ProZ.com's legacy hosting service is being retired on December 1, 2020 (see the announcement in the forums). If you are still an active user of ProZ.com hosting, you will need to migrate to another hosting service provider.
This document contains information to help you with this process. It is organized into the following sections:
If your hosted domain ends in my.proz.com, you will not be able to use that domain name anymore.
When you sign up for a new hosting provider, you will either need to switch to a free subdomain that they provide, or register your own personalized domain name that you can take with you whenever you change providers again in the future (recommended).
Many people who use my.proz.com hosting accounts just want a free email account or simple brochure-like website.
If you just need a free email account or simple website, consider using Gmail for a free email account, or Google Sites for a free, simple website.
If you need more advanced features than a free service can provide, you'll need to move your site to another hosting provider as described below. The only difference from migrating a non-my.proz.com site is that instead of transferring an existing domain, you should register a new domain when you sign up for your new hosting service.
Once you have signed up with a new hosting provider and know what your new email address and website URL will be, you can have email sent to your old my.proz.com account forwarded to your new email address, and set up an auto-responder to reply with your new address when someone emails your old one. (Forwarding and auto-responders will only be available until the hosting service is finally retired on December 1.)
To set up your old my.proz.com account to forward email to your new address, log into your ProZ.com hosting control panel. Then go to Forwarders -> Email account forwarders -> Add forwarder.
To set up an auto-responder, log into your ProZ.com hosting control panel. Then go to Auto-responders -> Add auto-responder.
If you registered a domain name through ProZ.com, you will need to transfer it to a new domain registrar. If you are also setting up a website and/or email with a new hosting provider, you can usually transfer your domain to them while you are signing up for your new hosting account. Or, if you prefer, you can transfer your domain to a different registrar and host your website somewhere else. In either case, the process is similar.
To transfer a domain you registered at ProZ.com, follow these steps:
It can take several days for the domain transfer process to fully complete.
There are many hosting providers on the internet. Some well-known ones are Bluehost and Dreamhost. You may find others more suitable given your needs, location, language and so on.
A forum thread has been started for discussion of different hosting options.
Download a backup of all of the files in your hosting account. This will help you protect against any possible data loss while you are migrating your hosting account, in addition to preparing your data to be copied to your new site.
To download your hosting backups, first log into your ProZ.com hosting control panel. (Your username is shown on your hosting info page; if you forgot your password, click "Cancel" in the login form, and then click "Reset password".)
In your hosting control panel, go to Backups -> System Backups -> Daily.
This will download a compressed archive of all of the files in your home directory, along with configuration information, database backups, etc.
There's no single approach to copying your website to your new provider; it depends on how your old website was configured, and how your new hosting provider does things.
If you had just a simple, brochure-like website, you may be able to migrate it to your new webhost by simply copying a handful of files.
You can find your publicly accessible website files in your downloaded backup, under homedir.tar/public_html.
Or you can download the files individually, using the control panel file manager. (Log into your ProZ.com hosting control panel and select File manager.)
Then upload these website files to the public web root directory of your new web host. (Contact your new host if you need help with this.)
If you had a more complex website, with databases or executable scripts, it will take more work to set it up on your new site. If you are having trouble making it work, please submit a support request.
It is our intention as ProZ.com staff members to help ensure that migration is as easy as possible for you, and that none of your data is lost.
We have started a thread on the forum where people can discuss different options. If you require additional assistance, staff members are also available to help you complete the migration. Please enter a support request.