WordPress Blog Gets Suspended
I’ve been tutoring someone in blogging and today when I logged in to WordPress, it says the account has been suspended. I’m getting flashbacks from Google. In other words, there is no explanation or mercy. It’s just gone.
My friend has a lot of information on her various blogs. I can’t see how it might be violating the terms of service. We ran no ads. Anyone have a suggestion?
Here’s what they say:
Blogs are suspended if they are found to be in breach of the TOS.
We do not contact you first to ask that content be modified or removed.
You cannot have that blog name back.
You cannot have the blog content back.
Matt, what gives?? This is unduly harsh – it seems you should know what term you are violating and be given an opportunity to correct the problem. I haven’t seen this problem and it’s tough to swallow that all that work can just vanish with no warning and no recourse.
ADVICE: Don’t use a WordPress hosted site – get your own domain name. I was new to blogging in 2005 and didn’t know how to host my own. Now I use Bluehost, one of my advertisers. They have an easy blog installation using simple scripts that makes it easy to do. It will cost about $7 a month in addition to $10 for a domain name. They will also walk you through it if you call them – open 24/7.
In this case, WordPress is a dictatorship.
UPDATE: Nov. 11, 2008: My blog was restored and about 6 months later, deleted again. For one spam link that I put in a post when the site was new and not considered spam. I was able to log in to get the backup file because I know Joseph Scott. But I couldn’t remove the link (which I don’t know) or keep the domain. I gave up. All my search engine results now say that the blog was deteled because it violated the terms and conditions. For ONE LINK. Ridiculous. I love WordPress — except on this issue.
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28 Responses to “WordPress Blog Gets Suspended”
Leave a Reply
September 17th, 2007 at 10:54 am
This is why I perfer web development to blogging. The cost of hosting has dropped to the point where it really is best just to set up on one’s own.
September 17th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Kevin is right. It’s essential to get your own server and host your own weblog if you are doing it as a business. If you are a serious writer, you cannot let your writing fall prey to the whims (or folly) of another company.
Seriously, WordPress.org could go belly up, disappear and take all your work with it. I saw that sort of thing in the first Dot Bomb, and I’m not trusting any company with my data, photos or writing.
Best of luck getting your weblog back.
September 18th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Contact support about it: http://wordpress.com/contact-support/
It is possible that the blog was suspended by mistake, or that it was violating the TOS in some regard.
October 1st, 2007 at 7:31 pm
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Check out the video they have on the page.
Cheers
Marko Fando
October 12th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
This has just happened to me as well. My blog is just gone, with no explanation from WordPress. I am very troubled, to say the least. Did your friend ever get this problem resolved?
October 13th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
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November 2nd, 2007 at 5:32 am
Hi,
I know what you mean. It is always better to host a Blog yourself so you don’t get into trouble.
Making money is easy with a Blog.
I’m helping people to make a living with
blogging money.
Check it out!
Michel
November 24th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
I ran into a similar problem not long ago, I however, was told before hand I was in violation of TOS. There was a big red banner across th back office of my blog. I was able to fix the problem and then sent them a note I had done so. I can’t wait to host my own blog so I don’t have to worry about the willy-nillyness of wordpress.
Good luck,
Jackie Lee
December 1st, 2007 at 1:26 am
Very disturbing…
“what gives?? This is unduly harsh – it seems you should know what term you are violatin”
It is known that these people hire untrained employees to handlle suspects without a care.
BTW, when it is easy to start a blog on your own domain, why
go for outside services?
1. This site will install wordpress free on your site
http://www.installity.com/
2. If you want install wordpress on your own, this
bunch of CNET videos takes you through it.
http://reviews.cnet.com/Install_a_WordPress_blog/4660-10165_7-6626809.html
Courteously — S. Kumar
http://www.learnhomebusiness.com
December 1st, 2007 at 1:12 pm
That would be terrible. That’s why I prefer WordPress on my own server, not theirs.
December 2nd, 2007 at 12:36 am
Hi,
“I know what you mean. It is always better to host a Blog yourself so you don’t get into trouble.”
I agree.
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:51 am
Backup remains the answer. I never write anything directly in my blog, but use my wordprocessor and then upload. That way, if the worst happen I still have my information. Nobody can be trusted these days. Google taught us that!
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:19 am
It’s getting crazy that’s true. Too many services don’t really tell you anymore what is or what isn’t a TOS, and many more just shoot from the hip (shoot first, ask questions later – if you’re lucky they’ll ask questions).
