"Edwards, Spurgeon, Ryle and Friends," an excellent blog devoted to excerpts from Puritan and Reformed devotional literature, has not only been deleted but has been hijacked by spammers. Its former location was jonathanedwards.blogspot.com. I've had to delete it from my blogroll, along with thenewvintage.blogspot.com, another abandoned Blogger site. (The New Vintage's blogger has resurfaced, anonymously, elsewhere.)

I wrote about the zombie blog harvester phenomenon last year, but here's a reminder -- and if you're a blogger reading this, please spread the word: If you must take your Blogger blog down, please, please don't delete the blog! Backup the content and then delete all the entries, but keep control of the blog as a placeholder. There are unscrupulous spammers (I repeat myself) who will grab the URLs of highly-linked blogs and use that high page rank to promote whatever it is they're trying to promote. When you delete the blog, anyone can claim that URL, and websurfers looking for your content will find whatever these cyberspace cowbirds have posted in its place.

One blogger who deleted his blog learned that his old URL had been claimed by a porn spammer, much to the surprise of his wife's grandmother who went to read his site. (To make matters worse, the pornographic story coincidentally used his wife's name as one of the protagonists of the story.)

Protect your reputation; keep hold of your blog's URL.