Suspended?

Those who visited this blog recently probably noticed that it had been suspended because of a TOS violation.  No doubt there was some speculation about what terrible philosophy had earned the wrath of WordPress.com. It was, however, nothing so dramatic.

Like many bloggers, I use Zemanta to automate a lot of tedious chores, such as creating tags for posts and links within blogs. When I used Zemanta to create links in my blog on health care, it created a link to a diet pill web site that is on the “proscribed list” for WordPress.com. Thus, my blog was suspended. As I write this, I can see that Zemanta is ready to stick in the link to the diet pill site again. Obviously, I won’t be using Zemanta to create links anymore.

If your account is suspended and you have no idea why, check to see if Zemanta has added such a link to your site.

Also, here is what to do if your account is suspended.

First, when you try to log in to your account, your password will be rejected. You can, however, request that the password be changed by clicking the “I forgot my password” link. You’ll get a new one. However, if you do not have any blogs that are still active, you’ll have nothing to log into.

Second, contact support. The url is http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/. For a suspended blog you will need to fill out the form without logging in. This is because you can type in the blog url if you are not logged on; but must select a blog from a drop-down menu if you are logged on. Suspended blogs do not show up in the drop down menu.

Explain the situation (that your blog is suspended) and ask why. Be brief and polite.

Third, wait for a reply. In my case, I had to remove the offending link. I was able to get into my blog dashboard and went to the posts. There I entered in the offending url in the search field. I found it, deleted it and the blog was back up shortly.