Fixes (Hopefully) Coming Soon [UPDATED]
Our long, blogical nightmare may soon be over.
UPDATE (4 June, 1751): Whatever is making the site so sluggish has made it impossible for them to get a clean migration their usual way. There’s an alternative solution, but I can’t get them working on that until tomorrow. The good news is that they should be able to import any posts and comments that come in.
UPDATE (2 June, 1200): The migration is underway, so any comments posted may disappear. Once the new site is up and running, we’ll repoint the outsidethebeltway.com domain to it, which will likely come with some latency.
Phase II will be to redesign the site with a new theme (the current one dates back to 2018!) on a development site. Once that’s done, which should be within a couple of weeks, we’ll again repoint the domain there.
Original post (Sunday 31 May, 0858):
Readers will likely have experienced frustrations loading the site of late. The combination of a 23-year-old site with some 58,000 posts and 1.5 million comments; a theme last updated in 2018; and years without outside technical support has caught up with us.
Matt Bernius made some fixes under the hood a year or so ago and moved us to a hosting plan that offered more company support, but that turned out to be a Band-Aid at best. And, having spent some $20,000 last year to fight and settle a lawsuit, I can’t justify throwing more money at the problem.
So, we’re going to try something radical. We’ve been self-hosted for all but the first three months of OTB’s existence, when we were on Google’s BlogSpot platform. Yesterday, I initiated the process of moving the site under the auspices of WordPress.com, whose software we’ve used for most of the site’s history.
Given the size of the database, I’m having them handle the migration, which they say usually takes 2-3 business days. They’ll migrate it to a test site and, once the bugs are worked out, we’ll redirect the URL. There may be a day or two in the interim where things are a bit wonky.
The upside should be a faster-loading, more modern site structure. My aim is to keep something close to the current look and feel, but on a modern theme infrastructure. We’ll keep you posted.
Bless you for all that you do to keep OTB alive and kicking.
@Kingdaddy:
Yes indeed.
I, and I’m sure many more, deeply appreciate what you do to maintain this little corner of sanity going.
Thanks!
I remember 20 years ago having to hand enter HTML coding for things like bold and embedded links. FTP for photos. There is always going to be change, usually for the better (er, enshittification at times though).
I think ALL of us here, whether frequent or occasional commentariat, or mere lurkers, greatly appreciate everything you’ve all done and continue to provide. Best of luck!!!!
Hi! Back after a while.
Just like to say I do appreciate OTB, as a refuge of reasonably sane discussion, and an insight into US politics that goes a lot further than the main UK media.
And really wish my finances were up to actually kicking something in.
But my central heating/hot water boiler just decided to go tits up on me.
Farewell my immediate savings.
*sobs*
Two minutes ago, when I opened the site, the response was immediate. As in a few seconds. Earlier this morning it was 20-30 seconds. Don’t know if that’s the new hosting arrangement’s doing or not.
@Michael Cain:
It varies for me, too. Sometimes immediate, more often not.
@Michael Cain: @CSK: Alas, the migration isn’t complete yet. One imagines it’ll be finished today and we’ll repoint the domain shortly thereafter.