I just signed on to my yahoo mail and got a notice that Geocities was closing on October 26. They had previously warned this would happen before the end of the year but they are now giving some details. If you didn’t know, Geocities is a free web hosting service owned by Yahoo. The service was supported by advertising placed by Geocities on the hosted web sites.

So if you are one of the many genealogists using this service, it is time to think about options (if you haven’t already). There are other “free” hosts around. There are a number of hosts who will host your site for a few dollars each month. Generally you have many more options when you pay but a “free” site might fit your needs.

My site was on Geocities for years and after I received the warning from them a few months ago, I investigated web hosts and decided to move to my own domain.

Since the pages on Geocities will not be recoverable after October 26, you might want to download them (if you haven’t already) and start thinking about where you want your genealogy pages on the internet to move.

Here is the Yahoo/Geocities help page on the closing:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/geocities/close/