AOL Hometown
| Company type | Web hosting service |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet |
| Founded | 1998 |
| Defunct | 2008-10-31 |
| Fate | Service terminated |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Products | Web hosting, website creation tools (1-2-3 Publish, Easy Designer) |
| Owner | AOL |
AOL Hometown was a web hosting service provided by AOL, offering subscribers 12 megabytes of server storage to create and publish their own websites. It included two main tools for site creation: a 10-step guided form called 1-2-3 Publish and a WYSIWYG editor named Easy Designer, both designed to eliminate the need for HTML expertise (serving as successors to the earlier AOLpress). By 2001, AOL Hometown was home to approximately 11 million websites, with new pages being added roughly every eight seconds. This figure increased to 14 million sites by 2002. The platform was officially terminated on October 31, 2008.
The closure of AOL Hometown inspired Jason Scott to establish the Archive Team, partnering with the Internet Archive and other organizations to safeguard valuable online content. After archiving AOL Hometown data, their efforts shifted toward preserving GeoCities, recognizing its significance as a key venue for personal websites prior to its shutdown in October 2009.
members.aol.com
Prior to AOL Hometown, AOL users were allocated 2 MB of web hosting space along with tools such as "Personal Publisher II" and "AOLPress". These webpages were accessible under the members.aol.com or home.aol.com domains. The Personal Publisher tool allowed users without HTML skills to build webpages; however, AOL discontinued this service around the year 2000. Additionally, users had the option to upload custom HTML files using the "MyPlace" feature.
Launch timeline
Initially introduced as "Hometown AOL" in October 1998, the service was renamed "AOL Hometown" in 1999 to conform with AOL’s branding strategy. While official launch documentation is limited, domain registration records suggest activity predating August 1996, though this likely pertains to broader AOL domains rather than the specific service. The earliest known references to AOL Hometown appear in sources from 1999 and 2000.
Supporting evidence points to a launch date around or before 1999: the "AOL Hometown StatCounter" displays copyrights from 1999–2011, and James S. Huggins’s "AOL Hometown easyDesigner" download page was created prior to November 2001 with copyright spanning 1997–2011.
Incorporated legacy websites
AOL Hometown consolidated numerous websites originating from previously independent platforms acquired or merged into AOL’s portfolio, including Ancestry.com, MyFamily.com, Netscape, CompuServe, eAccess, AcmeCity, among others. This integration encompassed many sites that existed well before the establishment of AOL Hometown.
Some of these legacy websites had been active for more than 17 years before the platform ceased operations in 2008. For example, a user on the German forum antispam.de expressed regret over losing a site that had been live since at least 1991.
See also
External links
- Dillard, David (2008). "Meet the Googles" Visits the Grave Site of AOL Hometown to Ponder Its Past All to Short Life, Temple University, posted on Yahoo Groups, November 18, 2008
- Scott, Jason (2008). Eviction, or the Coming Datapocalypse, December 21, 2008
- Dr. Jitter (2008). AOL hometown shut down. Finding old sites., House of Jitters, November 12, 2008
- How To Retrieve Your AOL Files, November 11, 2008
- AOL Hometown Users: Your files are *not* deleted yet – grab’m while you can!, November 24, 2008