It’s Hard Work Running a Blog Site—Fees Are Due

Seriously. It’s hard work running a blog site. It starts off as ‘fun’ (I put that in single-quotes because I was never too sure I ever actually knew what ‘fun’ felt like) but then there is that never ending nagging that starts.

Is it worth the time invested? The effort of working out what to post next, and then doing the work and research required to craft up a quality post. But then, what else would I do with that time? Watch television? Spend more time surfing around the Web? Sleep? So then you come back to the conclusion you may as well continue the site. At least it provides some mental stimulation and gives one a break from one’s day-to-day work.

Then there is the problem of looking after it. Checking statistics. Seeing what people are clicking on (not that SquareSpace’s statistics in this area are anything to throw a party about). Paying the annual account with SquareSpace (which is due in about two week’s time). Wondering if it is worth paying the annual SquareSpace hosting account for another year or not.

Then there is there is the issue of keeping the look of the site ‘current’. I have been very kindly told by two people in the last couple of months to whom I showed my site that it looks ‘old’—like a site from 2005. Well maybe it does, but as it happens I quite like the ‘old’ straight-forward functional look of my site. There are 60 templates provided by SquareSpace and each template can be significantly customised but basically it just takes to much time and work. And as for my banner being too busy—it was designed to look busy. Why else would I put all those cuttings in there from previous postings?

Then there is the task of reviewing the comments about once a month or so to make sure there are no ‘unwanted’ comments. To make sure the site is not being SPAM’d by bot comments. Letting SquareSpace administration know about any comments you get posted that you think are by a SPAMing bot so they can add them to the auto-SPAM killer.

Here’s an example of a SPAMing bot comment I came across today.

This comment is on my posting “Bugger! Overheated the Honey this Morning” (here).

Now is this a bot posted comment or something from a CBC (carbon-based commenter, which is a person). I think it has to be a SPAMing bot; but even for a bot posted comment it is strange. Presumably the purpose of this SPAMing bot is to get people to do a search for Cartier Roadster watches, and thereby it is grey-noise advertising for Cartier Watches. Who would have thought that Cartier Watches would stoop to using SPAMing bots?

I guess this is one reason for turning on comment posting by registered site ‘members’ only. The problem is I battle to get any comments now. Imagine how many comments I would get if people had to register before they could comment—probably about 95 percent less than I get now; which would be about one per quarter (four a year).

Oh well. I guess I will cough up my $150 (okay, $136.08 to be precise) for another year with SquareSpace. Even in the event that I decide to stop posting at least that will keep the site up and alive for people to check out all my existing awesome posts.