OMG! I thought I might have killed my blog. And then I thought, holy crap! Five years of blogs and memories, gone, just like that! How could this have happened, you ask? Well, I have two domains. www.kristensimental.com and www.darkculture.net. The Dark Culture blog (formally a fully loaded webzine and formallly gothicpreservation.com) is located in the main directory. This blog is located in a sub-directory of darkculture.net in a folder named /blog. It had been a while since I’d updated the application that runs the Dark Culture blog, but in order to do that, I had to delete everything from the www.darkculture.net domain. Are you following me? Initially, when I switched the old Dark Culture Magazine format into the easy-to-update blog format, I did a hard install – which means I installed the application without any assistance from my host; which offers what they call “one click installs”. These are very handy because I don’t have to fiddle with any code and when updates are available, all I have to do it click a button. Simple.

Because I’d done a hard install the first time around, this meant I couldn’t use the one click install application. Thus, in order to use it and make my life easier in the long term, I had to start fresh. Naturally, it had been a while since I’d done any backend work on Dark Culture, so I forgot the cardinal rule of updates. BACK UP, BACK UP, AND BACK UP! ALWAYS! I did not. Thus, I lost anything that had been posted to the new version of Dark Culture. Let’s forget about the last 10 years of content that is sitting somewhere gathering dust waiting to be restored and probably never will.

So what does this all mean for Dark Culture? Not a whole lot, really. Frankly, my heart hasn’t been in Dark Culture for a while now. I enjoy doing the podcasts and occasionally posting news, but that’s about it. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a review and truth be told, Dark Culture has been half ass for a few years now. And that right there makes me sad. Dark Culture was always a labor of love. I tried making money at it, but it just never happened. I could never get enough advertising to simply pay for the hosting. Readership suffers when you make major changes or are down for long periods of time, so I can’t imagine all that many people read it on a regular basis. Statistics tell me that when I upload a new podcast, I get some good traffic – even if no one comments or gives me feedback. However, the way search engines a’plenty spider my site, it could just be fluff traffic and not anyone legitimate.

*sigh* So what will become of Dark Culture? I recall spending countless hours working on the site, updating, chasing after writers, laboring over content…I remember staying up until the sun rose on some nights. I can’t put that kind of effort into it anymore and frankly, I don’t want to.

Because Dark Culture was one of the first websites of it’s kind, I inspired numerous people to start their own webzines. That’s nice, but they’re a whole lot more excited about it than I am and they put in the effort. The writers I once had have all gone separate ways and wouldn’t come back if I asked them. I suppose I could find new writers, but just as it was then, it’s hard to find people who’ll work for nothing. Writing credit on a half ass webzine? I wouldn’t do it either. So here I am, at yet another cross-roads with Dark Culture. Part of me doesn’t want to let it go because I still hold some ideals for it. I’ve always dreamt of what it could have been, but never will. Besides, I’m not all that active in the Goth scene anymore – at least, not as much as I used to be. I still enjoy the music and hearing new bands, but I’m less inclined to write about them.

Oh, this all makes me so sad. There was a point where Dark Culture was an amazing website, but it’s a shadow of it’s former self now. It’s been broken so many times, I don’t know if it can recover. I guess I’ll continue to make podcasts. Those make me happy and I love doing them. Now, to find the time.

Over the years I’ve had numerous close calls with almost losing everything. Today I lost the latest incarnation of Dark Culture, but luckily this blog is in tact. It’s funny how our priorities shift over time. It also reminds me to back things up more. I mean, I was actually sweating while waiting for the site to re-upload. I thought, what am I going to do if I lose it all? I almost cried thinking about it. This blog is so much a part of me that I can’t envision living without it. I mean, if I had lost it, I would have lived, but I would have been really fucking depressed about it.

A sigh of relief. I’m going to back up this blog once a month and never scare the shit out of myself again.