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Months after the initial announcement, today, it becomes official: Yahoo has shut down GeoCities— one of the original kings of free web hosting services.

Now, all of those GeoCities websites (excuse me, "Web Sites") are coming down. It's got me more tear-jerkingly nostalgic than Where The Wild Things Are.

No doubt, GeoCities started a revolution, but many of its ways have gone by the wayside. While Yahoo deploys the virtual demolition crews, let's make one last toast to a few of the relics they'll leave in the rubble.

1) Under Construction GIFs

It's absurd to think that putting up an ?under construction? sign on a web page was at one point an idea that was (pardon the pun) ?ground breaking.?

Why did people make such a big deal out of being ?under construction? in the 90s? It's not necessarily something you want to attract attention to. ?Hey! See this fancy animated GIF? That?s just a previewof how impressive my site will be when it?s done.?

Sadly, putting up 37 under construction animations is definitely as impressive as your Family Mattersfan page ever got. (Except for when you added the auto-playing MIDI version of the intro song. That was awesome.)

And why the civil engineering motif? Are you trying to tell me that a self-taught HTML geek is like a construction worker? I hope not. Making a website is about the furthest you can get from hard manual labor.

See the other six retro things we'll miss after the jump… more...