Here i do a kind of relay in english for a post i saw this morning in the french TechCrunch..

The article summarizes the essential questions every blogger should ask to himself before to continue to posts articles in his blog, or not.

Concerning my blog, it’s right i do publish less articles for some times. First reasons were personal reasons (several problems during the summer) then i got a new Job in september, and began a study on a new platform , so i spent more time during my evenings to learn, test the platform. Even my personal projects slowly decreased in activity.

I am not this kind of blogger, writing 5 articles a day, and doing this as the first time in the morning. I try to share my time between family, hacking on personal projects and blogging.

This blog is principally oriented on technologies, and at the beginning of this automn i wanted to give a new orientation, posting on more personal subjects i’m interested in. Finally, i decided to continue writing about technologies.

I published more on Ruby on Rails these last months, and less on Java technologies (as i did until beginning of 2007), i think in the next months it will be a return on Java-related technologies and platforms articles.

It’s right for a year i increased my activities on Twitter (micro blogging) and decreased my activities on this blog. By experience, writing articles on technologies (howto, tutorials) is time expensive.

The reasons to stop are (source TechCrunch.fr ) :

* You’ve got no readers : for people who blog only for the traffic, this can be frustrating. As TechCrunch advice (it’s also mine), don’t blog for the traffic.

* You’ve got visitors but no feedback , ie no comments, no trackbacks,..nothing.

* You don’t earn money… If you began your blog with the idea to be able to earn enough money to live from, forget. A few people succeeded in earning money from blogging, but it wasn’t their first motivation.

* No time to blog : it’s a real problem, but often it’s question of self-organization. The goal is not to write 3 articles per day, but write regularly.

* You found a better alternative , as micro blogging with Twitter, or social networks to vehiculate your ideas. We can live happy without blogging.

* too much “trolls” : if you’re popular many readers will comment and “dummify” your articles. It’s a minor problem, should ignore theses kinds of people.

* Your employer doesn’t approve you’re blogging. If it’s the case, just stop blogging for your company and start a personal blog.

* Your wife doesn’t approve you to spend time on your blog. Don’t kill your family life because of blogging. In this case, just stop, or be more well organized (blog early in the day, or late in the night before going to bed)

* You received threatens : Just stop talking about your neighbours, employers, government’s institutions, companies, etc… or just stop at all to protect your entourage.

* Perhaps you are not a blogger : if you spend your time to copy paste articles, copy commercial links.. you’re not a blogger. Just stop.