Parts of Rootsweb to be retired and migrated to new homes

From RootsWeb (now part of Ancestry):

RootsWeb was founded in 1996 and has had an extraordinarily long and successful run, outlasting nearly every other website originating in those early days of the internet. RootsWeb has far exceeded its founders' expectations regarding longevity and its central role in creating an online genealogy community, but maintaining RootsWeb forever is not a viable long-term solution. We recognize the valuable genealogical information RootsWeb offers and are working to keep that community knowledge alive by migrating it to Ancestry and other places throughout 2023.

Mailing Lists Archives (last updated in 2020) will be retired on 6 April 2023 and migrated to an alternative, free platform. Once migration is complete, we’ll provide a link to them on the RootsWeb home page.

WorldConnect family trees (last updated on 9 August 2021) will be retired on 15 April 2023 and migrated to Ancestry as a new free-access collection later in the year. For help removing a tree or its content, contact us.

Hosted websites will become read-only beginning in early 2024. At that time, all logins will be disabled, but hosted sites will remain on RootsWeb as static content. Website owners wishing to maintain their sites must migrate to a different hosting provider before 2024.

Frequently asked questions

How do I download my RootsWeb-hosted website?  Open an FTP client (like FileZilla) and connect to:

•         Host: sf​tp://sitesuser.r​ootsweb.c​​om
•         Port: 22

Enter your username and password and log in. Your username is the website name and can be found at the end of the URL (example: https://sites.rootsweb.com/~username/). For help with your password,  click here or contact us.

Use your FTP client to download your website’s files. See instructions for some popular FTP clients here.

Where can I find the Mailing Lists Archives?
The mailing list content will be migrated to an alternative, free platform for long-term access. When the migration is complete, a link will be posted to the RootsWeb home page.

Where can I find the WorldConnect trees?
The trees will be migrated to Ancestry as a new collection. The collection will be free to access without an Ancestry membership.

Source: https://support.rootsweb.com/s/article/Retiring-and-Migrating-Portions-of-RootsWeb

COMMENT: This is great news with regards to the mailing lists in particular, which I feared would be retired completely - there is a lot of useful genealogical information stored away on the site!

(With thanks to Debbie Kennet via Twitter @DebbieKennett)

Chris 

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For the USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.