GeoCities logo via Wikimedia Commons.
In the early 2000s, you could make a website on GeoCities, choose a neighborhood, upload some HTML, and fill the page with animated GIFs, visitor counters, tiled backgrounds, and an “Under Construction” sign.
It was rough, personal, and yours.
GitHub Pages and Cloudflare feel like the modern version of that same idea. GitHub Pages publishes your site from a repository. Cloudflare provides the DNS, HTTPS, caching, and edge delivery. You write the files, push the changes, and your site is online.
The best part is what you do not have to include. No banner ads. No popups. No autoplaying music. No hosting company branding taking over the page. A personal website can simply be a personal website.
Back then, Flash was the way to make something interactive. Today, browsers can handle applications, animations, games, and rich interfaces without a plugin. With free hosting tiers, managed databases, and a little vibe coding, you can even build and publish database-backed applications without renting a server or running a development team.
The tools are better now, but the spirit is familiar. People still build technical journals, project pages, fan sites, portfolios, and strange little corners of the internet because they want to make something.
GeoCities gave people a place to start. GitHub Pages and Cloudflare give us a faster, safer, more capable version of that same freedom.
Just with fewer spinning skull GIFs.
Spinning skull by Bugb0yguy, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
