Goodbye Geocities Website

The notification from Geocities was somewhat unexpected. Sure, nothing's free ... but after more than nine years of having the Muncie Northside Yearbooks website hosted for free by Geocities, it came as a surprise to find out that they would be shutting down their free webhosting service. What to do? Should I pony up the $12/month that it would take to convert to their paid service? Should I let the NHS on-line yearbooks site slip into oblivion? Or should I get off my rear end and look around for cost-effective webhosting alternatives? If you're reading this, you've likely already figured out that I choose to move the website to a paid service.

I spent the better part of two weekends and quite a bit of time in the week between getting the website ready to go live on the paid service. Don't get me wrong: it's not costing lots of money to host MuncieNorthsideYearbooks.com, but IT IS NOT FREE. I'm not fishing for money, so don't look for any pleas to help out by sending me contributions through PayPal or the like. After nine years of getting "something for nothing," it does take a slight mental adjustment to using a new hosting service that I HAVE TO PAY FOR!!!! (Sorry Mrs. Gouveia. That last sentence should have read, "... using a new hosting service for which I have to pay. But that just doesn't have the same ZING as how I wrote it first.) Enough venting...

So I hope you've enjoyed the last nine years with my yearbook site at Geocities. Now that the new site is up and running, I hope you continue to enjoy it at its new location: MuncieNorthsideYearbooks.com. Let me know what you think by posting a comment here on this blog, or by sending me feedback through the form on the yearbook website. Go Titans!

-- Steve