🌐 geocities-boilerplate

Scaffold a complete 1990s Geocities-themed static website in seconds.

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         geocities-boilerplate  ✨  Welcome to 1996  ✨

🌐 View Live Demo

What is this?

geocities-boilerplate is a CLI tool that generates a fully self-contained, retro 1990s Geocities-style personal website. Think neon colors, blinking text, animated star trails, marquee banners, visitor counters, and guestbooks — all of it, generated instantly with a single command.

The generated site is pure static HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript. No build tools, no frameworks, no dependencies. Just open index.html in any browser and relive the golden age of the web.

Quick Start

npx create-geocities-app my-site

Then open my-site/index.html in your browser. That's it!

Demo

Live demo: https://sugardaddyapp.github.io/geocities-boilerplate/

The demo is generated with all options enabled (neon theme, sparkle cursor, falling stars, all 5 pages). It is automatically rebuilt and deployed to GitHub Pages on every push to main.

Interactive Setup

When you run npx create-geocities-app my-site, you'll be walked through a series of prompts:

| # | Prompt | Type | Description | |---|--------|------|-------------| | 1 | Site name | text | Your homepage title, e.g. CoolDude's Homepage | | 2 | Your name | text | Displayed in headers, footers, and contact sections | | 3 | Color theme | select | Choose from 5 retro color palettes (see below) | | 4 | Extra pages | multi | About, Gallery, Guestbook, Cool Links | | 5 | Cursor effect | select | Sparkle, Star Trail, Comet, Rainbow, or None | | 6 | Falling effect | select | Stars, Snow, or None | | 7 | Welcome alert | yes/no | Show a alert() greeting when the page loads | | 8 | Auto-play music | yes/no | Play a Web Audio API 8-bit jingle on load | | 9 | Fake high count | yes/no | Start visitor counter at ~10,000 (looks popular!) |

Skip prompts (use all defaults)

npx create-geocities-app my-site --yes

Generated Output

my-site/
├── index.html        ← Homepage
├── about.html        ← About Me (if selected)
├── gallery.html      ← Photo Gallery with lightbox (if selected)
├── guestbook.html    ← Guestbook (if selected)
├── links.html        ← Cool Links (if selected)
├── css/
│   └── style.css     ← Full retro stylesheet (theme-specific)
└── js/
    └── main.js       ← All JS effects (counter, cursor, music, etc.)

Zero runtime dependencies in the generated output. Every file is self-contained and works offline.

Color Themes

Choose a theme during setup. Each theme controls background, text, link, and accent colors throughout the entire site.

| Theme | Background | Primary Text | Headings | Links | Feel | |-------|-----------|--------------|----------|-------|------| | neon | #000000 | #00FF00 | #FFFF00 | #FF00FF | Hacker/Matrix vibes | | space | #000033 | #CCCCFF | #FFDD00 | #00FFFF | Deep space explorer | | candy | #FF69B4 | #FFFFFF | #FFFF00 | #00FFFF | Sweet and electric | | forest | #003300 | #CCFFCC | #FFDD00 | #99FF99 | Dark enchanted forest | | windows | #008080 | #000000 | #000080 | #000080 | Classic Windows 95 |

Pages

🏠 index.html — Homepage

Every generated site includes a homepage with:

• Marquee banner — scrolling welcome text (CSS animation, no deprecated <marquee> tag)
• Rainbow animated site title — CSS hue-rotate animation cycles through all colors
• Neon-pulsing headings — text-shadow breathes in and out
• "What's New" section — with blinking NEW badges
• Under Construction section — animated yellow/black caution tape
• Sidebar — navigation, live clock, spinning globe, visitor counter, web ring
• Web ring widget — retro navigation to prev/home/next sites
• Footer — "Best viewed in Netscape Navigator" badge, copyright

👤 about.html — About Me

• Fun Facts list — blinking star bullet points
• Interests grid — styled badge chips for hobbies
• Favorites table — a retro-styled table of favorite things (music, movies, games, etc.)
• Contact section — email and guestbook links

🖼️ gallery.html — Photo Gallery

• Photo of the Month spotlight at the top
• 3-column image grid — each item has thick beveled Windows-95-style borders
• Captions in Comic Sans below each image
• Lightbox viewer — click any photo to open it full-size in an overlay; press ESC or click outside to close
• Placeholder images pre-filled — replace with your own

📖 guestbook.html — Guestbook

• Sign form — fields for name, email, website, location, and message
• Fake previous entries — pre-populated with period-authentic guestbook posts (fully editable)
• Client-side submit — shows a thank-you alert and resets the form
• Note explaining how to add a real backend (Formspree, Netlify Forms, etc.)

