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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Anthony, you and the WordPress guys should pat each other on the back. WUWT has, for some years appeared to be totally reliable and was, as far as my experience went, almost never MIA. As a Unix sysop, I’ve been so used to reliability, reliability and reliability, I really hadn’t noticed but, looking backwards, you all should take a bow.
Big changes, as this promises to be, almost never go without a hiccup or two, so plan carefully, don’t rush and it should be smooth. Despite having said that, may “Fortune smile on the endeavour.”
The new font size is a bit small (on iPad). The comments are about right, but the article itself is difficult to read. Expanding the page places the text over the edge of the screen.
But keep up the good work.
About time I put something in the tip-jar, as I have not so for a couple of years now. How about everyone placing a new donation, to ease this transition. Where would the skeptic voice be, without WUWT…..?
Thanks,
Ralph.
Good stuff Anthony…. The fight against ignorance and oppression continues…
Great for you and even better for me! WordPress sites have been restricted for me at work for about a year now. I could see text but images and styling were absent. Imagine my surprise (and delight) when I browsed to the site today and everything was there – kind of like Dorothy opening the door into the land of Oz. Much appreciated!
Looks like the site has passed over the major speed bump it hit last night.
All the security warnings are gone. All the browsers I use: FF,Chrome,Brave and even IE, all function correctly.
The articles load much faster. Thanks for the great improvement!
Sometimes it can take up to 24 hours for DNS changes to propagate, so some of you may still be experiencing the crossover.
Just checked in this am. First thing I noticed was the font change. I like sans-serif fonts. Easier to read although the font in typing comments is small, it is clean. Haven’t had any problems accessing the site although I have seen a mixed content warning for a couple of months now. Apparently the images are triggering the notification. Not a big problem as of now. Good luck in the transition.
It appears that comments to recent posts are split between two websites…
There are 25 comments here…
https://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2018/05/30/ex-nasa-employee-planned-blog-posts-on-coal-to-solar-plant-conversions-cancelled/
And 17 comments here…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/05/ex-nasa-employee-planned-blog-posts-on-coal-to-solar-plant-conversions-cancelled/
Best of luck with the transition.
I had not noticed any problems accessing WUWT using my “Brave” browser.
David Middleton May 29, 2018 at 10:25 am directs us to a scarecat site to access a cartoon. Unfortunately this is what I get:
“This site can’t provide a secure connection
starecat.com uses an unsupported protocol.
ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH”
I have found a few other sites with the same problem – mostly well respected organizations that should have no problems. However, some above have suggested that this may be fixed by killing all cookies, caches, etc, and they found that this fixes the problem.
Query: how does one kill cookies, and delete caches? And does not deleting caches remove essential information? If not essential, what does this remove? Please …..
The cartoon was there yesterday. The comments are currently being split between wattsupwiththat.com and wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com. I am assuming that this is related to the migration of the website.
It appears that comments to recent posts are split between two websites…
There are 25 comments here…
https://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2018/05/30/ex-nasa-employee-planned-blog-posts-on-coal-to-solar-plant-conversions-cancelled/
And 17 comments here…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/05/ex-nasa-employee-planned-blog-posts-on-coal-to-solar-plant-conversions-cancelled/
The browser cache just stores temporary copies of images, applets, and such, so you don’t have to redownload them every time you return to a site. It can just load them from the cache. And it doesn’t hold anything that shouldn’t be deleted. Emptying the browser cache just makes the browser redownload everything on each site you visit from scratch again. It’s usually done when a site goes through a major update but isn’t updating the cache files on its own (probably because of filename/directory changes).
“how does one kill cookies, and delete caches?”
Use private browsing mode (“incognito”, anonymous browsing, pron browsing, you name it). When something breaks, always go private.
Use an alternate profile (try Guest profile in Google Chrome).
I got the ‘not secure connection’ message twice yesterday, but now it’s fine. I must have tried in the middle of the transfer to The Cloud. (Is there a portion that the Mud People will be able to access, too?:)
I just have one question, about the typeface: it seems thinner and some what smaller. Was that intentional, or is it just an artifact of the transfer?
Sara, I think the “not secure” message is an old issue on WUWT & IIRC has to do w/certain links on the sidebar. The conclusion was that it’s not really an issue & the site is secure.
I’m pretty sure links to other sites do NOT cause this message.
Best of luck on your server conversion and thanks very much for your excellent service for the years! You provide a valuable service to all of humanity.
I use IE nearly exclusively and have had no problems with security advisories about WUWT. I bookmark my preferred sites in Favorites and therefore don’t have to search for them. After years of browsing, I have quite a detailed computer filing system for my Favorites!
Anthony,
Firstly, many, many thanks for your work.
You are a true star.
Secondly, the ‘Edit function is hugely appreciated – even before wine is taken!
Thirdly, I get ‘Not Secure’ messages from several sites [NOT WUWT, today], like Shipwrecklog [of (hitherto) professional interest to me – now I am retired it’s a pastime!]
https://www.shipwrecklog.com/log/
WooHoo; retirement!
And no more Southern Railways – unless I choose!
Again, many thanks!
Auto
Mmmm Had to complete ‘my’ details below . . . . again.
Teething troubles, I am sure.
If you fancy a laugh – or an Awful IT Warning – look at the last month or more history of the switch of the UK’s TSB (challenger bank, Spanish-owned) from an old system to a new(er) one.
A recent link is – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44253335
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh dearrrrr.
The font size seems to have been increased, so much easier to read, THANKS.
In My Opinion this is the best website ever and find it a great source of valuable data on our Climate for us scientists to share & view with others; thank you Anthony.
(I keep myself anonymous as I’ve been ‘threatened’ elsewhere on these issues & my opinion)
I get “ERROR: your url is too long” using Facebook login.
To log in I must use the manual login. I have not tried WordPress, Google or Twitter.
This is my bookmark and has been for ages: https://wattsupwiththat.com
I get redirected to: https://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com
Even if I put https://wattsupwiththat.com in the URL bar it redirects
The only thing that I can do to get to the nonwordpress site is: https://wattsupwiththat.com/page/2/
I do not think it is my computer that is redirecting
Actually, it is.
You’ll need to clear your browser cache, possibly DNS. See some tips here: https://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2018/05/31/note-please-find-our-new-website/