Inkspot, Inklings, Inkspot.com and linking

Let me tell you a story.

Years ago, in the early days of the Web, I used to have a site called Inkspot. It was one of the first sites for writers and was highlighted in the FIRST edition of John December's HTML & CGI UNleashed in 1995. The original URL: http://interlog.com/~ohi/dmo-pages/writers.html. Around the same time, Glenn Davis picked it as Cool Site of the Day ... and this was back in the time when there was only ONE Cool Site of the Day.







The flurry of media attention prompted me to expand Inkspot and register Inkspot.com. I also hosted some author sites, like those of Charles Ghigna and Hazel Hutchins.

As many of you already know I no longer own Inkspot. The company that bought Inkspot shut the site down and sold or gave the domain to Writing.com, and the latter is now funneling all Inkspot traffic to its own site.

While I have nothing against Writing.com, I'm not happy about the idea of people looking for Inkspot (especially young writers who are trying to find the old Young Writers' section) and assuming that Writing.com is the new incarnation of Inkspot.



Charles Ghigna recently wrote me and said that people looking for his site sometimes end up at Writing.com and get confused because there's no indication that they've been rerouted, and no message on Writing.com about Inkspot.

What I theorize: that enough people still link to the old Inkspot URL (inkspot.com) that Google thinks it still deserves a high ranking in search results, so people tend to come across Inkspot URLs more often than they should. And anyone clicking on an old Inkspot URL now gets Writing.com instead, and many people don't realize that they've been rerouted.

The Inkspot.com domain switch was made quietly several years ago, as was the traffic funneling; I only found out accidentally.

So here's my plea:

If you have a link to Inkspot (any URL at inkspot.com), PLEASE DELETE IT. Inkspot no longer exists.

If you notice someone linking to the old Inkspot site, PLEASE LET THEM KNOW IT NO LONGER EXISTS and that the URL is actually being re-routed to another site, or point them to this post. I've been gradually contacting sites myself, but there are still so many.

And do check out the NEW sites of Charles Ghigna and Hazel Hutchins. They're both wonderful authors and very nice people. I'm back in touch with Charles, and my sister has illustrated a number of Hazel's books in the past.



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