Neocities

Neocities is a commercial web hosting service for static pages. It offers 1 GB of storage space for free sites and no server-side scripting for both paid and free subscriptions. The service's expressed goal is to "revive the support of free web hosting of the now-defunct GeoCities". Neocities was launched in 2013 by Kyle Drake.^[1][2] As of April 2024, it hosted more than 765,600 sites.^[3] The service is powered by an open-source backend provided under the FreeBSD license.^[4][5]

Neocities

Penelope, the mascot of Neocities
Type of site	Web hosting
Created by	Kyle Drake
URL	neocities.org
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Yes
Launched	June 28, 2013; 11 years ago (2013-06-28)
Written in	Ruby

History

Neocities was created by Kyle Drake on May 23, 2013, and launched on June 28, 2013, offering 10 megabytes of file storage for every user.^[6] It initially served as an archive for sites previously hosted on GeoCities before the latter's shutdown.^[7]

On May 8, 2014, Neocities announced that it would limit the bandwidth speed of the FCC headquarters to early dial-up modem speeds as a protest against FCC's stance on net neutrality.^[8][9] This protest received wide attention^[10] and lasted until February 2, 2015.^[11]

The service hosted about 55,000 to 57,000 sites in 2015,^[12][13] which had risen to over 460,000 by 2022, ^{[citation needed]} and 615,700 by 2023.

As of currently, Neocities allows 1 GB of storage to free users, and 50 GB of storage to "supporters".

Usage

Neocities allows users to create their own websites using HTML, CSS,^[14] and JavaScript, and the development tool comes with a built-in debugger for these languages.

Neocities has 2 options for users to store their data. A free plan, which has 1 gigabyte of data storage and slower transfer speeds, and a paid plan, which allows 50 gigabytes of storage and faster transfer speeds. The paid plan costs $5.00 per month, and funds go to server expenses.

The files that free users can host on Neocities are restricted to HTML files, CSS files, Javascript files, Markdown files, XML files, text files, fonts and images. By upgrading to their paid plan, this restriction is removed. This restriction is in place to prevent it from becoming a "file dump".^[15]

References

1. Drake, Kyle (May 28, 2013). "Making the Web Fun Again". The Neocities Blog. Archived from the original on June 7, 2015. Retrieved June 15, 2015.
2. Jackson, Candace (July 17, 2017). "The Latest in Web Design? Retro Websites Inspired by the '90s". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on July 18, 2017.
3. "Neocities.org". Archived from the original on April 12, 2024. Retrieved April 12, 2024. Neocities is a social network of 765,600 web sites that are bringing back the lost individual creativity of the web.
4. "NeoCities is bringing the eye-bleeding "spirit" of GeoCities back to the modern web". TechSpot. June 15, 2023. Retrieved September 4, 2024.
5. "neocities/LICENSE.txt at master · neocities/neocities". GitHub. Retrieved September 4, 2024.
6. Stockton, Nick (May 8, 2016). "NeoCities Wants to Save Us From the Crushing Boredom of Social Networking". Wired. Archived from the original on May 8, 2016. Retrieved December 12, 2021.
7. Drake, Kyle (May 23, 2013). "I want to make another Geocities. Free web hosting, static HTML only, 10MB limit, anonymous, uncensored". Twitter. Archived from the original on December 29, 2020. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
8. "We are rate limiting the FCC to dialup modem speeds until they pay us for bandwidth". May 8, 2014. Archived from the original on December 29, 2020. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
9. Drake, Kyle (May 9, 2014). "The "fast lane" to internet civil war". The Neocities Blog. Archived from the original on July 25, 2021. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
10. "Young Turks - FCC Gets A Taste Of It's [sic] Own Medicine". YouTube. Archived from the original on December 29, 2020. Retrieved February 4, 2020.

    • "Web Host Gives FCC a 28.8Kbps Slow Lane in Net Neutrality Protest". Ars Technica. May 9, 2014. Archived from the original on May 9, 2014.
    • "Complaints About Net Neutrality Flooding the FCC". Vox.com. May 9, 2014. Archived from the original on February 4, 2020.
    • Andy Patrizio (May 12, 2014). "Web hosting provider give FCC a dose of life without net neutrality". Network World. Archived from the original on February 4, 2020.
    • "Web Hosting Company Puts FCC In Slow Lane". The Verge. May 9, 2014. Archived from the original on May 10, 2014.
    • "Webhost Protests FCC's Net Neutrality Proposal By Limiting FCC Access To 28.8Kbps". Techdirt. May 9, 2014. Archived from the original on September 19, 2015.
11. "We have removed the FCC rate limit". The Neocities Blog. February 4, 2015. Archived from the original on June 21, 2021. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
12. Koebler, Jason (October 26, 2015). "There's An Entire Conference Dedicated to Geocities-Style Websites". Motherboard. Vice Media. Archived from the original on December 13, 2021. Retrieved December 12, 2021.
13. Dewey, Caitlin (November 10, 2015). "The counterintuitive, GIF-tastic plan to redeem the modern Internet". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on October 18, 2021. Retrieved December 12, 2021.
14. Valens, Ana (August 8, 2019). "The best web hosting services for sex workers and adult artists". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on December 13, 2021. Retrieved December 12, 2021.
15. "Neocities - Allowed File Types". Neocities. n.d. Archived from the original on June 26, 2022. Retrieved July 21, 2022.

External links

• Official website