Here’s hoping the day never arrives, but at some point, you may need to cease blogging. Instead of abandonning your blog, there are some things you can do to mothball your blog properly.
Explain the situation to your readers. If detail isn’t warranted, leave it out. Give a broad reason for halting your blogging and let them know whether you may start it up in the future.
Explain the situation to all of your new traffic. Because the site will be archived online and people may continue to find your site through search engines and other websites, letting your new readers know the site is mothballed will curb their expectations and deter any unnecessary contact messages. You can inform your new traffic that the site has been archived with a single sentence notice at the top of each page.
And most important when you decide to mothball a blog - disable commenting and trackback across all the posts. This helps deter spam and saves hosting space. (Thousands of comment spam messages can begin to take up a large amount of disk space when left unchecked.)
Another exit strategy would be to sell the blog or hand the reigns over to someone else. You will still need to inform your readership of this change over so they are not taken aback by a sudden change in writing style. Blog readers are nothing, if not fickle.
Because a one-day transition will probably not bode well for the new owner or replacement, the transition should happen gradually over two weeks to a month. You should continue to blog with intermittent posts by the new author, gradually letting the new author post more while you post less. This allows the readers to acclimate themselves to the new style.
In the end, your readers shouldn’t suffer because you’ve decided to move on from your blog. Your archives may have a wealth of content for them, and if it’s a personal blog, some loyal readers may feel put out because you disappeared with no explanation. Let’s try to keep that to a minimum.
