I try to keep my blogroll pretty current: in my humble opinion, life is too short to waste clicking on dead links...It means that if I notice someone hasn't posted for a very long while, I delete them from my blogroll. The exception is if someone has posted a warning that there might be an enforced period of inactivity... because they're moving house or something.
But even though I delete the link from my blogroll, I haven't got the time to go through each and every past post of mine which refers to that blog, and delete the links there too. I wouldn't want to: some of the posts referred to are well-worth revisiting...
Now blogging is time-consuming (though much less so than many other activities, such as, say... watching TV) and not everyone wants to keep doing it. Also, no matter how much a person enjoys blogging, sometimes circumstances are such that it's just not practical to continue. And occasionally people blog for a while and then get bored and want to stop.
That's fine. It's sad to see good blogs stop, but hey, it happens.
But please... please! If you are going to stop blogging, please do not delete all your blog posts. If people have linked back to you, the link is then "dead" and if they just linked (providing you with internet traffic) and didn't actually copy your post in full, then they have a whole load of blog posts which are meaningless. I mean, if established bloggers waited 12 months before linking to a new blog, just in case the author didn't stay the course, it would take ages for anyone to get going. Blogging relies on readers and links alert readers to the new blogs.
Also, please do not delete the entire blog. The blog name and the links still exist, but what can happen is that the site then becomes available for takeover by advertisers... and some of the stuff advertised this way can be very unappealing indeed. Another blogger, a while back, didn't listen to my advice, deleted her blog and then got very upset as all her friends found that their links were going to a site advertising Viagra and other such stuff. It took quite a bit of time and trouble to get through to Blogger to put the thing right.
...And you never know... in a few months you might even find you miss blogging, and want to come back!
that's good advice. I've been blogging for 3 and a half years and i have lost count of the number of times that i have thought i'd quit the blog completely due to boredom, time limits, unreliable internet access etc...but now when i have nothing to say or when i just want to take a time out, i'm not afraid to walk away for a few weeks and just take a breather from it all. Often i find that i return to it refreshed, and over the years I've been blessed that many online friendships have grown from it and that my readership has likewise grown and not dimished despite my absences form the blogosphere occassionally.
ReplyDeleteIt 's been tempting to click the delete button a few times, but my blog buddies and even anonymous visitors have aked me to keep the blog up so that they have access to all my old apologetic type posts, prayer threads etc.
Yeah, and what people dont realize from what Ive read, someone can now grab that name and imitate YOU and put up all kinds of stuff ...
ReplyDeleteVERY irritating.
I can understand deleting a post or two if need be, but deleting the whole blog just seems so destructive. [Can you tell I really miss Valle Adurni? The blog that lead me to the whole blogosphere after Damian Thompson refered to it?]
And the hell of it is a lot of times people can find things in caches so what is the point of deleting the thing?
Arrrgh...
Karen
Eep. Was this directed at me? *shameful grin*
ReplyDeleteno-one in particular... but if you've done this then consider your wrists slapped!
ReplyDelete