Lost Web Host: How to redirect?

[Clueless in Seattle]

For the last ten or so years my chronic illness support group has had
a free web page on Geo-Cities (Now owned by Yahoo!).

We recently received a message from Yahoo that they will soon be
terminating their free web page service.

Since none of us is web savvy, we don't have a clue how to handle the
transition to a new web page host.

Once Yahoo cuts us off, will there be any way for us to redirect
traffic to our new page from the old URL?

Will in Seattle
a.k.a. "Clueless"

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

For the last ten or so years my chronic illness support group has had
a free web page on Geo-Cities (Now owned by Yahoo!).

We recently received a message from Yahoo that they will soon be
terminating their free web page service.

Since none of us is web savvy, we don't have a clue how to handle the
transition to a new web page host.

Once Yahoo cuts us off, will there be any way for us to redirect
traffic to our new page from the old URL?

If you have your own domain name, "www.example.com", then the change is
transparent to your users if you change the dns pointers to your new
server. I am guessing that you do not have your own domain name, but
either use a subdoman of Geo-Cities i.e. "YOU.geocities.com" or use
Geo-Cities domain "www.geocities.com/YOU". In this scenario the
redirect would have to be done at their servers which will no longer
exist. So the short answer is no. Your visitors will have to find you at
a new URL.

Where or not your use "free hosting", it does pay to get at least a
domain name! You can move to different servers without breaking the
continuity of your URL.