July 7 will be the end of the road for two of .Mac’s long time features, HomePage and Groups. But don’t worry, you won’t lose any info and you can still publish pages to your MobileMe account.
Apple sent notices to MobileMe members on Thursday alerting users of the coming changes. HomePage has been a part of Apple’s online services since it launched iTools in 2000. Fortunately, any pages you have published will not be taken down or affected in any way.
In fact, you can keep the pages will be at their current Web address for as long as you like. However, after July 7, 2009, you won’t be able to edit existing pages or create new ones.
The change to HomePage doesn’t leave members totally out in the cold. MobileMe and iLife users can always fire up iWeb and publish Web sites and blogs any time they want. You can also publish photo galleries directly from iPhoto.
The changes to .Mac Groups is a bit of a different story. On July 7, all Groups features will be taken offline completely. That includes your group email address, group HomePage, message board, and iDisk “Groups.” If you have a group on MobileMe, you should contact your members and let them know.
Any files in the group folder on July 7 will be moved to a new folder called “Groups Archive.” You’ll continue to have access to those files as long as you’re a MobileMe member.