So this week saw the 40th birthday of Arpanet, the foundations for the Internet that we all know today. This week also saw the doors closing on Geocities, the first introduction to web design.

Geocities was the best known of many quick WYSIWYG webpage creation sites and over time became synonymous with badly designed websites about nothing at all that were filled with animated backgrounds, lurid coloured text and blinking/scrolling paragraphs of pure joy.

I also remember there being other similar services such as Homestead and the flash based Moonfruit. Looking at them now it appears that both are still operating but for money instead of as hosting for advertising deals.

There is no doubt that Geocities was due to be put down for crimes against coding and design. It is also likely that few will miss it thanks to the rise of decent software and cheap hosting as well as social networks negating most people’s needs for personal web pages. Despite all of this I am thankful to it for giving me my first web space to play around in.