I’ve used both AOL and Yahoo!Geocities for personal webpages . . .but am always on the market for something better.
The key for me is ease of use (I use things like the Easy Page Builder, just to give you an idea how pathetic- I don’t have time or patience for tags) and options (unfortunately, Yahoo! only offers 6-7 templates).
I really liked my AOL site. I could put a picture up, and update it within minutes, and it never froze up on me while editing. . . . but I dropped AOL last year, so can’t use it.
Anything better out there? Keep in mind I really don’t have the free time to do a full blown site, that’s why I use these kind of services. Remember, easy to use, and the site looks good, and I don’t have to subscribe to a specific URL are the keys.
It automatically thumbnails all the uploaded pictures for you (regardless of their size), and has nice sections for links, recommendations, calendar, etc.
I use the aforementioned MSN Communities to put my personal pictures up for my friends.
For my website, I use Tripod. It has an easy page builder, although I haven’t used it, and 50 MB of free space. I find it hard to escape ads when you want free web space, but at least Tripod offers me a choice of a banner ad or a pop-up (I HATE pop-ups!).
Another place to look is http://www.homestead.com – you have your choice of either using the personal or professional web page templates, and I think they have a pretty good selection. Be forewarned, though: Homestead is switching to a paid service beginning in September, and you’ll no longer be able to download any sigs or photos you have there onto another site…
Just to let everyone interested know I played around with Yahoo!Geocities Page Builder, and it’s actually not too bad. The only part I hate is I can’t seem to copy and paste Word to the text template, but I’m sure theres a way around this.