A Blog-City Quit Notice

Like a quit notice

I got notice on the first of August from my blog service provider Blog-City that they are closing down their service on the 1st of January 2012.

This might seem a long way off but not for one who has had a blog running for almost 7 years; it is like disastrous to say the least.

My blog is the core part of my large footprint on the Internet, it is the online expression of my views, in some other cases it journals my life, experiences, thoughts and much more which I cannot recreate.

The thought that it is about to lose its web identity has occupied my mind for most of the day, it has not sunk in yet and I am losing sleep already.

Getting out not keeping up

The service is being withdrawn not for financial reasons but because the owners do not want to commit any new development time to the service when others are better with more functionality.

I had noticed that we were not keeping up but it did not matter as long as my blog was hosted and I could do the simple things I have always done on my blog, a few links and not too much whizz.

A growing sense of loss

In 2003 when I decided to start blogging, it was like a pioneering thing, I could use my name on any of the available services, now, uniqueness would almost mean the obscurity of starting all over again – all records, all histories, all references lost.

It is almost like losing a mobile phone, it is not the phone that matters but the contacts list and even more importantly if you communicate a lot by texting, all that is lost too – the gravity of this development is reverberating and I am not being melodramatic.

I chose Blog-City for its ease-of-use and accessible functionality, it was a small Scottish company that I felt would endure and it is why I took out a 5-year subscription and I should have been suspicious when that offer was no more available on renewal, the novelty of blog hosting has worn off and the gurus are on to new exciting things, I suppose.

What happens next?

The concern now beyond backing up my almost 1,500 blog entries is how to keep the content online beyond Blog-City, maintaining the publication dates and possibly the formatting on another hosting site – that job must start now rather than wait till 2012.

I guess it is time for me to register a domain name too, if only I can just keep that screaming thought out of my mind for just one second – What is going to happen to all my content? – I might be able to see beyond the breaking of what was essentially bad news.

I hope Blog-City provides every possible and useful means of help those of us who have been long-term supporters a smooth transition to new platforms or hosting services and I hope I can provide you my readers and supporters a managed transition to wherever else we might end up.

How could I have been so naïve as to think even blog hosting can be permanent – such is life.