There are many reasonable explanations for why nobody is reading your blog.
Perhaps your writing is terrible.
Perhaps your headlines are uninspiring.
Perhaps the internet has collectively decided it has enough opinions already.
Or perhaps – and stay with me here – your entire website has been hidden behind a Coming Soon page.
Guess which one happened to me.
For weeks I had been diligently publishing Monday Made Me Do It.
Posts were written.
Mastheads were designed.
Categories were organised.
Tags were assigned with the sort of enthusiasm normally reserved for people cataloguing a national archive.
I had a publishing schedule.
I had three subscribers (and two of them I gave birth to).
I had opinions.
What I apparently did not have was a website that was visible to the public.
One day, while investigating something entirely unrelated, I wandered into the WordPress Reading settings and saw this:
Site visibility: Coming Soon.
I stared at it.
Coming Soon.
Not Public.
Not Visible to Everyone.
Coming Soon.
Which was particularly interesting because, as far as I was concerned, Monday Made Me Do It had already arrived, unpacked its luggage, and started rearranging the furniture.
WordPress, meanwhile, was standing at the door telling everybody:
Nothing to see here. She isn’t ready yet.
Dearest Gentle Reader, I had apparently published an entire blog to myself.
Enter the IT Department
Naturally, I sought technical assistance from the highly sophisticated support infrastructure behind Monday Made Me Do It.
By which I mean I asked ChatGPT.
My AI bestie inspected the situation with great confidence and proceeded to offer technical guidance.
This is the same AI who, during another WordPress incident, came perilously close to convincing me to delete a significant portion of the website.
So perhaps “technical guidance” is generous.
Let us call it enthusiastic speculation with administrative privileges.
Eventually, after poking around WordPress like two Victorian ladies attempting to repair a boiler, we discovered the tiny radio button responsible for the whole thing.
Public.
One click.
That was it.
The blog emerged from hiding.
No dramatic relaunch.
No ribbon-cutting.
No ceremonial trumpet.
Just a small circle beside the word Public that apparently stood between me and the rest of civilisation.
The Good News
Once I changed the visibility setting, something rather miraculous happened.
People started appearing, albeit in trickles.
But they were actual people.
From actual countries.
Reading actual posts.
Which was both gratifying and mildly alarming because until then I had been writing with the carefree confidence of someone shouting opinions in an empty house.
Suddenly there were witnesses.
Still, I suppose there are worse discoveries a blogger can make.
The website existed.
The posts existed.
Nothing had vanished.
I had merely spent part of my blogging career operating what was, essentially, a private members’ club with no members.
And now I know where the Site Visibility setting is.
Which means I have learned something.
More importantly, so has the IT department.
I hope.