Sometimes it’s inevitable that we must step down from blogging at a certain point and time, but you should abandon your blog with some dignity and grace.

A couple of months ago, Rick Bruner announced that he would be taking a hiatus from the Business Blog Consulting blog to further evolve his career and as a fan, I was a little sad to see him go, but I was happy to hear of the new opportunities that came his way.

Following a link to his blog, I quickly realized that he had made the one mistake when leaving his blog that no blogger should ever make: he didn’t turn off comments or trackbacks. The warning signs of spam to come are there and a great source of information is starting to turn into a seedy spam playground. If left untended, the problem will worsen.

Spam can discredit a site faster than lightening. If you would still like to have your blog online for posterity and feel the information would be a great resource for people although it won’t be updated, make sure to turn off the commenting system, or if you’d still like to hear what people are saying, use comment moderation and clean up the comments every once in a while.

Abandoned blogs are what keep spammers doing what they’re doing. Abandoned blogs are the 1% rule (i.e. the 1% of the blogs that it will get through on so as long as the 1% exists, spammers will continue). Please don’t become one of the 1%.