Dec11
Verbal property
I logged into my wordpress.com blog last night, was greeted by an announcement that the blog had been deactivated for not complying with their terms of service. It concluded with a stern warning against advertising.
???
I have no idea what’s going on. It was a personal blog, not a commercial one, and contained no advertising beyond a few permissible Amazon Affiliate Associate links to books. I would have preferred to import it to this blog when I took up residence here, but as I was never able to export it fully, I decided to leave it intact.
If anyone visits my old blog site, the blog is not visible. Instead there is a rude announcement that it has been deactivated for “violating wordpress terms of service.” Even worse, when I am logged in, none of the posts are visible. I can’t try to import the posts and comments to this blog, or even cut and paste the posts alone. It’s all, apparently, lost.
A year’s worth of reading, writing, and thinking, and all the comments, lost. There were 75 book reviews alone.
It happened once before, last fall. That time it wasn’t wordpress, but the web host, which switched databases two weeks later than they had announced. Several weeks’ worth of posts were lost. This time, it’s all of it.
“Occasionally we are wrong,” the announcement concedes. “If you think you’ve been misclassified, notify us immediately so we can remedy the problem.” I’ve notified them twice. Nothing.
Whose property is it that has been lost? I wrote for a year thinking that it was mine: my thoughts, my words, my conception of purpose. Now, without any warning, and apparently in error, someone else has made it all vanish. If I were acknowledged by wordpress to be the owner/author, shouldn’t I receive at least the courtesy of an email notification or inquiry before logging into “my” blog and finding it gone?
*Edited to add: I figured out why the export file of my old blog never imported completely, and was able to import most (not all) of the posts. So wordpress may have made my blog inoperative and invisible without cause, but it did not delete the content, since the last time I tried to export it was last night. I don’t understand why I couldn’t see or access the posts from within the blog, but it appears they were intact.
Aside from having to reformat all links to my old blog, I’m actually glad to be all in one place. What a relief!
Ohhhh, Janet. That makes me want to cry. I’m so sorry. If it were me, I’d definitely continue trying to contact wordpress or whomever is responsible.
This is so alarming. Just yesterday I was reading about how Blogger/Google has a history of shutting down conservative blogs, and though my own isn’t very political, I thought of switching to WordPress just as a protest. I guess that’s no solution after all.
It all makes me resolve to copy my blog content to documents on my hard drive–a time-consuming process, but a safeguard at a basic level.
The blogosphere is much the poorer for losing your pages.
I’ve spent the afternoon doing just that, GretchenJoanna — copying posts and their accompanying comments to my hard drive.
Thank you both for your kind comments.
Oh Janet, I’m so sorry!
When I log in to your old site, I get this message:
“This blog has been archived or suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service.”
Unfortunately I think they do consider Amazon Affiliate links as “advertising” which they don’t allow on their free blogs. (Not general links of a book you are speaking of to Amazon, but the affiliate system whereby you get some kind of credit if someone clicks on an Amazon link).
But they definitely should have sent you a notification of some kind first and an opportunity to explain or correct the situation. Just shutting down with such a notice in place is rather heavy-handed. I would keep trying to contact them. I don’t know if anyone is in “Support” over the weekend, but hopefully by Monday they’ll have someone look at it.
Now I need to go copy some of my posts….
No, those affiliate links are okay. I investigated all that thoroughly before ever signing up with Amazon. I never posted ads or search boxes, but affiliate links to books are fine. There are discussions on the forums about how to format them.
Yes, that’s the notice I quoted. It feels like a slap in the face every time I read it.
yikes! I have actually read whispers that the blogge doesn’t actually “own” the content. The hosting site (WP, Blogspot, etc.) owns it. But, I have heard that is solved when someone gets their own URL like you have done. I guess there are still glitches and problems even with doing it that way.
Isn’t it fairly easy to move your old WP stuff over here to your new site since it is powered (or Themed) by WP? I’m wondering because I have been thinking of switching during the holiday break.
The process is simple. You export a version of your blog in a file to your computer, then import it to the other site. (You know this, probably… seems like you’ve mentioned that you switched to wp from another platform.)
What I’ve found is that the whole blog doesn’t import. Today, I tried again, and some additional posts were included. Maybe you just have to do it multiple times. I’m just thankful I’ve been able to recover a good many posts this way.
(What’s been especially confusing today is that inside my former blog, there appear to be no posts. Yet when I export, posts export. I don’t get it. But that’s not the normal case.)
You do have more freedom with a “self-hosted” blog like this. But even here, it’s not really self-hosted. You have to get a web host. It’s explained at the WP.org site.
That would be very cool, to see you set up a new niche.
Thanks Janet. There was no accommodation when I switched from my old blog host to WP. I had to manually copy and paste. Much of it is still at the old site.
I need to do more digging around for information. I’ve been holding off until after Christmas because I know how time consuming this will end up being.
(The notice in the dashboard when I’m logged in is longer. That’s where the warnings about advertising are.)
There’s some info on the import/export part in the dashboard tools menu. Maybe you can get both your old blogs consolidated at the same site.
I’d freak out if I woke up and my blog had been shut down like that! I remember a while back some Blogger blogs had been suddenly locked down or disappearing- at that point I began regularly exporting my entire blog and storing the data on my harddrive. But I’ve gotten lax and not done that for a while. Time for a backup! It would be awful to loose all those posts- so glad yours aren’t actually gone into the inter-ether.
Okay, hmmmmmmm. You’ve got me worried and thinking. . . My writing isn’t that great, I admit, but I do enjoy being able to look back at the books we’ve read, etc. . .
What to do?
Oh, and I should’ve offered my sympathy first, instead of being concerned with myself. . .
I just realized I used “Amazon Affiliate” above when the proper term for me is “Amazon Associate.” Associate links are permissible at wp.com.