There are 41 Neighborhoods, and each one is about something: pets in Petsburgh, computers in SiliconValley, gardening in the Orchard, and so on down the line. Pick the one that fits what your page is about. Can't decide? I gave every one of them a sentence on my tour of all 41 Neighborhoods.

Inside each Neighborhood are suburbs, and inside each suburb, house numbers. That's your address. Mine is Route66, suburb Crossroads, number 4995:

www.geocities.us/Route66/Crossroads/4995/

You get a matching free e-mail address with it, [email protected], that you can read from any Web browser.

This evening, 7 PM: the New Homesteaders Welcome chat, hosted by Community Leaders. That's us. Come say hello.

Your front page has to be named index.html. That's the page people see when they type your address. Every other page can be named whatever you like (keep the names short, lowercase, and no spaces), but the front door is always index.html.

There are two ways to build it:

• Page Builder 2.0: drag your words, pictures and counters onto the page and press Save. No HTML at all. It needs Netscape 4.0 or Internet Explorer 4.0 or later with Java turned on, and on a 28.8 modem it takes about a minute to load, so get a cup of coffee and don't click on it twice.
• Your own HTML: write your pages in Notepad (or SimpleText on a Mac) and send them up with the File Manager, ten files at a time, right from your browser. Or type straight into the Basic HTML Editor, a big box right there in the browser. If you're building a whole site at once, use FTP: the host is ftp.geocities.us, with your member name and password. Send .html files as ASCII and pictures as binary. Send a picture as ASCII and it comes out scrambled.

This evening, 8 PM: the SiliconValley Help Desk. Bring your computer questions.

The member bar. That strip across the top of every page, yours and mine, is the GeoCities.us member bar. It helps visitors find their way around the Neighborhoods, and it helps pay for the free service. Leave it be. It's the rent, and it's cheap rent.

The Content Guidelines. GeoCities.us is family-friendly, and when you join you agree to keep it that way. That means no adult material; nothing hateful, threatening or harassing; no pirated software (folks call it "warez") and no music, pictures or writing you don't have permission to use; no viruses; and no chain letters, pyramid schemes or junk e-mail. Pages that break the guidelines can be taken down. The full rules are in the Terms of Service, and the short version is on the Help Center page.

I'll say a word about chain letters, because I see them every week. If an e-mail tells you to forward it to ten friends or something bad will happen, nothing bad will happen. Don't forward it, and don't put it on your page.

This evening, 9 PM: Area51 After Dark, for science fiction, UFOs and the unexplained.

The message boards are where the answers live. The three a new Homesteader wants:

• HTML Help: stuck on a tag? Ask. There are better than eighteen thousand posts on it, and odds are somebody already asked your question and somebody else already answered it.
• Page Builder Questions: tips and tricks for Page Builder 2.0.
• Show Off Your Page: put up your address and get friendly feedback. This is the busiest of the three, and the friendliest.

When you post, say what you're trying to do, what happened instead, and give your page's address. "It doesn't work" doesn't give anybody much to go on.

This evening, 7 PM: the Heartland Kitchen. Swap recipes and family news.

You've got 11 MB of space. That's room for dozens of pages and hundreds of pictures, so don't be stingy with your words. The free clip art library has backgrounds, animated GIFs, buttons and hit counter digits, and Page Builder will put a hit counter or a guestbook on your page with one click.

My advice, for what it's worth: write about the thing you know. The best pages on GeoCities.us aren't the fanciest. They're the ones where somebody who knows bees, or bass, or old Buicks, tells you what they know. Pictures are nice. Words are why people come back.

This evening, 8 PM: Petsburgh Pet Talk. Cats, dogs and everything in between.

Go visit. Sign a few guestbooks. Folks notice who stops by, and most of them stop by back.

Then look at the WebRings. A WebRing links pages about the same subject in a circle, so a visitor can hop from one to the next. Homesteaders run seven of them: the Front Porch (friendly, family-style pages), Backroads (road trips, cars and the outdoors), Kitchen Table (cooking, gardening and crafts), Stage Door (music, theater and the arts), Hobby Horse (collectors, builders and players), Time Capsule (local and family history) and Glass House Journals (online diaries). Each ring has a hub page with the list of member sites and a How to Join section. Read it before you write the owner; every ring has its own rules.

This evening, 9 PM: Hollywood Movie Night. What did you see this week?

Click every link on your page and make sure it goes somewhere. Read it over once more for spelling.

Changed your page and still see the old one? Your browser is showing you a saved copy. In Netscape, hold Shift and click Reload. In Internet Explorer, hold Ctrl and click Refresh. That one trick answers about a third of the questions I get on Sunday nights.

Proud of a page? Nominate it for Homepage of the Month. It can be your own. E-mail the address to [email protected] with a few words about why you love it.

Truly stuck? Write to Member Services at [email protected], and put your member name in the letter. Forgot your password? Use the "Forgot your password?" link in the Member Center, and it'll be sent to the e-mail address they have on file.

There's no chat on Saturday night. Go outside. Your page will be there in the morning.