This blog was down for more than a week. Do you know the reason? Blogger.
This blog was hosted on Blogger - the free blogging platform, but as everybody knows - there is no free lunch. This was the case with Blogger too. No matter that it is backed by the biggest search engine - Google, Blogger can still screw it’s users, just as it did with me.
One morning, when I logged in to my Blogger accound I noticed that ALL of my blogs were completely GONE! I was amazed, but I though it is something temporary. Then I have tried to go to my personal blog - The Blog of MR-Gee, and for my amazement I saw a message saying “404 Error”. Then I understood that my blogs were deleted. No reason, no warning, no sign of getting them back. I’ve put almost a year of work for some of my blogs!
I have immediately gone to the Blogger Help Group with the hope to find a solution. I was right, it’s not just me, there are other webmasters (bloggers) experienced the same problem.
After posting around the group in different threads for the same problem with the expectation that the “Blogger Employee” will reply and possibly return my blogs. No luck! He (or they) was replying to other threads, but not to those that got their blogs disappeared. I wonder why… Does Blogger doesn’t care about their customers (even if the product they offer is free)?
I’ve been and still am very postive towards Google, even if it becomes a monopoly, it still provides the best search engine and email service in the world - all that for free! After the case with Blogger, my oppinion about Google was lowered. Yes, I will surely continue to use Google Search, Gmail and Google Reader, but not Blogger - maybe I will, but I will not rely my business and work at a free service.
I have learned my lesson - don’t build business on free services!
Now, I have bought hosting from DreamHost (register through my link to get $50 OFF of your hosting) and started everything from the beginning. Everything old is lost - the posts, comments and most importantly - the readers. I will have to build everything from scratch. Luckily, I’ve been able to backup some of the articles from the Google (again, duh!) search results. I will publish them again in time, because I believe they are useful for some people.
My recommendation for all the readers that are currently using Blogger as a blogging platform is, that they should move to their own hosting as soon as possible. Believe me - the small investition is nothing compered to the hassle you have if you experience the same as me.
Slow page loading time can and will drive your visitors away - FOREVER! That’s why you need to focus on decreasing the time your page is completely loaded to it’s absolute minimum. Here are the tips, which will help you.