This blog is (currently) hosted on wordpress.com with a redirect from my successfulsoftware.net domain. Having wordpress host this blog has a number of advantages, including:
- I don’t have to pay for bandwidth
- I don’t have to update the wordpress software
- wordpress can handle big traffic spikes
- built in spam filtering
I was generally very happy with the service, which has been free so far apart from paying a few dollars for the redirect. But when I tried to log into this blog on Wednesday, all I saw were the chilling words ‘account suspended’. The blog itself was still up, but I couldn’t log in to change anything or export it. I emailed wordpress technical support and started backing up the text of all the articles I hadn’t backed up already.
Then the images started disappearing from the blog.
Then the blog disappeared altogether, replaced by a message saying that it had been suspended for violations of terms of service.
Apparently wordpress can shutdown your blog at any time without warning, without right of appeal and without giving a reason. I was not a happy man. It is bad enough to have your blog shut down, but never to know why would be a particularly cruel and Kafkaesque punishment. I also discovered that it could possibly be a wordpress bug. I sent another email to support and Patrick McKenzie kindly posted onto a wordpress forum for me (I couldn’t even log in to do that).
I was wondering what to do if it never came back. Although I had backed up the text of the posts, all the comments would be lost.
Eventually, after about 24 hours, I got the following email from wordpress.com support (quoted in full):
Sorry about that. Your high quality blog is restored,
The blog reappeared and my login was restored. Phew.
Following this incident I have considered moving the blog off the wordpress servers. I don’t like the idea that wordpress can suspend a blog without giving a reason. I am also not wild about the fact that wordpress can run ads on my blog if they want, which I only found out about recently. I realise they have to make a living, but I would rather pay them a small fee than have ads.
But wherever I move the blog there is a danger some third party is going to let me down. Even if I hosted it myself my Internet connection or server hardware could fail. At the very least I am going to regularly export the full blog in XML format (Manage>Export from the wordpress control panel), so that I can resurrect it elsewhere if needed. As usual it takes a disaster, or near disaster, to make us think about back-ups. Are you backing up all your important data?
Successful Software 
That’s interesting. I have been using Blogger for a little while. I use to host my own WP blog with my GoDaddy account. I just got tired of having all the updates to install and risk something going wrong.
WP is a great blogging tool. I just wish they were a little more scheduled in their update process.
I also have a free account with their hosted blog service but I have not used it in sometime.
It’s interesting that they used the phrase “Your high quality blog is restored”. Makes me wonder if they are doing some house-cleaning.
I can understand that sites with high traffic or original content benefits them – particulary if they’re placing ads. The fact that you were totally locked out and apparently not informed beforehand via email doesn’t speak well for them – irregardless of their TOS.
A TOS can say anything it wants but must still comply with local/state and national laws – imho. There are users that put a considerable amount of time on their blogs with expectations driven by all the upfront sales talk. One of these days, many of these draconian TOSes will be tested in court…
Did your feed change? You’re not showing up on http://planetmicroisv.com/ now.
The feed shouldn’t have changed.
Sadly, I don’t do any backups… And considering I only have one disk in my laptop, I really should be doing them.
Maybe I will now. But like you said, until something like this happens you think you are safe.
I had a similar experience just couple of days ago. My car radio was stolen from me. I was foolish enough to leave the faceplate on when I parked the car. You can be sure I will always remove it from now on (when I get a new radio of course, which will cost me a fortune (the old one was about 250€ :()).
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Hi, I have had similar very bad expierience with a small hosting company that went bancrupt. I had to use google’s cache and the archive.org to resurrect my old homepage, and I still dont have access to my own old domain name. The things I have learned the hard way:
* Use a very large hosting service that has good reputation. Don’t bother with small ones, the risks are too high.
* Backup regularly, e.g. with a cron job. And check if you can restore your site from the backups!
* Only host yourself when you have lots of free time and are willing to do 24/7 service.
i don’t like wordpress.com(
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@ “But wherever I move the blog there is a danger some third party is going to let me down. Even if I hosted it myself my Internet connection or server hardware could fail.” :
Now let’s not overdo it..
If a comet comes and wipes out our planet then probably your blog will not be accesible to visitors… That would suck, wouldn’t it?
My point is : let’s not worry too much. Worrying that the hardware would fail if you were to host the blog yourself is exageration.
Andrei,
Have you seen my track record with harddisks?
No I haven’t seen it till today. Wow…
I have owned at least one PC since 1994 but never had one hard disk fail. I’m sorry.
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