Why self-host?
This morning I had a message from my friend sweetgirl, who had woken up to find her blog suspended by WordPress, with no warning and no explanation. This is a recurring theme, and hoping that it doesn’t happen to you is not going to protect you. There is a push out there to remove adult content from many of the platforms we use, and WordPress and Blogger have the reputation of simply getting rid of blogs like ours, without a sniff of warning.
Sweetgirl was lucky enough to have a short window where she could recover some of her content, but her images and followers were all lost. This can be devastating when you have spent a long time building up a bank of content, and a strong following. Despite the fact that she did not feel she had broken the terms and conditions, WordPress decided that she had. Interestingly enough, she has had no response from WordPress to any of the correspondence she has sent to them regarding this, or the transfer of her material.
If you were one of the 300 followers of Sweetgirl’s Journal, then you can find her new self-hosted site at www.sweetgirlsjournal.com
How do I move my blog and self-host?
I do not pretend to be any sort of expert on this, but thankfully, I know a man who is. Michael Knight or @Domsigns to the Twitter world, explains exactly what to do in this fantastic article, To selfhosting we will go which is part of the blog on the Eroticon site. It explains exactly how to go about moving your content. To be honest. I had not understood the need to move and self-host our blogs, until I heard Michael speak at Eroticon last year.
For those of you who are like HisLordship and I, having a step by step article like this may still leave you scratching your head (HL) or crying into your hands (me), when it does not all go according to plan. Do not worry if this is the case. I would highly recommend engaging the services of @Domsigns on a professional level, as he will make sure that the scratching and tears are kept to a minimum. Seriously, if you have a close relationship with your blog and feel quite emotional about it, it is well worth paying someone who knows what they are doing. And he does.
What Next?
I know that there is a cost to self-host, but if you want to be able to keep your content safe, then it is well worth doing as soon as you can afford it. I know that when I started off I was not really sure where my blog would go, but a few months down the line, I felt proud of what I had been able to achieve. There other advantages too. When you self-host you will be able to use some of the cool plugins and features that are on offer out there to really personalise your site and create a feel which is your own. In addition, you will have the power to use SEO to generate more traffic to your blog, so in the long-term, it will be a good move.
I know that for many, this is all old news and you were (quite literally) converted some time ago. However, I do know that there are others, with really great blogs, who are still posting away unaware of the risks. And it is always better to be safe than sorry.
This is an important service announcement!
Thank you Brigit. I was trying to help sweet really but realized that there may be other people out there who still don’t know that this is happening on a regular basis. ?
I am looking more into it now as I have heard way to many lose everything. Since I am just starting out I want to make the switch soon. Thanks for all the info.
Thanks Molly J. I don’t know a lot about it but if it wasn’t for Eroticon and for twitter, I would still be in the dark myself. ?
I had no idea that this was happening! Thank you for the info, missy!
Sometimes it is hard as people just disappear. I guess being on twitter there is much more discussion about it and you can see people voicing their thoughts when it happens. But for the first couple of years, I was blogging away on WordPress and didn’t know about it either. People disappeared sometimes and I didn’t know why or where they had gone. I remember ‘Sexline Stories’ moving for that reason.
Well said Missy! I am lucky that I have always self hosted, I researched it when i opened my blog a few years ago. I think the powers that be just decide- “you will go” and it does not have too much bearing on if you are the most pornographic or erotic if their sites. Get out while you can, I say x
Agreed. I feel lucky that I managed to get away with everything intact as it were. Although I did need some help in that department and am still trying to catch up with the SEO as that all belongs to WordPress and not to your posts.
This happened to us last year and we lost our WordPress site, it wasn’t a good time. we complied with every directions that they required but you get no feed back.
at each step they tried to push us towards one of their pay for site but each time they would point out that theye site still would require us to comply with WordPress rules – so always with the threat that they could shut us down.
when we looked into it our first shut down warning came exactly 1 year after starting the blog, so the cynic in me now thinks that it was a very deliberate ploy to push us towards one of their pay site.
the wordpress archiving tool for transferring your blog is also only for moving to one of their pay site. it took us quite some time to get into that and covert it to a word document – no images saved and then a couple of weeks un-ravelling the blogg entries to make them presentable
The worst thing for us is that we lost all those that used to visit and comment. that was the bit that really hurt and it really does nark us that we couldn’t let people know that we were moving – we thought we had complied and then it just went and we couldn’t get back in.
we’ve moved to blogger, and are flagged (our choice) but it does reduce our views and I’m sure we could do more to increase views but part of us does worry about losing the blog again.
We’d seriously consider self hosting but some of the cost packages that we looked at were too much compared to how often we blog – and most of the sites came with the threat that they would monitor our content closely. if we blogged more regularly we could justify the cost.
so we continue to blog on tender hooks, and look for a cheap but sensible/ adult accepting blog host – suggestions welcome?
but as for WordPress, very disappointing and I do think that they do only look at adult content or specialist discussion forms as a cash cow – give you a year to get established and then threaten you until you pay, no pay then wipe your site.
it’s a shame – we have started to really enjoy blogging and engaging with online friends and losing the WP site hurt.
oh well, we managed to salvage some things and we are still plugging away.
Regards
Madam and billie
I am sorry that you had to go through this. The host we use currently is siteground but I know that there are many others. I think we were with inmotion hosting prior to that but left them as we weren’t happy. I think you have to move around a bit to find a package that suits you.
We had The SafeworD/s Club on self hosted from the beginning but moved HisLordshipUK and submissy last year. We asked Domsigns to help as it felt like a big risk for a novice and he was able to move all content (and images) as well as likes, comments and followers intact so it really was worth engaging him to do that. Hopefully you will be able to find something that works for you. I can sympathize with you losing all that hard work.
Well, after a lot of years and frustration as Missy says we are back, and the site will be much better in the long run. I would have rather done it on our own terms rather than under these conditions but I guess it is what it is.
If you followed my old blog please do find me again.
Michael Knight really is just that (although I didn’t know that was his name) and he helped us out. I have no idea what he looks like but from now on (in my head at least) he will definitely drive a black car called KIT!