My Opera forum, blogging platform, and email to shut down on March 1, 2014

Opera today announced it is shutting down My Opera on March 1, 2014. The whole service is going away, including the forum, blogging platform, and email components.

My Opera started as a support forum in 2001, but then in 2006 it grew into a full-fledged community site that let users do everything from writing blog posts to sharing photos. Opera says social media and blogging sites have since popped up with “more and better features than we could possibly maintain.”

Opera is thus giving its users four months to move to new services and to back up their blogs and photos. You can preserve all your content with two simple steps:

• Export your blog. The output file should work with WordPress, Squarespace, Typepad, Movable Type, Drupal, and many other weblog-hosting sites.
• Download all of your content. Opera has a guide to walk you through the steps.

As for My Opera email, Opera suggests users sign up for a new provider and forward the emails they want to save. You can set up an auto-reply in your My Opera email to inform your contacts of your new email address.

This quick FAQ explains a bit more:

What about the desktop blog?
It will be continued at blogs.opera.com.

What about the Opera Link web interface?
It will be hosted from http://link.opera.com/ and you can log in with your My Opera account details to get access to your synchronized content.

Will this affect other Opera services such as addons.opera.com?
No, you can still log in with your My Opera account and access your addons, review and comment.

What happens with my comments?
Your comments will also be included when you export your blog post.

What about the forums?
Our forums will be moved to www.opera.com later. The most important threads will be moved there and you can still use your My Opera account to log in and continue the discussion. In other words: Your My Opera account is now your new Opera account that you can use for all Opera services and products.

In short, Opera is killing a lot of features here. The company hopes users will transition to alternatives but also keep using its other services where possible. That’s a tough message to send.