Geocities pages get indexed by Google and other search engines, but they are no longer archived at archive.org -- The last archive of one of mine was Sept 02, 2004 [ref]
A lot of people had Geocities as their first or only site, a lot of vital information, scholarly research, genealogical, personal, and family information and fun things are about to be lost forever, along with solutions to problems and kind of a history of changes in the Information Age. Personal domains disappeared forever when their creators no longer paid the rent, but Geocities user files remained even if their creators passed on. It certainly illustrates the problems of gatekeepers, who controls the keys (access) and owns the data is and will continue to be a major problem.
Free Geocities sites can no longer be created and you must put your files on other web hosting sites or pay for account before Oct. 26, 2009. otherwise, the files get trashed whether you are dead or alive. Geocities has not been archived at archive.org since sometime in 2004.
The downloading advice provided by Geocities is not good, as you have to edit each file from the file manager and copy and paste it to save file. Also each file was tampered with and you have to remove advertising modifications inside. Hopefully everyone reading this uploaded
files and did not compose on Geocities.
How can I save my files and images?
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/geocities/close/close-02.html
Solved problem of "ÿþ<" without the quotes as the only text of web page. This is a problem of differing text formats. Then later found "" at beginning of otherwise good page. Problems may be primarily due to embedded frames in user's HTML.
If no problem leave things alone; otherwise try one or more of these. There was a secondary problem of non-breaking spaces not coded as “ ”, and quotes, dashes all not coded but as characters.
Login in immediately when page changes
https://manage.bravehost.com/website/
Your new site: <userid>.bravehosts.com
Your site will contain an index.html, which you must have; otherwise, your site will not be found with using <userid>.bravehost.com You can overwrite the content of index.html so that the page will refresh in two seconds to your index.htm page if that is what you use. (Example
of a page that redirects from a page to another.)
You will be first creating a website as a subdomain of bravehost.com
https://manage.bravehost.com/ftp direction there to first create a website.
Then continue at https://manage.bravehost.com/ftp with directions to obtain applet
userid: <bravenetuserid>-xxxxxxxxxxx long string of digits completes your FTP userid
password: supply a password that is not the same as your bravenet password for your userid
severhostname: will be assigned you will need that as the hostname i.e. ftp3.bravehost.com\
Obtain Filezilla client from sourceforge.com per links at bravenet so you can transfer files to new site, both for conversion and for later updates from your local files. Using - FileZilla Wiki
Bring up Filezilla (launch from Windows START)
Create a files.txt file on your local site, so you can see what got changed later based on last updated date.
Make changes to your local site, use the file.txt a the high water mark. Anything above that when sorted im reverse last updated order must get copied to main pages. Will be a lot more difficult with folders.
To change the last modified date on your high-watermark files.txt file.
Use "Agent Ransack" to find old geocities file links and descriptive text links on your local pages. Put your <userid>.bravehost.com into clipboard so that you can edit file, search on geoc (for geocities.com) and change links or strings found by "Agent Ransack" with a paste. Not much you can do about other Geocity links that turn up.
If you don't provide for 404 errors your entire site is invisible with the slightest error in the url filename making the site appear not just missing but from the advertising as available.
You can handle 404 errors on your bravehost site unlike what was available at Geocities. simply create a file named 404_not_found.html with what you want it to say and you can identify the file that was asked for:
404 Not Found Error, Sorry but the page you are seeking,
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">
<!--
document.write(""<b>" + document.location + "<\/b>", ")
//-->
</script>
does not exist on this server.
See the home page for ___ at http://___
The sentence will make sense whether JavaScript is turned on or not.
Somewhere else you might say that JavaScript is not turned on
for when JavaScript portion of the above message would not appear.
<noscript><font color="red">By the way you have JavaScript turned off.</b></font> There is very little JavaScript on our pages, other than last updated dates, but having JavaScript turned off may affect your viewing of web pages on other sites. </noscript>
Internet Archive: GeoCities Special Collection 2009, GeoCities has been an important outlet for personal expression on the Web for almost 15 years. With the recent news from Yahoo that GeoCities is going to be discontinued on October 26, 2009, the Internet Archive is working over the next few months to ensure our collection of GeoCities sites is as deep and thorough as possible. As a GeoCities user or fan, you can help!
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