The signup page is enabled again. Yesterday we had to disable it, because we stopped being able to connect to reCaptcha servers. reCaptcha provides us with the anti-spam verification on new account signups and on anonymous comment submission. Without it, we’d be flooded with spammers.
The problem is solved. It was a network routing problem, not reCaptcha’s fault. It was not our fault either. We’ll just chalk the blame for this event to computers on the other side of the ocean. I’m sure they are not sentient (yet) and won’t care (yet).
We are tying up the last loose ends in the move to wordpress. If your blog is still living in the previous platform, expect it to be automatically migrated during the next couple of weeks. No intervention is needed by the blog owner. We will move all the data to the new infrastructure and convert it to wordpress format. Your blog template will be kept as it is now, with all the customizations you have done so far. We will send an individual email to each author as soon as his/her account is migrated.
Moving blogs between platforms entails a change in the server that actually serves the blog. This operation takes a few hours to propagate over the Internet. Right after your blog gets moved, new posts may suffer a delay of up to two hours to show up everywhere. The blog itself will never be unavailable. Only posts done immediately after the migration are affected.
Please don’t send requests to blog.com support to speed up your specific blog migration. The process is automatic, and the support team can’t change the order blogs get processed.
The new blog.com homepage is going live today! As the DNS updates, during the next few hours you’ll find the new look of blog.com. This is the first step in a slew of evolutions scheduled for the near future. We’ll keep you posted through our blog.
The move to wordpress opens up the possibility for blog.com to draw upon the huge library of wordpress themes created by the wordpress community. We already have a selection of handpicked themes for you to use. However, we are as always open to your input. Please use this post comment section to tell us if there is a theme you particularly like and wish to have in your blog.
If you ever find yourself running out of subjects to talk about, turn to the internet. There’s an answer to everything. Try out Plinky. Plinky shoots out a challenge a day to call your muse back to work.
As events develop in Iran, the government tries to silence dissident voices in the media. What was once feasible by governments is now extremely difficult. As John Gillmore once laid out in perfect terms: “The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”. More info on The Guardian, on the increased usage of Tor, public proxies and, of course, Twitter.
In case you haven’t noticed yet, we are moving at full blast to wordpress-mu. Ever since WP 2.7 feature list appeared on our radar, we were pondering the possibility of moving. We took the plunge, and are working hard moving tracks on a heavy train. Switching platforms is no easy task, and works should take another month or so.
The current status is: accounts created prior to March are living on the previous platform, the portal is running on top of the previous platform. New accounts are being created on the new platform, and number right now about 200 thousand accounts.
Next plans: We will be moving the portal to the new platform, launching with it the new site logo and colors. Following, we will start the account migration process, gradually moving accounts to the new systems.
