So you want another homepage, eh?
Written: Jul 20 '00
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Yahoo! GeoCities is one of the many places out there where you can make a free homepage. Recently, is was taken over by Yahoo!. Now, if you are a Yahoo! member, you do not have to sign up. There are more and better features now than there were ever before.....
Do I have to sign up?
Of course! If you are not a member of any of the other services that Yahoo! offers, then you have to sign up. Yahoo! GeoCities probably has one of the simplest sign up procedures I have seen.
In the first section, you pick your username and password. After you have done that, you have to pick one of the three questions you could answer if you forgot your password. You pick the answer for it, too. Make sure nobody can guess it easily. You also have to enter your birthday and email.
In the third section, they ask for you zip code, gender, occupation, and the industry you work in. If you choose, you can also pick some of the things you like out of the list they have provided. Just click the submit button and you are ready to go.
What are the good things about this place?
•Home Page Builder
Yes, this place also has a homepage builder for all you people who don't know HTML. This one is not as complicated as the one Tripod has, but it does get the job done. At first, you have to write an description about your site and have to pick a category it best fits. Then, Yahoo! GeoCities will send you an email telling you everything to do. Then you can go to the actual builder. Everything is drag and drop. Everything will be uploaded on the spot, so you do not have to worry bout missing files. If you want to make some changes, just login and make them! It's that easy! The builder is nothing like FrontPage, but you can still make some awesome websites!
•Home Page Wizard
This is for the people who know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about HTML. You pick from a list of templates and then you are taken to another page. You do everything step by step. They will ask for the text you want, images, titles, and all the other things. You do not have to enter a SINGLE HTML flag. This is the easiest. The pages won't look good as the ones in the Page Builder, but they will do. Remember, you can edit the pages at any time.
•Advanced Home Page Builder
This is for those people who know HTML. You go to the page and you will see that it is just a pig text box waiting to be filled in with HTML. You have to write it on the spot or you can cut and paste it from an HTML editor or something. You can preview your future website and save it if you like it. If you do not like it, you can make the changes you want and save it. After a week, if you decide to add another picture, just head on back to the Advanced Builder and do it!
•File Manager
Like all the other services, this one also has a file manager. It is kind of like the one Tripod has. If shows all your files in one easy place. You can edit and delete them any time. You can also create more folders like one for pictures, one for birthday pictures, one for html files and so on. With this, up to 20 files can be uploaded simultaneously. If you do that, your connection will get slow if you are on a 56K and will probably quit before you are done. It's better to upload less than 3 at a time to save yourself from getting disconnected.
•FTP Upload
Many services do not offer this. If you are tired of getting disconnected and having a lagging computer, you should try out this. You have to download an FTP program. After you enter the server name and other information, you can upload as many files as you want at one time. It's better to upload 10 or less at one time. With one mouse click, you could delete 10 files or even your whole directory. This thing really speeds up your uploads.
•Add-ons
Yahoo! GeoCities has many add-ons. You can add a stock quote ticker, guest book, counter, a search box, and even your own chat room! If you made your website in FrontPage, here is some good news for you. Yahoo! GeoCities can handle FrontPage extensions! If you do not have enough images, just hop on down to their little gallery, and pick as many as you want! Yahoo! GeoCities brings everything into one.
•Short URL and Space
With Yahoo! GeoCities, you get 15 MB or space and an easy to remember http://www.geocities.com/yourname. Now you can even get a domain through them, but that will cost some money. No more long address like Angelfire. You can buy an extra 5 MB of space for $2.50 if you ever need more. It's really easy.
Whoa, there were a LOT of good things. Now what about the bad things?
•Banner Ad
Like any other company, this one also has a banner ad, but this one is different. It is not as big as all the other ones. If you had frames with XOOM or Angelfire, you would have a banner or pop-up for every frame. So if you had 6 frames, that would be 6 pop-ups. That would take away everything you have from your site. This one is just a little banner that sits in the top right-hand corner of the screen and can be minimized to say Yahoo! GeoCities.
•Slow loading pages
Sometimes, the pages run kind of slow. It could be many people using Yahoo! GeoCities at that one time or a slow server. It does not happen that often, but it can get very annoying when it does. 95% of the time the pages are working fine, but they can get slow.
•Technical Support
The technical support is kind of slow. I had a question that I could not find the answer to, and it took them 3 days to respond. That is average, but they did not answer some questions. So I had to send them another email with the questions the didn't answer. Then 4 days later I got them back. in total, it took me a week to get some questions answered.
Final Thoughts
If you want to build a homepage, this should not be the first place to build it. You should try out Tripod. After that, I would recommend this to you. There is a big community you can browse through and add many things to your website. There are so many new things that you can do with the new Yahoo! GeoCities.
I recommend this to anyone who has no knowledge of HTML and is interested in making a website. You could make some extra cash with it too...
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
sohailg
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Member: Sohail Ghanchi
Location: Houston, Texas
Reviews written: 113
Trusted by: 86 members
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