How to get a free personal Web page immediately

Go to Geocities. http://www.geocities.com/

I think this is a fine way for people to get started. They do not provide dial-up access, as far as I can see, so you'll need to get that another way. The amount of free Web space is limited, of course (to 2 megs). But that is a lot, unless you're heavily into graphics. And, when you want more room, you can get a lot of room (10 megs) and additional features for just $4.95 per month.

There are a few minor drawbacks that I can see:

1. It appears to me that you have to already have an email account somewhere to do this. You are required to give an email address on the form and they send your initial info there. If you don't already have one, you can get a free email account from Juno.
2. Further, if you once apply for a Geocities account with an email address, then forevermore (it seems) no one will ever be able to get another Geocities account with that exact email address. (It floats around in their database forever apparently.) On the other hand, if you don't update your Web pages every so often (I think once a month) then they delete it and you have to start over. With a different email address. This seems like a bit of a hassle, but, after all, this is free. Presumably they don't want one person getting all the space they want just by getting multiple accounts with them and they don't want people's pages taking up room on their server unless they are still interested in them.
3. Occasionally, I have trouble getting connected with Geocities on the Web. Obviously, they have a lot of traffic.

Nice features:

1. Free.
2. You can change anything about it if you want - your member name, your email address (see the above caution), your "community", "neighborhood", and "address", as well as all the more obvious things like your password.
3. Really quick response time in setting up your account. (Less than 30 minutes for me.)
4. It has several different editors for HTML built in, or you can use your own editor, and uploading files is really easy -- done on the same page as the editing.
5. Their organizational principle of creating neighborhoods of people with like interests is fun. They also really take seriously getting you hooked up with others of similar interests in other ways besides "neighborhood proximity" so that you can get more traffic to your page than you might with some other service providers. And you'll learn a lot about the possibilities for this.
6. You can get an email account from Geocities too, free. You can, if you wish, have mail from it forwarded to any email address you wish easily and can change this easily at any time.

So, are you ready to go to Geocities and apply?

Or would you rather read more about my experience as a novice, and how I wasted more time than I needed to in messing around with it? Maybe if you read this, you won't waste much time!

At the top of the main Geocities page is a list of interests. I chose Education. You choose whatever you want to explore. The page you will then get shows what neighborhoods have people with those interests. When you find a vacancy you want, just click on it and fill out the form. That's all there is to it.

Important note: After you sign up, you can change anything you want at any time, including your "name" and "address". So just sign up for any vacancy you can find and change it later if you find a better one. You'll probably want to get your name and address final before you use them to tell other people how to look at your page and where to send your email, but it will probably be several days before you get enough stuff up to tell your friends.

Some strategy:

As you're looking through the neighborhood, notice the names and three-line lists of interests. At the time you sign up, you'll be asked for these. Plan what you want to say. Think of several alternatives for your name in case the first ones you try are already in use. Click on some of the pages. The very newest ones have a "generic page" that goes up automatically when you sign up. It gives a very short list of your interests. (You'll fill that out on your application too.)

I'd suggest that you "choose" one of the first vacancies you see and have the form come up. You can see all the questions you'll have to answer and then, when you get through reading it, you can choose not to submit the form. Notice particularly which fields are required. You'll also get to practice thinking up a different name. All the obvious ones are already chosen. Taking the name you really want and putting a number on the end often works. This name is not part of your Web page address. It is used on the list of people in your neighborhood and on your Geocities email account.

Don't waste time! I spent far too long trying to find just the right "set of neighbors". I suggest that you not spend too much time worrying about that and just find somewhere with a vacancy and take it! Also, don't worry too much about what you say on your application. You can change all of it at any time, including your "name" and "address". So, if you have a better idea for your name, or if you find a better address later, you're not locked in.

One little problem I had at first was that I picked a vacancy in a neighborhood that had almost no vacancies. After I had filled out the entire form, I was told that vacancy had been taken while I was filling out the form. I was given other choices, but only in that same neighborhood. There was only one other choice and it had also been taken. The program seemed to hang up there and I couldn't ask for another neighborhood. So I had to just dump myself out of the program (closed Netscape) and lost all my work in filling out the form.

mpxyz@geocities.com . Last updated November 26, 1997.