Quick OTB Site Update: Don’t Mind The Dust
Infrastructure week is continuing
Hey all, this is just a heads up that we are continuing to work on fixing some lingering bugs from the Great OTB Outage of 2025. In particular, we’re having an issue uploading files. As a result, throughout the day I’m going to both be going through our plug-ins, our .PHP config files, and… if all else fails, having to break out the terminal and revisiting director and file permissions and ownership.
Having had a lot of recent issues, we have backups we can immediately roll back to. I’m also going to be moving slowly (so I’ll only break one thing at a time and be able to quickly roll it back). I don’t expect the site to go offline (or if it does, it will only be for a moment). That said, turning plug-ins on and off is going to impact the look and feel of the site.
So if things look weird when you visit, trust us, its just temporary (and somewhat intentional) this time.
Update Test by SLT
Another dunce sighting.
Just saw a post by someone identified only as JG stating that your secrets are safe with them…
Good luck and godspeed.
Thanks very much for all the time, effort, and expertise you’re putting into this.
Best laid plans and all that. Even if it blows up again, we appreciate your support for the site, Matt.
Good luck. And remember your hard work in keeping this site, and its best comment section in the internet, going, is very much appreciated.
Thanks for all of your hard work, Matt!
Matt,
Whatever you do, be careful with the gonculator.
I plead ignorance (I am a college drop out).
Who is the traffic cone dunce and where is this located?
Adding my voice to what I’m sure is a chorus of grateful thanks !
Don’t mind the maggots.
@Mister Bluster: I thought it was the Duke of Wellington statute in Glasgow, but it looks different so maybe it’s catching on elsewhere…
@Mister Bluster: @Jen: I think it’s David Hume’s statue, in Edinburgh.
@James Joyner:..David Hume…
Thank you for the reply. A quick Google confirms your response.
Just an aside: I’ve noticed the newsfeed connection for OTB is not updating.
@James Joyner: Correct.
@Jen:
There are a lot of statues on the campus of the University of Glasgow. They even saved David Hume’s bar chair in the Campus pub. At least, I think was Hume’s. It might have been one of the other in a long list of U of G alums. Ether way, I sat next to it and had a pint.
Of all the philosophers I read, Hume made the most sense to me. Muted Utilitarianism.
@James Joyner:
You’re supposed to rub its big toe for good luck. In the four years I lived in Edinburgh, I don’t recall so doing.
Good luck, best wishes, and all of that. I will remark that WordPress seems to have managed to recreate all of the bad software system design things from Windows 95. It’s really rather remarkable.
@Michael Cain:
Wait, you mean imitation isn’t the sincerest form of flattery?
@Mister Bluster:
I had a 1996 jeep wrangler. It was the year they switched over for a bunch of safety features. I was like 19. I had the model year that didn’t have the safety features.
Young and dumb I drove through a line of traffic cones. Like 30 of them. They went flying everywhere. Glorious. One got stuck. I didn’t see the cop.
When I did I just kept driving. Brrrrrrapppp. Rollers flash on. I pull over and pretended like nothing happened.
Cop walks up. Kicks the flaming traffic cones out of my wheel well. Burning, on fire traffic cone. Goes, “you gotta little problem there” to the assorted idiot teenagers in the Jeep with no doors. Then just walks away. We look at each other and slowly drive away.
@Beth:..flaming cones!…
Great story!
About the dust…
Before the Great OTB Outage of 25, I’d reload the page to see whether the comment count went up. Then after clicking on comments I’d need to reload the page to see any new comments.
Now new comments just load. No reloading necessary.
However that happened, good job.
Will you be enabling/updating the RSS feed to be current? My newsreader is only pulling up posts on or before March 14th or so.
I would like to say that the OTB RSS feed updated Protopage. So that’s nice.