What I want to know...what do you guys think of these people. I know we all know the horribly craptastic sites that these places churn out, but do they have any benefits? You notice people staying away from Geocities and Tripod more now. Maybe the age of horrible sites done in even worse WYSIWYG editors is over? Opinions anyone?

I think geocities is ideal for small personal website. They are stable and don't disappear overnight. The downside is that they usually don't have many features.

I agree with allanh (hmm...that name seems familiar, doesn't it? ). Geocities is excellent for the personal homepage and for the inexperienced webmasters. And remember, there are tons of people out there who are very knowledgeable, but they are hopeless when it comes to designing websites! And if it weren't for Geocities and Tripod, many of these people would not have sites at all, and we would be missing out on some excellent information.

Conker

The question you need to ask yourself is how professional do you want your Web site to look? It is so inexpensive to register a domain and go with an affordable Web hosting company it really only makes sense to head in that direction. If you are only going to have a personal Web site or want to develop your skills, go with Geocities.