I was going through my Bloglovin’ feed this morning and noticed something that kinda broke my heart.

One of the blogs that I follow – Blogger has removed.  I’m not mentioning names of blogs – for all I know it’s a glitch that is being fixed as we speak.

But just the thought of all that work… just gone.  All the time, and creativity and thought that went into making that blog… just gone.  At someone else’s decision, not mine.  It does break my heart.  I cannot even imagine what I would do.

This is the exact reason I always have and always will use WordPress.org for my self-hosted blogs.  Yes, it does cost money to self-host.  But to me it is worth the cost for several reasons.

1.  NO ONE will EVER take away my hard work in an instant.  I decide to keep the blog running or not.  Only me.

2.  I run several blogs, not only in the book reviewing niche.  Those other blogs are part of my income.  If they suddenly disappear, by someone else’s decision – there goes a few monthly bills that won’t get paid. ( yes, I review items on commission on blogs of mine that are over a decade old, I will never be private jet rich, but it does supplement my other income )

3.  The only censorship that I face on self-hosted blogs is self imposed.  As long as I have the proper disclosures available for the public to read – no one is going to shut me down.  And I keep certain genre of reviewing separate from the main book review blog for that exact reason.  I don’t take stupid risks when it comes to compliance.

4.  I cannot replace an entire blog.  Yes, I have backups.  We all should.  But the “feel” of this blog would disappear forever.  You cannot replicate the comments, the feeling of a blog easily.  Once the name you are “Known” by is gone – you are starting from scratch.

I am emotionally attached to Keeper Bookshelf.  It’s not much, it’s not huge – but it is mine, it is me, it is the heart and soul of my love of fiction.  If I lost this – I do not honestly know if I would start again.  I cannot fathom losing this place.  Four months ago it was a fun, occasional pastime – now, it is the first thing I do when I wake and the last tab I close down on my computer at night.  It is important to me, for my own reasons, and I will never take the chance that someone could take “this” away from me in a second…just hit a key and it’s gone.

I am not saying that I am right and self-hosting is the only way to go.  Lord knows I completely understand finances or lack of them.  I wrote this to simply say – think about it.  If you are not self-hosting all of your hard work, blood, sweat, tears, laughter and time could be gone in an instant.  I really don’t want to go to my feeds and not find your blog there anymore, if it wasn’t your choice.  Just think about it, okay?

**This is an emotional post, the thoughts poured out of me – I intended no offense to anyone about where they put their blog – I just don’t want to see it gone for no good reason.**