Web design


A girl always remembers her first time: a tribute to GeoCities

Yahoo has finally pulled the plug on GeoCities. Though most will say “good riddance” to the home of eye-searing fluro text, badly animated GIFs and never-ending Midi tunes, Ruth Brown looks back fondly on the site that popped her HTML cherry.

RIP GeoCities: a loss for fluro text, animated GIFs and endless Midi files

Today, Yahoo is finally euthanising GeoCities, the original free, design-you-own webpage service where many netizens got their first taste of web mastery and popped their HTML cherries. Vale.

Websites: before they were famous

Before Facebook, Google, YouTube and others were the sleek, cutting-edge sites they are today, they went through the same awkward early years many online ventures do (The Drudge Report is arguably still there). Here’s how 20 top websites looked when they first launched.