the Author
Location: Indiana
Reviews written: 230
Trusted by: 200 members
About Me: Well life has been insane but trying to write more again.
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