It’s the end of an era: Geocities is closing on October 26th 2009. All Geocities content is being deleted, including my first website. Ah, what fond memories I have of Philonski’s Plush but Itchy Land of Cheesecake and Suchlike.

Geocities was originally modelled on real cities and you could explore and choose an address within a geographical location. I was the first person to “move into” Paris Parc when it opened. It made perfect sense to introduce yourself to your close neighbours when they arrived, just as you would in a real city.

It was fun to play websites. I put my visitor counter into a phrase which changed each week (”Philonski sentences her evil landlady to [14926] years in Hell!”) and I liked to hide jokes in the metadata.

At the time I was most proud of my map of Guadeloupe and an interactive pop quiz story about a Jonathan King lookalike trying to escape a parallel universe. But looking back, the real achievement was getting so many people to take part in silly games. The Caption Competition and the Page of Self Indulgence always got a respectable number of hits, even if one anonymous contributor regularly submitted the answer “PUSSY!” whatever the question.

Dan’s site, The Kerrazy World of Edible Undergarments, has already disappeared from Geocities, as has The Strange and Unsettling World of the Ultrafoetus (are you spotting a theme in these titles?). Luckily, the Wayback Machine has copies of both.

If you had a Geocities site, leave a comment – it would be great to mention a couple on this blog before they go offline.