GeoCities To Ghost: Oh How The Times Have Changed

There was a time when the internet was like the Wild West—a place where you could carve out your little corner of the digital frontier with nothing more than a dial-up connection and a bit of patience. For many of us who were around in the early days, GeoCities was the gateway to this brave new world. It was where we learned the basics of HTML, where we shared our passions, no matter how niche, and where we felt the first thrill of having a space on the internet to call our own.

GeoCities was clunky, to be sure. The backgrounds were garish, the GIFs were animated, and the guestbooks were often filled with random strangers signing in just to leave their mark. But there was something magical about it—a raw, unfiltered creativity that you don’t see much of today. It was the era of DIY web design, where you didn’t need to know much to create something that was uniquely yours. Sure, it was a mess by modern standards, but it was our mess.

Fast forward to today, and the landscape couldn’t be more different. Platforms like Ghost have taken the reins, offering sleek, minimalist designs and powerful content management systems that make the old GeoCities pages look like they were designed in crayon. Ghost is everything GeoCities wasn’t—clean, professional, and focused. It’s the tool for the modern blogger, one who values aesthetics and user experience as much as content.

But as polished as Ghost is, I can’t help but feel a pang of nostalgia for those early days of the web. GeoCities was chaotic, yes, but it was also a place of pure expression. There were no algorithms dictating what you saw, no ads cluttering up the page, no templates forcing your content into a predefined box. It was just you, a blinking cursor, and a world of possibilities.

Ghost, on the other hand, is all about refinement. It’s a tool for the professional, or at least the semi-professional, who wants to build an audience, track analytics, and make sure their site looks just as good on a smartphone as it does on a desktop. It’s powerful, but it’s also a little… sterile. The rough edges have been smoothed out, the chaos tamed. And while that’s a good thing in many ways, it also means that some of the wild spirit of those early days has been lost.

But that’s the nature of progress, isn’t it? The internet has grown up, and so have we. We’ve traded the neon backgrounds and scrolling marquees for clean lines and responsive design. We’ve swapped out the guestbooks for comment sections, the clunky HTML for slick, pre-packaged themes. And in doing so, we’ve gained a lot—better functionality, more control, and a platform that can truly showcase our work.

Still, as I sit here writing on Ghost, I can’t help but think back to my GeoCities days with a certain fondness. It was where I cut my teeth, where I first felt the thrill of putting something out there for the world to see. It wasn’t pretty, but it was mine. And in a way, it set the stage for everything that’s come since.

So here’s to GeoCities, the chaotic, colorful, and completely unrefined start to our digital lives. And here’s to Ghost, the refined, powerful tool that lets us take those same ideas and present them in a way that’s more polished and professional. The times have certainly changed, but at the heart of it, the drive to create and share remains the same. And that’s something worth celebrating.

-One Of Those Days
--Bryan