Sunday, April 18, 2010

“The Blog You Were Looking For Was Not Found.”

If you are a blogger, can you imagine the feelings you would have if you logged into your blog account and found your account and your blog completely gone…deleted?    
This recently happened to one of our fellow bloggers, Willow @ My Irish Cottage. 

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Willow told me she has no idea how or why her blog disappeared and despite her best efforts, she has not been able to retrieve any of the content she had previously posted.  
Does anyone else besides me think  it is  scary to know that could conceivably happen to any of us bloggers who use Blogger?  Many of us use our blogs as an on-line journal of the events in our lives.
Even working with the people at the Google  Help forums proved fruitless for Willow.  After at least a week of attempting to find and restore her old blog,  she came to the realization that if she was to continue blogging, she would have to set up a new Blogger account, select a new URL address, a new blog name, and start over from scratch.  
Bless her heart.  She didn’t throw in the towel and give up like I would have been so tempted to do.  She’s starting over.
I told Willow I would be glad to help her re-establish her readership by posting her new blog info here, since I’m sure we share some of the same readers.   If you previously read Willow’s blog and found it deleted when you went to visit, now you know why. 
If you have never visited Willow before, stop by and say hello.  In addition to posting about gardening, crafting and decorating, she has embarked on a weight loss program and she will be courageously sharing her journey as she attempts to lose  200 pounds.    I know from personal experience, the process of losing weight is HARD and I’m sure Willow would appreciate some encouraging words.
Here’s her new blog:

My Irish Cottage Home

4 comments:

Cindy said...

Oh my, it's scary to think of what can happen. I have had a couple of wierd experiences with my comments. But to lose my blog altogether would not be a good thing.
I will go over and say hello.
Thanks, Cindy

Loui♥ said...

Hi Shari..
had a similar incident when I first started blogging..somehow, I couldn't remember my password, and became locked out.
The email account connected to that blog was where they would send the info to get back in..but I could not enter the email account..had to simply start over..and am glad I did!!
am having a delightful time..
meeting new friends, and LEARNING so much..plus traveling the blogsphere..
One other word of caution..
My original email account was with Yahoo..
after 10 years of loving this account,one day it was gone!
Gone were all my professional as well as personal contacts..as well as emails which I had no idea how to back up.. they were in folders..
what is scary about this, I finally managed to speak to a real live person..who reviewed my account and could see nothing I had done to warrant the closing of my account.
(it could have been reinstated, but they refused to do so)
He told me to read the "terms of service" which I did very carefully...
"by using the account for email, I was abiding by their rules..which meant the account could be closed at any time, for any reason, without notice at their whim, and if I sought legal recourse, I would lose because I had agreed to these terms.."
my advice, whatever one must save, if it cannot be backed up on a separate hard drive or disc, then print it out for safekeeping..
and there are sites who will publish your blog into a book form..
warmest hugs..
Loui♥

Betty said...

Hi Shari,

Thank you so much for getting the word out. You are one Great Lady to do this for me. Just a wonderful post you did too.

Willow

Lisa said...

It is scary! I do have my blogs I follow in Google reader so hope fully I could at least find that part again! It would be sad to loose all my posts and lovely comments! Thanks for doing this post. Poor Willow. She stopped by and let me know but wow to loose everyone!!!
Hugs, Lisa