MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Blogger/Blogspot Sucks

• Posted by Beth on July 31st, 2006 filed in Blogs, General, Stupid, WTF    

Tags: Blogger, Blogspot, splogs, free hosting, free blog hosts, Blogger sucks

Just like Typepad, if you quit Blogger to move to real hosting, you may–or probably will, eventually–have your Blogspot URL hijacked. And actually, it’s more of a problem with Blogger than Typepad, as far as I can tell.

Here’s an example: Fausta recently moved her site (The Bad Hair Blog) from its Blogspot URL to her own domain. Almost immediately, badhairblog.blogspot.com was snatched up by some goatfarking moron–not just that, but the scumbag is posting as “Fausta” and even wrote about waiting for the Pajamas Media ad code!

So anyway, after I heard about that, I just happened to click MY old URL - bamapachyderm.com - from which I had moved in November 2004. Until recently, the redirect worked fine. You never even saw the old site–all the archives were transferred here so there was no reason to see it, so the redirect was immediate. So anyway, I clicked the old URL and what did I get? A farking splog! I’ve still got an active Blogger account with several other blogs attached to it (not to mention the profile, which I use when commenting at Blogspot blogs). Because of that, I’m sure people do click the link in my profile, where it shows the blogs I have or of which I am a contributing member. And I don’t know if anyone still has a link in their blogroll to the old URL (I would hope not after all this time!), but there are links to posts floating around from the old days. That pisses me off.

I can still access the “old blog” from the Blogger dashboard, because it wasn’t deleted. But WTF?! What the hell is wrong with Blogger, anyway? Do they even pay attention to flagged sites? Do they even bother answering questions? I found this Google group and this blog, and it sure as hell doesn’t look like it. Every time I turn around I find another hijacked blog that’s become a splog. The Blogger Status for Real blog knows about the bastard hijackers, but who’s actually solving the problem at Blogger? Anyone?

MY ADVICE: Don’t use Blogger, Typepad, or any of these other freebie hosts if you think you may be blogging for at least a few months, because apparently your URL will be taken by someone else once you move–even if you don’t delete the old site. Besides, the free sites suck anyway compared to paid hosting, if you want any real functionality. Actually, I’m surprised there are any blogs that bitch about Blogger actually using it. I don’t get why they would at all. (Blogsome and Wordpress are free too, but I haven’t heard about hijackings–YET. I’m sure I will, though.)