I prefer to host my blogs on my own sites/servers especially since hosting doesn’t cost too much anymore and I get quite a bit more control over it that way.
I just would like to see sites offering services to be more clear and specific, way too many people are getting hit and never know what for (and often they didn’t do anything either).
Xavier
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Hi NewspaperGirl. I too had a few of those free wordpress blogs – 2 accounts actually – both got suspended. I treated them with care and only linked out very discreetly. Only text links within the articles I posted. Only thing that I can think of is that I linked to my free hosted wordpress blogs from the outside so they were gaining incoming links and it may have triggered an alarm. Now I have a ton of broken links on some f my sites as they were shut down. More work than I need to clean those up. That was a month or two ago and I’m still cleaning up links to them… Moral to the story is to only use free hosted blogs or domains as feeder sites – never as your primary sites – who knows what may happen to them… out of our control!
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Sorry about your blog
I have also a WordPress blog, but I host it myself.This is the only way to ensure that you will not be put off.
December 4th, 2007 at 11:10 am
The better way is host yourself…Im already been suspend 3x and its bad day for me when see all my work for half year gone with only 1 phrases ” Blogs are suspended if they are found to be in breach of the TOS.” Dictatorship….
December 4th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Hi Guys,
I mean come on! If your not hosting
your own blogs your whole business could
dissapear in seconds.
Dont risk it!
Take Care,
Michael Silvester
January 1st, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I didn’t have my website suspended, but my husband deleted it by accident! Either way we should always backup, you just never know. Even though the site was deleted there was alot of posts still in Technorati. (only the first paragraph, but it was better than nothing.) Good luck anyway.
December 7th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Indeed… I see it really is better to host it on your own server, at the end of the day its best we own the virtual property and not merely be tenants who can get kicked out when the landlord pleases.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
I HAD a blog. It got violated for no reason. I got pretty upset, but I contacted wordpress.
May 26th, 2009 at 4:24 am
Hi,
Today morning when i tried to check my wordpress account. The messege came “Your Account is Suspended”. From last 7 months i have been using this account, which was giving me enough traffic. And i havent done anything wrong as far as my knowledge. But suddenly this happened.
I think, my friends are right. You should install your blog on ur own server. So that your hard work does not get vanish like this.
June 22nd, 2009 at 3:03 am
I never knew this kind of problem do exist on wordpress. I logged in to my account to check my stats and was told my account has been suspended. The most depressing aspect is that there is no opportunity to even lay a complain or ask for help in the forum because the suspended account is linked to everything.
I believe WordPress can do better than this.
If there is a violation of the TOS, the blogger should be sent a warning. Shutting down a blog without explanation is quite depressing.
June 4th, 2010 at 8:13 am
i can host a free wordpress blog on a subdomain that wont be suspeded
Word-host
December 19th, 2010 at 2:01 am
I think WordPress have got very strict with affiliate links. In their TOS, they said that they will not allow their blogs for SEO purposes.
Mary
May 14th, 2011 at 5:58 pm
My blog on wordpress.com just got suspended, apparently in violation to TOS. Under no circumstance have I violated or infringed any copyrights or hosted get-rich-quick scams or spam people for that matter. I´m hoping to resolve this issue but wonder about the support team response time or if they even care. Although I´m not stressed about it, it certainly comes at a bad time since I was just starting to blog and had dramatically increased my audience and traffic. I hope this is all a mistake, would hate to have this on my Google search results forever.
May 14th, 2011 at 8:08 pm
I got my site back, I was publishing an article on stats about online dating had a link to a particular dating service and the automatic crawler detected it as spam. Got rid of the link and the blog is up and running again. This is the article in question, what d´ya know: http://dianenoboa.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/study-reveals-one-in-four-couples-now-meet-online/
May 21st, 2011 at 9:25 am
Diane, so glad you got your site back. I wasn’t as lucky. I lost all the Google rankings for a bad link and gave up trying to get it back after the 2nd time it happened. They can be over-zealous. That’s why it pays to host it on your own server. I’ll never make that mistake again!
October 16th, 2011 at 6:00 am
I had a blog for college and that got “archived”, so I started another one since it was for marks and therefore required. Amazingly, it was archived again with absolutely no feedback from wordpress. I forgave them two years later and just started another LINK FREE blog, which has gotten suspended as well. Superamazing.