AOL_Hometown
AOL Hometown
Former web hosting service
AOL Hometown was a web hosting service offered by AOL. It offered 12 megabytes of server space for AOL subscribers to publish their own websites, and included a 10-step form-driven page creator called 1-2-3 Publish[2][3] and a WYSIWYG online website builder called Easy Designer,[4] neither of which required knowledge of HTML (AOLpress had been AOL's website builder before the introduction of AOL Hometown). In 2001, AOL Hometown estimatedly had 11 million websites[5] and a new website was added to it every eight seconds.[6] By 2002, AOL Hometown had grown to 14 million websites.[7] It was shut down on 31 October 2008.[1]
Its shutdown led to the creation of Archive Team by Jason Scott[8][9][10] who was angered by the shutdown. Then it, with the help of the Internet Archive and other activist websites, saved as much of GeoCities as possible when it became the next "critical part of online history"[8] and "important outlet for personal expression on the Web"[11] to be shut down with short notice in October 2009.