Hello everybody,
I wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their continued patronage of WUWT, and to let you know that in the last couples of months the site has been under attack by a variety of forces, which has reduced the viability and visibility of the website. After consulting with technical people @WordPress.com they have graciously offered to help me and we’re in the process of beginning a site migration. It is a daunting task, as there are over 18,500 articles and 2.6 million comments. In addition to that there’s about 13 GB of image files that are indexed to specific articles. At present, WUWT stands at 353 million views.
In the short term this migration may mean some interruptions of service, in the long-term this should ensure that WUWT continues to reach audiences worldwide without interruption or interception by some of the nefarious forces that operate from the shadows trying to reduce the impact this website has. It will also toughen the site against attacks.
Over the next day the process of migration will begin. If I am lucky, there will be very little interruption of service. However as these things go sometimes it’s not always hiccup free, and the chance of the site becoming unreachable for awhile while DNS cache is cleared. However, the technical engineers at WordPress seem to think it will go okay.
Another long-term benefit of this migration to a new server is that it will remove some of the limitations I’ve had by being hosted on WordPress.com. Instead I’m going to be hosted on the same cloud server group that hosts many of the largest news websites on the planet. All of this will still be under the control of the people at WordPress, but the good news is that in the nearly 12 years I’ve been doing this, WordPress as a company has staunchly defended my right to publish articles which they have undoubtedly taken some flak for. There is a back story from 2009 related to Climategate, Al Gore, and Google that I believe I’ve shared in the past to give you an idea of the kinds of things I’m up against.
The other good news is that being on this new server group it will give me freedom to install plug-ins that I could not do before. This will enhance our ability to make conversation and commenting run a little bit smoother, in addition to offering some other features I could not offer before. Guest authorship of articles will also benefit from this change.
Thank you for your patience during this process, and most of all thank you the readers, the moderators,the contributors, and even my detractors for making WUWT the most viewed climate related website on the planet.
I’ll post an update again once the process is complete.
Anthony
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Excellent news
Terrific news, Anthony!!
Whenever software vendors swore that users wouldn’t notice upgrade(s) installation, that always meant long weekend hours, workarounds and angry superiors.
Good … and Thank you !
google currently is blocking wuwt as a dangerous app/site and is asking for more info. switched to Bing
google is currently blocking WUWT as a dangerous site/app with no privacy and asking for system info and page content. Switched to Bing
What exactly is Google’s warning message?
Microsoft Edge is giving me a “Certificate Error” when trying to access the site.
WUWT just came up as the site being insecure, and so Firefox refused to load your page as did Chrome. I was able to load WUWT on Chrome anyway by allowing despite the danger. Firefox still will not load your page, What is this all about?
same
Just happened to me as well, was ob site reading this post 3 hours before with no issue. Just checked to see what was new and got the same warning on Chrome.
Chromebook just says what it always says about the site being insecure because “attackers might be able to see the images you are looking at and trick you by modifying them ” It does not go any further.
This is because some images are served over insecure HTTP; an adversary would be able to change these. This is a risk on an high value site (like finance), not so much here.
Here is part of the message why from Firefox ==================================================
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/05/notice-wuwt-to-begin-migration-to-new-cloud-server-opening-up-new-horizons/#comment-2365475 Unable to communicate securely with peer: requested domain name does not match the server’s certificate. HTTP Strict Transport Security: true HTTP Public Key Pinning: false
Never mind, I just read this post which explains what has happened. Look forward to when this is over.
Me too. Firefox absolutely refuses to load WUWT.
Right now I’m using Dillo, a really simple browser that doesn’t understand the smart things required to create a security problem.
“Firefox absolutely refuses to load WUWT.”
What is the complete error message?
Is there some way that us lowly users of these nefarious browsers can get back at them for sending us pop-up windows that falsely warn us that WUWT is a dangerous site?
“falsely warn us that WUWT is a dangerous site”
Did they really? What was the EXACT warning message?
Hopefully it is a “reign” cloud!
This is great News. Thank you!
The WordPress VIP, and their Enterprise Cloud not only earn them money, but gives them a stake in your success & well-being. WordPress loves nothing better than to host well-known ‘fair-game’ like WUWT.
When the tech-rep from NYT comes to WP with a security concern, and buttonholes the WP-rep on assurances, they can respond with “You know that What’s Up With That climate site? Yeah … you think you got security-concerns…”
After you can pass the basic Security Quiz, your next step is Live Ammo & Concertina Wire. They’re drooling at the thought of WUWT on their cloud. What an ‘Ad’ for other Enterprise customers…
=====
Anthony Watts & Crew,
Are you delving into the new Project Gutenberg block-editor? Lots of questions in the community, on just Why (really) and to what aim. My assumption is, Matt Mullenweg is up to something big, and the block-editor is a means to the end … which remains secret for the time.
Not really much question, ‘What it is’. I gave “phpWebSite” an extended try, before WP came out. It’s an Academic project, and it was all block-structured & Edited. I liked it, but the project was not receiving focused on-going attention (and still isn’t; parked on GitHub now). But it was a great experience.
