Life and death happen, often unexpectedly.
For many of us, our blogs are valuable records tracking various trends, market data, – it would be a shame to allow such history to be relegated to the Google cache or the Internet Archive.
Give your passwords, logins, networks to someone else and give them instructions on what you want them to do.
– Who will tell your readers that you have died?
– Should it be maintained? By whom?
– Sold? To whom? How?
– Allowed to expire?
– When should the announcement be written and posted? Who should do it?
– Consider writing your (blog’s) obituary – what do you hope you have accomplished?
– Consult a lawyer about what steps need to be taken to transfer ownership of accounts – domain hosting isn’t free, and the hosting company likely won’t take your spouse’s or friend’s word that you really, really wanted them to take over.
– Develop a system for systematically syncing passwords, addresses, etc to a central, shared location that your significant other and/or trusted friend can access. Put what you want done in writing. Make sure that person understand what they will be doing – how to login/post.
As morbid as this sounds, it’s nothing compared to the conversations my wife and I have had about our respective wills (done) or our life insurance guy’s recommendation that we get life insurance for our kids (nope). Ultimately, it’s just a blog, but I really wouldn’t want four years of my life to be thrown away.
Now, off to develop a blog succession plan for myself …
