After 16 years I finally pulled the plug on my other blogging websites (altenergyaction.org, shumwaysmith.com). I had done almost nothing with them for the last 6 years, except for occasional rescue efforts to address failing software components. The cost to maintain them was not high (I think I was paying around $100/year) but keeping them running added a mental burden - thinking I *ought* to go in and start fixing them up and using them properly again - which I had no prospect of actually accomplishing. Better they be gone. From latest stats the sites were accessed by a couple of thousand people per month, but I suspect most of that was bots and not actual users. I'm hoping anything useful to others in them has been picked up by the internet archive (https://archive.org/) - it does have some record of the sites and their subpages.
The altenergyaction site was initially created to start an organization - the Alternative Energy Action Network - which for a while consisted of a half-dozen or so of us (including my father, who I miss dearly these last 4 1/2 years he's been gone) who would regularly exchange emails discussing alternatives to fossil fuels. Several members of the group sent me articles to post on the blog, and for a while we had public comment sections that further discussed particular topics. The group had a wide variety of enthusiasms, and was not necessarily all in agreement on things (though we largely agreed that using hydrogen for ground transportation or heating did not make much sense). I had hoped that one of the other people who inspired me to set up the website would take the reins, recruit lots of people, and start getting our message out more broadly, but that didn't happen. In the end we were one of probably hundreds or thousands of similar little blogging efforts that faded with the rise of Facebook, Twitter and other "big social" media as the 2000's turned into the 2010's...
The "shumwaysmith.com" site was similarly afflicted by the rise of social media. I'd intended for my wife and children to get involved, but it ended up being just me with a personal blog ("Not Spaghetti") that also did a lot of climate science-related blogging. And basically nothing in the last 6 years. So I'm back here.
Twitter was a huge distraction, but I'm trying to give it up now. I'm also on mastondon - @apsmith@fediscience.org - if you'd like to comment please do it there! Hoping to post a bit more often here in the new year.