Image Adapted: http://www.jdbshow.com/images/I_Quit_Male.jpg

A recent tweet alerted me to yet another “Web 2.0” provider calling it quits (anyone keeping a list? How about you, Dan Rezac?):

Found out this past week that my blog host November Learning will no longer be operational as of Aug.1st. Any blog platforms you’d suggest/
Source: Tweet by JoeEvans

Here is the announcement (04/06/2009) available on the November Learning blog:

Several years ago, we introduced a new, free blogging system, November Learning Communities. At the time, this system was one of the premier educational blogging tools available. Educators worldwide joined us in expanding the boundaries of learning through thoughtful writing and global connectivity. However, with ongoing developments in Web technology and more options available in blogging software, our system no longer offers the premium service that we want to provide. Therefore, we have decided to discontinue our November Learning Communities software, effective August 1, 2009.

It’s pretty irresponsible of November Learning to offer NO way to archive blog posts. Apologies are insufficient.

Is there a way to archive all of the posts on our blogs?
In short, no. Newer blogging systems offer the possibility of exporting blogs to bring to another service. Our outdated software does not. We have not found a clean method of exporting blog posts within this installation. The only way to keep your blogs intact and preserve posts and comments would be to copy and paste them elsewhere. We realize that for those of you who have been writing on you blogs for years may have amassed many postings, and a simple copy and paste will be difficult or impossible. Again, we apologize for this.

Although not a user of November Learning’s blogging tiger-trap, er, I mean, solution, it’s unbelievable that this blog provider for schools is leaving them high and dry with no way to archive their content.

Fortunately, I now have backups of ALL my blog entries in at home WordPress installation, as well as Edublogs.org (yes, I know they have ads but I don’t care since they’re just the backup to my primary backup site). I can easily imagine what Joe is going through as he copies 237 pages of his blog entries…I had over 7,000 in the Thingamablog version before I decided to switch to Blogger as my primary tool (or, until Blogger matured and was ready for me to use).

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