NeoCities

[slg]

Don't use this for anything you view as important. I just checked and there is no collision detection for usernames. You can signup for an account using any name and your account will seemingly just replace the previous created account. That is a big enough and obvious enough flaw that it also makes we wonder if this is just a phishing expedition or a way to mine email addresses.

[kyledrake]

I just fixed it. It was a change I did last night to fix a save bug. My apologies about that, it wasn't a good bug, but hopefully it's the last security-related one. Probably goes without saying, but this is definitely a beta project. I'm doing a lot of other things to protect this kind of attack (filename scrubbing, bcrypt passwords), so I'm pretty red in the face about how dumb this one was.

If you find any other bad bugs, please let me know (@kyledrake on Twitter) instead of, you know, trashing other people's work. I'm finding the duplicate sites right now and taking care of it. Thanks, and again my apologies.

This is not an email phishing expedition. I don't even require you to enter your email address to make a site.

[peterwwillis]

Check out his tweet that started this: https://twitter.com/kyledrake/statuses/337706291801763841

He started a month ago. The 'Just Ship It' mantra basically declares that crappy bugs like this are A-OK. I don't know why you're surprised.

[revelation]

Back then, this wasn't called collision detection, but proper database design. I can not even begin to fathom how you can inadvertently introduce this by fixing a save bug.

[ErikAugust]

It appears now people have caught on quick - and are replacing sites that people actually worked on with "SITE HACKED" messages.

That is pretty frigging mean to exploit such an obvious problem!

[ErikAugust]

I'm logged in as "www" right now.

[sneak]

Don't use this for anything you view as important. Hosting that doesn't use a domain name that you control means that when the donation bucket is empty and the service goes under, your traffic and pagerank and brand is now lost forever.

[daviddoran]

I thought david.neocities.org should have been taken, now that you point it out.

[davidbanham]

This is not for anything important. It is for blink tags and under construction graphics.

[colbyaley]

Too good to be true, you ask?

[networked]

Hi, Hax0r N3ws!

Check out my all-new website showing some oldskool JScripting skillz at http://cd.neocities.org/. You can trick your friends by directing them there.

P.S.: Just checked and it actually works with Internet Exploder 6.0 in an M$ Windoze 98 VM, which I had running in VMWare Player 5.0.2 with my PC's physical DVD drive connected. Should work as long as your Win9x or pre-SP2 XP has WMP 7 installed.

P.P.S.: Do post here if it works for you!

[big_lou]

PEOPLE. This is clearly not intended as a business. Stop asking about the "business model." It strikes me as just being a cool side project that enables people to make websites. That's it.

Yeesh.

[rollo_tommasi]

I think you're underestimating the lucrative "disoriented time-traveler" market.

[LandoCalrissian]

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what it is. This is just for fun, I don't think they are looking for VC money or anything crazy.

[workhere-io]

HN is supposed to be (partly) about the joy of building stuff, and yet this entire thread is all about people pointing out flaws, missing features and minor annoyances instead of saying, "Good job!".

Give the guy a break and a chance to get the project off the ground.

[jstalin]

I just had to do it:

http://jstalin.neocities.org/index.html

It's going to play audio if you clink the link, unless you're using click to play

[Samuel_Michon]

Also, backstory: http://mike.winterdiamond.com/history.php

[jmathai]

Please state a warning that it is going to play audio when you click the link.

[kybernetyk]

Oh man, I'm sorry for OP because of all the negativity in this thread.

I think his service is kinda cool in a twisted way and I can totally see me building a little 'old school' homepage on it.

/edit: I did build a homepage: http://kybernetyk.neocities.org I feel better now ;)

[omd]

Nah, OP seems to be doing just fine. I feel more sorry for the people who forgot how to laugh.

Here's mine (NSFW-ish): http://nl.neocities.org

[Luyt]

I wonder whether this 'negativity' is really negativity, or just well-meant criticism, testing and validating the idea, maybe even playing advocate of the devil. From what I've seen in the past years, the HN community is unlikely to produce a page with tons of similar 'Nice job!' postings.

