Those of you who keep a “*.wordpress.com” or a “*.blogspot.com” have nothing to worry about. Your blogs will live on forever – or at least as long as WordPress and Google decide to keep them up. Your thoughts, words, and feelings will always be online and will be found in search results till the Internet is working. They might well get lost in the sheer flood of data generated over the next few decades or centuries, but they can be found in principle.
But what about those of us whose blogs are on a paid hosted plan? Like this one? If I die and no one renews the subscription free for both my domain and my hosting, end of story. As of now – six years of writing, all my thoughts with over 450 posts and over 6000 comments…all destroyed! It’s an interesting question as to why I should care. I’ll be dead won’t I? So it technically shouldn’t matter what becomes of all my work.
But I do care. Just like parents want to ensure that their kids are taken care of after they die, I want my writing to at least be available publicly. It doesn’t matter that no one may read it. I just want it “out there”. With a life of its own and independent from me. Which is why as soon as I retire, I’m moving my content from “bhagwad.com” to a free hosted domain like blogspot or wordpress. The worry is that I’ll lose all the links to my site, but that can’t be helped. I’ll keep my domain for a year or so to redirect the spiders I guess.
Managing one’s own domain is a pain. Just last month I had to struggle to control bots spamming my site. It’s kind of fun too but I think my taste for that kind of thing may go down as I grow older. So nice to have everything managed by pros like those taking care of wordpress and blogger blogs! A few people have asked me for advice about how they should go about getting their own domain for their blog and I’ve always discouraged them for these reasons. The only reason I have my own domain is that I’m a professional writer and this helps my reputation and shows clients I’m serious.
In case I die without warning, Anupa has instructions about how to quickly port my blog over to a “.blogspot” domain. I also have a draft message in my Gmail that will hopefully go to everyone in my contacts list after I die :D. I wish there was a way to permanently buy a domain. That way I won’t have to get rid of it. Maybe I can construct some system that will keep renewing it automatically? I don’t think that’ll work though. Too many things can go wrong.
So what about you? If you have your own domain, what are your plans for keeping your digital content around after you die?
Best strategy would be migrate to a free domain right now. I am waiting for Google to launch a decent importer for WordPress so that I can move my own blog to Blogger and let it rest in peace there. :D
In reply to Sushubh
But my problem is that I need this domain for my professional portfolio. As a writer, this improves my credibility and visibility in the space.
In reply to bhagwad
Well, I was more talking about powering the domain using a hosted solution like WordPress.com or Blogger.com or Tumblr.com. So that even if you die and your domain expire, your blog is safe at least and can be switched back to the subdomain version.
In reply to Sushubh
That’s definitely a good way to go. I’ll have to seriously consider it…
what will happen to my book ? if i dont renew the web page subscription it will die a natural death. Now THAT would be a shame :(
In reply to tp
Yeah…how much money do you make from it anyway? If it’s negligible, you might want to consider just giving it away for free!
i am concerned about my forum :P
if i die suddenly in a car accident for example. there is no one that can take over and continue it. a lot of people would be disappointed and curse me while i would be burning in hell. :|
Long live wordpress :) :)
Thanks for raising this issue.
I’ve got two permanent backup blogs
1) sabhlok.wordpress.com
2) sabhlok.blogspot.com
I prefer personal wordpress theme on my domain because blogspot’s features are pathetic. And even WordPress.com doesn’t allow private themes.
I try to periodically upload onto sabhlok.wordpress.com (but haven’t done so for a very long time now – very time consuming: first you have to delete all existing posts and then upload, else the blogs/comments gets mixed up; some are doubled some don’t get copied).
The key is to make that “backup blog” non-searchable by search engines. That way readers don’t get confused and start commenting on the other one while one is alive.
Maybe I should leave precise instructions in my that my main blog be ported onto both sabhlok.blogspot.com and sabhlok.wordpress.com after I die. And the ‘searchabilty’ by search engines switched on. A lot of formatting will be lost during the porting of the posts/comments, but that’s tolerable, I guess.
In reply to Sanjeev Sabhlok
Yes, something like that needs to be done. I’ve left instruction with Anupa (my wife) to do this for me after I die. If I die last, then I’ll have to make a mirror backup somehow…
I’ve provided detailed instructions here to my administrator/s:
http://sabhlokcity.com/my-last-testament/
The main advantage of a backup blog is that if the main blog is hacked, then one has at least a backup system. It is very time consuming, though, to back up.
(I also recall there were some limits on the size of the xml file – haven’t tried in a while; maybe such limits have now been removed)
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