Back when the internet was new, one of the places genealogists started putting their family trees was Geocities. During these last 15 years, a whole lot of genealogy info was stored on Geocities. Family trees, Civil War regiments, burial locations, obits, you name it. When Yahoo closed Geocities last year, a lot of info was lost forever for internet genealogy researchers. While many active webmasters moved their sites, all too many did not.
The Internet Archive has archived Geocities webpages from various dates, but I've found the Internet Archive didn't always save all the interior pages of a site.
However I have just discovered Reocities. Reocities has archived much of Geocities and has an amazingly large amount of the interior pages archived also.
To find a Geocities website you have bookmarked, just change the "G" in Geocities to an "R". The rest of the URL remains the same.
Examples:
Change
http://www.geocities.com/g96thpvi/ to
http://www.reocities.com/g96thpvi/
Change
http://www.geocities.com/g96thpvi/lettersdiaries.html to
http://www.reocities.com/g96thpvi/lettersdiaries.html
Change
http://geocities.com/Heartland/5251/obitscly.html to
http://reocities.com/Heartland/5251/obitscly.html
To search the reocities archives, do a site search in Google.
Examples:
site:reocities.com civil war burials pennsylvania
site:reocities.com schuylkill county
site:reocities.com mahady genealogy
There is a lot of historical treasures tucked in these reocities sites.
Webmasters: if you link to an old geocities site, simply change the "G" in geocities to "R" to continue linking. You can also check the Internet Archive and see if either site has archived the interior pages. I don't know if reocities has archived all old geocities sites, but it had the ones I checked.
Reocities is historical information only. There is no way that a webmaster can update his old site. While some of it may become outdated, much of it is still valuable. There are old letters, obituaries, regimental histories, and so much more.
The Making of Reocities
5 comments:
Thank you. That is very helpful. Now, when I excoriate webmasters for having broken links on their sites I can direct them to Reocities.
Hmmm, excoriate, which means to censure scathingly. Why would anyone want to be a webmaster with that kind of attitude? They're not the ones responsible for the links to various sites, especially the ones they have NO CONTROL over, sheesh.
I would disagree, Gop. Well, maybe "excoriating" them would be pretty harsh, but if you're a webmaster of a small-to-medium sized website, I think part of your job should be to check the links at least weekly. A lot of the GenWeb county sites I visit have broken links to things I would really like to see. Sometimes a LOT of broken links, as if the webmaster hasn't even looked at the page in months. So I really do think these webmasters should be responsible for checking everything on the site if at all possible, and making sure the links work.
for those who do not realize that many/most? of those who manage websites are unpaid volunteers who have other responsibilities - including families to care for, illnesses, jobs, etc.
Be grateful that they do as much as they do.
If you find a broken link, notify the site's manager.
Great tip and terrific blog! I just found you and now I am following!!
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