[zephjc]

I think people are aiming to create the original geocities experience too: Examples:

http://poeks.neocities.org/

http://skry.neocities.org/

http://jeremy.neocities.org/

[brudgers]

GeoCities clipart backgrounds still available!

http://www.geocities.com/clipart/pbi/backgrounds/

[scottluptowski]

Holy nostalgia trip

[toni]

I've hacked a little script together[1] for uploading all the files in a directory into NeoCities. Handy if you are working on your site and want to upload everything in one go.

Set your username and password at the beginning of the script and run it with the path to the directory as an argument:

./neocities-uploader.php /path/to/my/site

[1] https://github.com/pwlin/neocities-uploader

[ErikAugust]

More fun: http://login.neocities.org/

[egeozcan]

Let's say I like cats: http://egeninwebsayfasi.neocities.org/

[ibudiallo]

I think its a nice website, don't be discouraged by the comments you get here. HN can be awful with this, but if you parse through all the bad mouthers you may find some gold :)

[will_brown]

It is very refreshing that a side project/start-up related post has made it to number 1 spot on HN. And this is coming from someone who posted a Bee article that made it to the front page today.

kyledrake if any negativity on this thread gets to you, something tells me it will not, just ask yourself how many others have posted their side project on HN that made it to #1, I know I have not and that is why I created this account to begin with - to share my start-up with a start-up community.

[mperham]

Add a premium tier, even something as simple as integrated web analytics. Donations are charity. If you want this to be a sustainable business, ask for people to pay for value.

[stinky613]

I was thinking about this too. I agree that counting on donations in sufficient quantity and regularity is like buying lotto tickets to pay your electric bill.

And if they add a premium tier... well then that kind of kills their differentiation, doesn't it? They're aiming for the niche of free, modest, simple, laissez faire vis-a-vis content. When you take 'free' out of the mix then you're in the arena of commoditized cheap hosting; inertia would be the only reason for someone to upgrade their free account to a premium plan.

[ics]

I think donating a dollar for a custom visitor counter would be the perfect option... doesn't really set apart anyone, still provides a bit of fun.

[rozap]

guys i just made mine here http://rozap.neocities.org/index.html and it is best so you all can stop making them because it will fail to surpass my creation.

[LandoCalrissian]

http://nick.neocities.org/

Already worth the price of admission. This is a really fun idea.

[fragmede]

Oh man, it is just like the 90's: unicode usernames are not allowed. Welcome to the past!

[farinasa]

I can't even put a unicode bullet on the page. Maybe I should be using double tildes or something.

[lotharbot]

It's never too early for scams.

http://secure.neocities.org/

"Security page. Please enter your password here."

[citricsquid]

A couple of years back there was a website I use that switched to usernames as sub domains and I managed to break it by using "webmail" as a username, another user took "ns1" and "ns2" and now my first port of call on sites like this always checking out "webmail", "ns1" and "ns2". So childish but good harmless fun.

[davorak]

I see login.neocities.org is taken as well.

[nickodell]

login.neocities.org payment.neocities.org

[hnriot]

too

[kwntm]

I love the browser editor you made. Very easy to get up and running fast. It'll be a useful tool for teaching, and also for small js projects. Fun project- Thanks!

[ddinh]

It's definitely an awesome project, but I just don't see the advantage of NeoCities over hosting a website on Github or BitBucket yet, especially since those sites offer unlimited space and store all the old versions of your website for you. Some differentiation with those services is needed - for example, a privacy policy guaranteeing true anonymity (no IP address stored, no cookies) or a more layperson-accessible website creator.

[brennannovak]

Those have significant learning curves to people who don't speak web-l337 yet. Remember before you knew how to code? What version control was, and documentation was scary? Angelfire & GeoCities is where I learned to code HTML