I have a blog in Marathi at https://rajksite.com/mr and last week it stopped working. You can still access the website but it is broken and it’s not allowing me to fix it.
The next part is technical so those not interested can skip the gray colour part.
How it happened
I use Malcare plugin for web security and I started getting alerts that their security scans were failing. On contacting the customer support, they told me that
We can see that our requests are being blocked with a 409 error response on the server side during the sync process.So the problem was with the hosting service which is Bluehost in my case. I contacted them; so did Malcare and within a day the issue was resolved. So far, so good.
I noticed that Bluehost plugin had been installed that was not done by me. I thought it must be part of the repair process.
Then my subfolder site of the Marathi blog stopped working. I could access the dashboard but I couldn not write new posts, edit the site or do anything else.
I contacted both WordPress support and Malcare support and both were of the opinion that the issue lies with the host.
Bluehost support refused to take responsibility, saying that this is outside their scope and told me to contact a developer.
So bottom line is I am left with a broken website.
After giving it some thought, I reached the conclusion that any more investment of any kind in the problem is a waste of time.
So for the benefit of my 6 faithful subscribers, my new Marathi blog is at https://randomvichar.substack.com
I will be slowly uploading all my old articles there. It will also be a great opportunity to edit old articles to remove parts that no longer feel relevant.
Lessons from the setback
I think every setback is a great opportunity to pause, review and reflect. So I decided to do just that with respect to blogging.
A blog that makes you think?
When I started the blog in 2015, I had a simple goal. To provide something new; try to be as original as possible. Something that will make the reader think. Unfortunately in doing so, I went against all established norms. I did not do niche blogging, I did not do keyword searches and all the rest of it. As a result, while the blog was read, in terms of traffic it was always sub par. It never went viral.
Things have changed drastically in the last year. The content creation landscape is getting upended by AI. I recently saw an ad for a SEO bot that will research and write articles, manage social media, and optimize SEO and it has already written millions of articles. I don’t think any human can compete with that.
On the other hand, people are also using AI to read and summarize articles. So even if I manage to come up with a tiny insight, it will be absorbed in a nanosecond in the sea of information out there, never to be found again.
Don’t get me wrong. This is not an anti-AI post. AI is transforming many fields. The best example is the AlphaFold protein project by Deep Mind that revolutionized protein research and won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. AI is great when you have mountains of data to sift through that is beyond the capabilities of any human.
It is using AI for personal projects that is worrisome in some aspects. For instance, many busy people are fans of reading book summaries instead of books. I think they are missing a point here. When you read a book and absorb the information, it allows your brain to synthesize and form novel connections. Doing this again and again leads to developing your creative thinking muscle.
Back to blogging. When I realized that majority of the people today do not have the time and patience to read carefully, I removed my tagline – A Blog that Makes You Think. Those who do, thank you!
What about the future? Honestly, I am not sure. I envy people who write confident articles about impact of AI in future. I am still taking in the information and thinking about how it will impact bloggers.
Lead image by John from Pixabay
Many thanks to the anonymous contributor who paid through Divisible Inc RRN. Since I started this blog in 2015, this is the first time it has made any money so that was really special.
