The steps you need to follow to sign up for a GeoCities Web page may change after we complete this book. If so, go to www.dummies.comand look up the update page for this book to get the latest instructions.
The first step in setting up your GeoCities Web page is to apply for a Yahoo!
user ID number. This user ID enables you to use a variety of services on Yahoo! and, if you’re not careful, to receive e-mail solicitations you don’t really want. If you don’t already have a Yahoo! user ID, follow these steps to set up your Yahoo! user ID and start using GeoCities:
1. Open your Web browser.
The GeoCities Web site works with any browser.
2. Go to geocities.yahoo.com.
The screen shown in Figure 2-1, or something very much like it, appears.
3. If you are currently signed in as a member of Yahoo!, your user name appears on the Web page you see. Skip the rest of the steps in this section.
If you’re a Yahoo! member, sign in. Then skip the rest of the steps in this section.
Enter your Yahoo! ID and Password in the Sign In to Yahoo! section, and then click the Sign In button.
If you are not yet a member of Yahoo!, click the Sign In button in the upper-right corner of the browser window; when the Welcome to Yahoo! screen appears, click the Sign up now link.
If you click the Sign up now link, the Sign Up for Your Yahoo ID! screen appears, as shown in Figure 2-2.
4. Enter your desired Yahoo! ID and password. Retype your password.
Reproduced with permission of Yahoo! Inc. 2000 by Yahoo! Inc. YAHOO! and the YAHOO! logo are trademarks of Yahoo! Inc.
Any Yahoo! ID you find desirable, like most first name and last name com-binations (such as “budsmith” for one of the authors), or your favorite sports team (“sfgiants,” for instance), is likely to be unavailable — one of Yahoo!’s existing tens of millions of users probably already has it. To save yourself a bunch of retries, pick a user name that makes sense, but is likely to be unique, such as your first and last name followed by the name of your state or hometown (“budsmithsf,” for instance). Try to make it memorable, too — your home page’s URL is in the form www.
geocities.com/, followed by your Yahoo! ID.
For your password, use six or more characters.
5. Clear the check box if you don’t wish to have a Yahoo! Mail account.
Then enter information in case you forget your password.
Use the pull-down menu to select a question that Yahoo! prompts you with if you forget your password. Enter your answer, your birthday (with a four-digit year, such as 1978), and your current e-mail address. Use an e-mail address that you’ll have immediate access to, so you can com-plete the process of activating your account. (And enter your real birthday — “Always tell the truth, so you don’t have to try to remember what you told people.”)
Figure 2-2:
Get your Yahoo! ID so that you
can use GeoCities.
“He tried, but he couldn’t do it” — despite our best efforts, we were unable to get GeoCities to accept a Yahoo! e-mail address as the contact e-mail address for a GeoCities Web page. You have to use a different e-mail account, not a Yahoo.com account. You can use an existing per-sonal or work e-mail address or a friend’s e-mail address. Or you can get a new, free e-mail account at www.hotmail.com(the most popular source for free e-mail), or any of several other sites on the Web.
6. Enter your personal account information. Clear the Send Me Special Offers. . . check box if you don’t want advertising from Yahoo! in your e-mail.
Choose your language-country combination, such as English - United States. Enter your zip code or postal code, your gender, your occupation, and the industry you work in. Clearing the “Send Me Special Offers. . .”
check box tells Yahoo! that you reallydon’t want a bunch of advertising stuff sent to your e-mail account.
Be sure to clear the check box unless you want to receive advertising e-mail from Yahoo! and its partners. Many Web sites have agreed to pre-sent boxes such as this one with the option unchecked, so only people who make the effort to click the check box get signed up, but Yahoo!
makes you do the unchecking yourself. See the sidebar, “Yahoo! for privacy?” for more.
7. If you want to, indicate areas of interest to you.
You have the option of clicking areas of interest to you by putting a check in each relevant check box. Like the pull-down menus for cus-tomizing Yahoo!, the Interests check boxes help Yahoo! customize news and information for you on the Yahoo! site. The information also helps Yahoo! and its partners target e-mail they send you (if you don’t uncheck the check box), ads they put on Web pages that you view, and otherwise personalize their marketing efforts to you.
8. Type in the word shown on-screen.
Type the word shown on-screen. This step is to make sure a real person is filling out the registration.
9. If you want to read the GeoCities Terms of Service, the Yahoo! Privacy Policy, or Yahoo Privacy Information, right-click the link to open them in a separate window. Otherwise, or after you finish, click the Submit This Form button.
If you click this link with a regular mouse click, the GeoCities’ Terms of Service replaces your current browser window contents. If you click the Back button in the browser window to return to the signup screen, everything you entered so far is gone! If you make this mistake — which is all too easy to do — repeat Steps 4 through 8.
After you click the Submit This Form button, you are sent an e-mail mes-sage with steps to follow to access your account. Follow the instructions in the e-mail message, and sign in to Yahoo. Then go to the next section to see how to begin working on your site.
You can reach the GeoCities Web site by typing the URL www.geocities.com into your browser’s address window. The address is automatically remapped to geocities.yahoo.com. Web sites often give simpler Web addresses to the public, but remap them to other internal Web addresses for their own conve-nience. You can continue to use the www.geocities.comaddress as a start-ing point for your own ease of use.