Homepage Sets are graphic collections of navigation buttons, backgrounds and dividers that somehow fit together. It would have been a stretch to call them templates because there was no pre-defined form for headlines, blurbs, photos or articles. For example this “executive set” contains most things one would need for a classic home page:

Backwards and Forward, Guestbook, Home Page, Links, Email, “own stuff” (e.g. writings), Help and Photos.

It was designed by “Shawna”, as well as dozens of other sets. Many Geocities users offered self-made sets like these, for anybody to copy and use. But Shawna was apparently able to sell some of her creations. She removed the data for sold sets, so it is not possible anymore to find out what made them commercially successful. Still this list can serve as a small market research on what topics could be interesting for today’s web designers, ordered by sales:

Animal sets:

Country sets:

Executive sets:

Fresh Flowers:

Flower sets:

Miscellaneous sets:

Victorian sets:

Genealogy sets:

Jeweled sets:

So, aspiring designers should put some work into their genealogy and jewel portfolios. What about creating WordPress and Gmail themes like these?

BTW, the categories Angels, Designer, Fantasy, Holiday, Kids and Masculine didn’t sell a single piece. This means something, Shawna has been in the biz since 1998.

Original URL: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/coffeehouse/5922/