🔗 links.html — Cool Links

• Links organized into categories: Friends, Games, Web & Tech, Art, News
• Blinking animated bullets before each link
• Description text below each link
• "Request Link Exchange" email button

Effects Reference

Cursor Effects

| Effect | What it does | |--------|-------------| | Sparkle ✨ | Random glitter glyphs (✦, ✧, ★, ·) spawn at your cursor and float upward | | Star Trail ★ | Yellow ★ characters follow the cursor and fade out with a scale-down animation | | Comet ☄️ | An orange-to-white horizontal streak trails behind cursor movement | | Rainbow 🌈 | Colored dots cycle through the full hue spectrum as you move the cursor | | None | No cursor effect |

Falling Background Effects

| Effect | What it does | |--------|-------------| | Stars ⭐ | 60 colored star characters (★) fall from top of screen with random sizes, speeds, and drift | | Snow ❄️ | 40 white circular snowflakes drift downward with random horizontal drift | | None | No falling effect |

Other Effects

| Effect | Details | |--------|---------| | Visitor counter | Odometer-style LCD digit boxes, animates on load, persists via localStorage | | Live clock | HH:MM:SS display in the sidebar, updated every second | | Marquee banner | CSS @keyframes scroll animation — pauses on hover | | Blinking text | CSS @keyframes blink — used on NEW badges, bullet points, and decorations | | Rainbow headings | CSS filter: hue-rotate() animation cycles through all colors | | Neon glow pulse | text-shadow breathes in/out on all major headings | | Spinning globe | 🌍 emoji spins continuously via CSS rotate animation | | Under construction | Yellow/black diagonal-stripe caution tape with a spinning 🚧 icon | | Page entry animation | Content fades and slides up on load | | 8-bit music jingle | Square-wave melody via Web Audio API — plays on first interaction; toggle with the PLAY/STOP button | | Matrix rain | Press M on any page to toggle a green Matrix-style canvas rain effect | | Custom scrollbar | Themed scrollbar matching the color palette (Chrome/Edge/Safari) | | Gallery lightbox | Click-to-expand image viewer with caption, close button, and ESC key support |

GitHub Pages Setup (for your generated site)

To host your generated site on GitHub Pages:

1. Create a new GitHub repository
2. Copy the contents of your generated folder into it
3. Push to main
4. Go to Settings → Pages → Source → Deploy from a branch → main → / (root)
5. Your site is live at https://<username>.github.io/<repo-name>/

Project Structure (for contributors)

geocities-boilerplate/
├── .github/workflows/
│   └── deploy-demo.yml    # Auto-deploys demo/ to GitHub Pages
├── bin/
│   └── cli.js             # CLI entry point with ASCII banner
├── src/
│   ├── generator.js       # Core: reads templates, interpolates vars, writes files
│   ├── prompts.js         # Interactive prompts using `prompts` package
│   └── themes.js          # 5 color palette definitions
├── templates/             # Source templates (included in npm bundle)
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── about.html
│   ├── gallery.html
│   ├── guestbook.html
│   ├── links.html
│   ├── css/style.css
│   └── js/main.js
├── demo/                  # Pre-generated demo (not in npm bundle)
├── scripts/
│   └── build-demo.js      # Regenerates demo/ with all options enabled
├── package.json
├── PLAN.md                # Full project plan and design decisions
└── README.md

Template Variables

Templates use {{VARIABLE_NAME}} placeholders that are replaced by the generator. Key variables:

| Variable | Description | |----------|-------------| | {{SITE_NAME}} | Site title from user prompt | | {{AUTHOR_NAME}} | Author name from user prompt | | {{THEME_NAME}} | Human-readable theme name | | {{BG}}, {{TEXT_COLOR}}, etc. | Theme color values (CSS hex) | | {{CURSOR_EFFECT}} | Selected cursor effect key | | {{FALLING_EFFECT}} | Selected falling effect key | | {{WELCOME_ALERT}} | "true" or "false" | | {{PLAY_MUSIC}} | "true" or "false" | | {{FAKE_HIGH_COUNT}} | "true" or "false" | | {{NAV_LINKS}} | Generated navigation <a> tags based on selected pages | | {{YEAR}} | Current year |

Contributing

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a feature branch: git checkout -b feat/my-awesome-feature
3. Make changes in templates/, src/, or bin/
4. Test locally: node bin/cli.js test-site --yes && open test-site/index.html
5. Rebuild the demo: npm run build:demo
6. Open a pull request

Ideas for contributions

• New color themes
• Additional page types (music page, art gallery, blog page)
• More cursor effects (pixel trail, fire cursor)
• Web component versions of the decorative elements
• A --theme <name> CLI flag to skip the theme prompt

Local Development

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/sugardaddyapp/geocities-boilerplate.git
cd geocities-boilerplate

# Install
npm install

# Test the CLI
node bin/cli.js my-test-site

# Rebuild demo
npm run build:demo

# Open demo
open demo/index.html

License

MIT © Jamey Baldwin

Acknowledgements

• Inspired by the preserved GeoCities archive and GifCities
• Color palette ideas from the original GeoCities neighborhood aesthetics
• Built with ❤️ and an unhealthy amount of nostalgia for 1996

Also checkout my other projects: Best Sugar Daddy Apps Best Sugar Daddy Apps 2026 Best Sugar Daddy Apps NPM Best Sugar Daddy Apps Socket

Best viewed in Netscape Navigator 4.0 at 800×600 resolution.