Create a 90s GeoCities style website in seconds (Python)

I think the thing these "old internet revivals" miss is they looked the way they did was because they were outsider-art. I don't think they have to reuse precisely the same layout tools, but non-developers butting heads with those tools was a big factor in why personal sites looked that way. The whole look of "old internet" is a modern concept that's a bit flanderized [0] now.

Nothing wrong with nostalgia, but I agree with you that the wrong things are being equated here. A tool that just quickly generates a visually-similar site to that somewhat-imagined "old internet look" isn't really the same. If you emulated a similar amount of friction to those old site with modern tooling, you'd end up with an actual spiritual successor to those geocities sites. (NeoCities [1] is a great example, a lot of personal sites on there are not targeting 90s-2000s nostalgia even if that's an obvious aesthetic direction to go for something called "NeoCities")

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanderization

[1] https://neocities.org/

🌐 geocities-boilerplate

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

  ██████╗ ███████╗ ██████╗  ██████╗██╗████████╗██╗███████╗███████╗
 ██╔════╝ ██╔════╝██╔═══██╗██╔════╝██║╚══██╔══╝██║██╔════╝██╔════╝
 ██║  ███╗█████╗  ██║   ██║██║     ██║   ██║   ██║█████╗  ███████╗
 ██║   ██║██╔══╝  ██║   ██║██║     ██║   ██║   ██║██╔══╝  ╚════██║
 ╚██████╔╝███████╗╚██████╔╝╚██████╗██║   ██║   ██║███████╗███████║
  ╚═════╝ ╚══════╝ ╚═════╝  ╚═════╝╚═╝   ╚═╝   ╚═╝╚══════╝╚══════╝

         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

# one-shot with pipx (recommended — no permanent install) pipx run create-geocities-app my-site

# or install permanently pip install create-geocities-app create-geocities-app my-site

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

Every Way to Run It

Pick your language or runtime — all produce the same site.

Python / PyPI

# one-shot with pipx (recommended) pipx run create-geocities-app my-site

# or install permanently pip install create-geocities-app create-geocities-app my-site

Node.js / npm

# one-shot, no install npx create-geocities-app my-site

# or install globally npm install -g create-geocities-app create-geocities-app my-site

Ruby / RubyGems

gem install create-geocities-app create-geocities-app my-site

Rust / Cargo

cargo install create-geocities-app create-geocities-app my-site

PHP / Composer

# global install composer global require geocities-app/create-geocities-app create-geocities-app my-site

# or as a project scaffold composer create-project geocities-app/create-geocities-app my-site

Deno / JSR

# run without installing deno run --allow-read --allow-write jsr:@geocities/create-app my-site

# or compile to a native binary first deno compile --allow-read --allow-write --output create-geocities-app jsr:@geocities/create-app ./create-geocities-app my-site

Go

# run without installing go run github.com/sugardaddyapp/geocities-boilerplate/go@latest my-site

# or install the binary go install github.com/sugardaddyapp/geocities-boilerplate/go@latest create-geocities-app my-site

All variants accept the same flags:

Flag	Meaning
`my-site`	Output directory name (default: `my-geocities-site`)
`-y` / `--yes`	Skip all prompts and use defaults

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 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)

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

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:

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

Requirements

Python 3.8+
questionary (installed automatically via pip)

Contributing

Fork the repo
Create a feature branch: git checkout -b feat/my-awesome-feature
Make changes in python/create_geocities_app/
Test locally: cd python && pip install -e . && create-geocities-app test-site --yes && open test-site/index.html
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)
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/python

# Install in editable mode pip install -e .

# Test the CLI create-geocities-app my-test-site

# Or run directly python -m create_geocities_app my-test-site

License

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.

Hacker Times