If you were once a customer or user of the blog host Blogetery, you aren’t now.

On July 9th the site, along with the 73,000 blogs it hosted, disappeared, never to return.

It was something of a murder mystery for the Internet.

Initially, the site’s host, BurstNet wasn’t making matters any easier and was effectively stonewalling the site’s owner, Alexander Yusupov, saying that “We cannot give him his data nor can we provide any other details. By stating this, most would recognize that something serious is afoot.”

Many suspected that it was copyright issues that led to the closure of the site but Blogetery’s owner said that he fully complied with all relevant laws and should have been well protected against such closure.

In the end, the host’s warnings about “something serious” turned out to be very true as the BurstNet’s CTO Joe Marr went on the record saying that it wasn’t copyright, but rather terrorist activity that led to the closure of the site. Apparently, on at least one of the blogs on the service, there were tips on how to make a bomb and a “hit list” of people to kill. This, in turn, prompted the FBI to take action and BurstNet to close the account.

But, as interesting as the story is from a news standpoint, it also serves as a word of caution for those who run websites. After all, Blogertery’s closure isn’t just a story about the questionable closure of a blog host, but also about 73,000 bloggers who have lost their data and their work.

So what can we learn from the Blogetery story? The answers are surprisingly clear.

What Mistakes Did Blogetery Make?

Though one is loathe to paint Yusupov as anything but the victim in this case; a large blog host who had his whole service pulled due to the actions of one or two accounts, it is still clear that there is more he could have and should have done to minimize the impact on his users and customers.

First, according to a forum Yusupov has posted about the closure, three days passed between when the closure happened and when he became aware of it. Though he was out of town at the time, which is understandable, it’s clear he wasn’t monitoring the service, at least not adequately.

This means that approximately 72 hours passed from the time the site went down until he was able to do anything about it. Though, in this case, it’s not time that would have had any benefit. If the outage had been caused by, say, a billing issue, these would have been days of needless downtime.

Second, and most importantly, Yusupov has stated that he had no backups of his service at all, meaning that the data, which BurstNet has said it can not turn over, is simply gone. This is compounded by the fact that BurstNet, according to its site, does not offer backups by default and instead charges extra for the service.

Though it is unclear if BurstNet was making backups of Blogetery or if they would have given Yusupov backups if they existed, Yusupov could have taken the initiative and arranged for another, off-site backup solution to run at least weekly so users would avoid losing years of data and it would have let him re-establish the service relatively quickly.

In short, if Yusupov had had the monitoring and backup tools most would recommend he have, this permanent closure needed only represent a few hours of downtime, perhaps a day or two, depending on the size of the site.

The latter is unpleasant, but understandable in the situation, the former, with years of work gone for many bloggers, means much of the anger is directed at Yusupov himself and not BurstNet or the FBI.

Unfortunately though, the situation is, most likely, reflective of the grim realities of trying to operate a large blogging host on razor-thin profit margins. High server costs combined with low advertising rates makes these kinds of casualties inevitable, not just because of the FBI, but because of services dropping off on their own.

Advice for Users

If you’re a customer or a user of a service like Blogetery, or any host for that matter, the lesson is very clear: do not trust your host.

Sure, WordPress.com and Google Blogger probably aren’t going to vanish suddenly thanks to a warrant from the FBI but your blog might. In fact, it could disappear for many different reasons including human error (including yours) a localized failure, alleged TOS violations and so forth.

In short, if you put time and effort into a site, you need to think about what you’re going to do if you wake up one morning to find your site gone. How will you recover? How will you get your work back? These aren’t easy questions, especially if you are on a free hosting service, but there are often things you can do.

If you think about these issues in advance and practice good prevention, you’ll save yourself a lot of headache and anger when and if something does happen.

As someone who has been on the wrong end of several bad server issues, I can tell you how much of a relief those backups can be, and how the little bit of work that goes into them is repaid many, many times over.

Bottom Line

The sad reality when it comes to hosting is that you can’t trust anyone or anything. You need to add multiple layers of protection for your safety and peace of mind. No matter how great your hosting company is, hard drives fail, mistakes happen and, at times, authorities raid servers.

You have to look out for your own work and your own data. Your host may not be able to do it for you if push comes to shove, no matter how badly they want to.

Your best bet is to simply have multiple layers of protection and prepare at least two levels of “fallback” in the event that something goes wrong.

Hopefully, you’ll never need to use it but, if you do, you’ll be very glad it is there.

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Tags:   backups • blogertery • blogging • downtime • fbi