My guess is, the WordPress dotCOM biz will continue as-is. This should impact mainly the dotORG scene.
Plugins are the opioid of the dotORG crowd. 55K titles & counting…
Also unable to access site via Chrome but succeeded with Firefox – for now. Chrome have a message stating-
“Your connection is not private
Attackers might be trying to steal your information from wattsupwiththat.com (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards). Learn more
NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID
Automatically send some system information and page content to Google to help detect dangerous apps and sites. Privacy policy”
When you clock on the underlined “system information and page content”, it takes you to a long page of general blurb where there’s an invitation to email them via Entourage. Is this censorship, or merely to do with your new site???
I got a similar message from the noscript addon I use in Firefox. I didn’t need to change noscript settings though, at all, I just had to empty all the privacy settings, are restart, then Firefox and WUWT came up, no further problems.
Was most likely just the old cookie that needed binning, but I flushed the lot anyway.
Takeoff and nuke it from orbit I say, you’ve gotta be sure …
“ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID”
It’s: Common name invalid in certificate
It just means that the Web server presented the wrong certificate to the navigator, and the navigator cannot authenticate the Web server via encryption, so the access is blocked.
This is expected behavior when the name in the URL doesn’t match either names in the certificate: the common name (“CN”) or some alternative name (subjectAltName).
Currently the certificate contains:
CN = wattsupwiththat.com
subjectAltName extension:
wattsupwiththat.com
http://www.wattsupwiththat.com
Had to go to my Vivaldi Web browser, as Firefox denied me access to your site with no way to access it with their new security settings (since version 59). At least, Vivaldi allows me to, if I trust the site, go ahead and load it. That was the only way I could access your site to find out what was going on, during the transition.
Same occurred to me, I emptied all the privacy settings options, such as cookies, active logins, cache, etc., and restarted and the new WUWT came up in Firefox.
hmm. lets see what this looks like as seems to be on the new site
Thank you so much Anthony, hope all goes smoothly. The net would be a monochromatic and depleted place without choice sites like WUWT.
@ur momisugly site designers and Anthony,
It would be nice to have an Up-Arrow button, after you’ve commented, to take you up to the top of the page again, as it’s a pain scrolling up again with a touch screen. If possible. Cheers.
My heart sank as I clicked on my favourite website this morning that it was not available. “Oh no”‘ I thought, ” the New World Orderers had got to WUWT at last”. Fortunately this was not the case but it got me thinking to sometime back in 2016 when I was watching a video featuring presidential hopeful Hilary Clinton and Mr. Al Gore, who was endorsing her for president. At that time a cyclone was off the Florida coast and was threatening to cross the coast and devastate the State. It was, he explained, all due to global warming implying, but not admittedly explicitly that it was my fault because I had opened a can of lemonade in Australia and let the carbon dioxide escape, and thus the impending disaster in Florida!! However all would turn out well, the cyclone would continue to move seaward to the coast, and no further threats would ensue if only the American public would vote for Hilary, and I didn’t open any more cans of lemonade. Throughout this Mrs Clinton was nodding wisely like a dashboard bobblehead. My despondence generated in me by watching this video evaporated into thin air much like my lemonade gas when shortly after I lucked onto WUWT. It was the opening up of a new world, and I have been so grateful to Mr. Watts ever since. Thank you Anthony.
Wow, you came here late!
Had the great fortune of finding WUWT in 2007.
The font, one that many use, is barely legible. Pity.
I have had no problem getting to the website via Google, WUWT is my first port of call each morning.#
I find it both interesting and informative, and feel immensely grateful to Anthony and his team for their hard work in keeping it going.
That said, I agree with C. Paul Barreira’s comment, as older eyes find it difficult to read the small print. This seems to be common in many magazines nowadays, presumably to save ink, but this doesn’t apply to digital media. I had no problem with the previous font.
There is also a trend in magazines to use coloured print on top of colour photographs which can made it unreadable where the colours are the same.
Does your browser have a zoom function? Readability is fine in Pale Moon when I zoom in a few times. It’s not like a magnifier, it actually increases the font size.
I was looking for the Tip Jar but could not find it.
Any way to pass donations?
imarcus
Excellent idea, and many,many, thanks for the sanity of the site.
Of interest, I had no problems finding the site on my imac, using Firefox. Checked on the W10 laptop and MSEdge went straight to the site.
Hope [desperately] that it all goes well.
Thanks for the link to cfact. Interesting observations and opinions there. I’ve also noticed the totally disproportionate Google search rating of desmogblog, rationalwiki, and even hotwhopper. But, some people like those, and probably that’s at least partly behind rating. It just turns very bad when Ph.D Joe-average suddenly finds himself smeared at those hate speech sites. You have to have some guts to be against the green mafia in academia.
opened immediately as usual for me using xp n firefox in aus this evening;-)
CME might upset clouds a tad more?
enjoying the larger brighter page n print
keep up the great work Anth*ny n mods;-)