The Free Host Injection

server side 1997 partly

The advertisement your free host appended to your page after you uploaded it.

In 2026: The pattern outlived the hosts. GeoCities started with a watermark image in the corner, moved to a floating advert window, and Angelfire and Tripod did their own versions. You could not remove it, and a good deal of 90s JavaScript exists purely to fight it.

Where it came from: GeoCities, Angelfire and Tripod page footers, roughly 1997 to 2001. The exact markup varied by year and by host. Wikipedia ↗

<!-- text below generated by server. PLEASE REMOVE -->
<!-- Counter/Statistics data collection code -->
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://us.js2.yimg.com/us.js.yimg.com/lib/smb/js/hosting/cp/js_source/whv2_001.js"></script>
<script language="javascript">
  geovisit();
</script>
<noscript><img src="http://visit.webhosting.yahoo.com/visit.gif?us1234567890" height="1" width="1"></noscript>

<!-- The floating advert window, opened on load -->
<script language="JavaScript">
  var ad = window.open("/adpopup.html", "ad",
    "width=250,height=250,toolbar=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=no");
</script>

<!-- And the script people pasted in to try to kill it -->
<script language="JavaScript">
  function killAd() { if (window.ad) { window.ad.close(); } }
  setTimeout(killAd, 1000);
</script>

sandboxed demo · breaks nothing but itselfrestart

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