Why do bloggers take their blogs down?

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This is something I’ve always wondered about.   I see so many bloggers take down their blogs when they lose interest or they feel like their blog has fulfilled its purpose.    I can’t tell you how many times I’ve visited a blog I like and seen a message saying the blog has been removed.

I don’t get it.  Even if I were to lose interest in blogging and stop writing posts, I would still leave my blog(s) up.    One, it costs nothing on WordPress.  Two, people will continue to stumble on my blog and may be helped, entertained, or inspired by something I wrote.  Three, people who already know about my blog want to go back and reread something they already read.

It’s always so disappointing to see that a blog I’ve grown attached to no longer exists.   If I haven’t kept in touch with the blog’s writer,  it’s as if they’ve disappeared from the face of the earth.  I always wonder what happened to them.

I understand people move on with their lives and they often reach a point where they feel as if blogging has served its purpose.  I also understand that in certain blogging communities (such as the narcissistic abuse community), the posts may be of a very personal nature.   But why remove the whole blog?   Just leave it up so others can still benefit from it.

I have no plans to stop blogging, even though I post less than I used to and have moved onto other subjects (less posts about narcissistic abuse).    If I ever did stop blogging though, I would leave my blogs alone so others could still read them.

 

Opinionated Man, I don’t know if I should thank you or kick you!

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Yesterday, Opinionated Man wrote a post called “My Greatest Blogging Fear.”  In that post he talked about the unthinkable for any blogger:  that one day you sit down and open up your blog…and find it gone.   All the work you put into it, the hours, sweat and tears…gone, just like that.  Poof.

If that happened to me I think I would want to die.  I have around 1600 posts on this blog now.  Sixteen months of work.   After reading his post, I realized how easily all that could just disappear.   A glitch, a hacker, WordPress suddenly shutting its doors, you name it.   All my hard work, gone just like that.   I know it’s not likely to happen, but it could.

I’m a worrier by nature.   I never worried about this before because it never really crossed my mind.  It never occurred to me to have a backup plan in case the unthinkable ever happened.   Now I have something new to worry about thanks to his post.

So I realized what I need to do is start a 3rd blog just for storage.  I’ll set it to private.  Most of the articles I care about will go in there.    I’m also going to save some of my best posts in my computer, probably Wordpad.   Then I won’t have to worry that one day I’ll log on here to find…everything gone.