Betsy's Page is back

Yesterday we asked "Where's Betsy's Page". It had disappeared a few days earlier, and I emailed her at that time, and when it did not reappear I offerred to set up a WordPress blog for her on my server (I may move over there myself sometime).

Well Blogger finally restored her page. As she said I seem to exist again. It's been a long, strange trip. On Tuesday, my blog disappeared completely and my dashboard page on Blogger showed that my blog did not exist. It was Kafkaesque. I didn't feel any different, but, apparently, my four years of blogging had vanished with just a few traces left in Google Cache.... Then, today, I got a message from Blogger saying that they had recovered my blog and that somehow I had gotten caught up in some massive “automated spam prevention system" action that had thought that my blog was spam. Huh?!

Sister Toldjah blogged After reading the experience Betsy Newmark went through after her blog went down for four days, and after reading that something similar happened to Jason at Generation Why? (who has his own domain now), I encourage anyone with a blog at Blogger/Blogspot to do a backup of their site and get a domain with hosting services.

CQ blogged Apparently the folks at Blogger have done a pretty horrible job of supporting their customers. Betsy Newmark had her entire site wiped out mysteriously by their system, and then experienced a boatload of frustration when she tried to correct the situation. Her URL also appeared to have been hijacked as well, but now seems like it's back on line.

OTB blogged I see that several sites on Blogspot, notably Betsy Newmark’s and Eric Lindholm’s, have suddenly disappeared owing to a glitch at Blogger. Some jerk even snagged Betsy’s old URL and is squatting on it. Michelle Malkin gives more insights into Newmark’s situation.

I had this happen to me several months ago, with my original OTB/OTB Backup Site disappearing and numerous niche blogs I had established just going away. Google, which owns Blogspot, never even bothered to respond to my queries. Indeed, my experience was almost identical to Newmark’s.

If you’re going to spend the time to blog, please get yourself a domain and rent your own server space. Unless you’re posting videos or getting big time traffic, you can do it for less than $20 a month–often much less. Frankly, this pathetic level of service is overpriced even at “free.”