After announcing the migration yesterday, the past 24 hours have been very stressful for me. About 11AM PDT yesterday, the migration began to move WUWT to a new much more secure and feature rich cloud server. It didn’t go well, and took far longer than I expected.
There were issues with the server SSL certificate, apparently, the SSL doesn’t become valid until DNS changes fully propagate. That was news to me, and the reason that some people got errors yesterday that the site “may be dangerous” because the SSL certificate wasn’t valid.
Propagation took an unusually long time, with the major issue being with Google’s public DNS servers, which didn’t get the memo until just before 10AM this morning. Now, once that log-jam broke, it appears we are essentially correctly referenced world-wide.
I have a long history with Google and repression. Me and our stable of guest authors write unpopular content, questioning the veracity of many outlandish claims about global warming. It’s inconvenient for some that we’ve been so successful.
Al Gore is on the BOD of Google was on the advisory board to Google, and in 2009 after I broke the story about ClimateGate he apparently lobbied Google to have me censured. Google abruptly and without explanation cancelled Google Adwords on my wordpress.com hosted site. Higher-ups at WordPress wanted to know why (they were losing revenue, after all), had a face-to-face meeting scheduled with Google the next week, and it was abruptly canceled the day before and they stopped returning calls.
My site’s treatment by Google is one of the strongest reasons the independent WordPress WordAds now exists, or so I’m told.
Through all this, WordPress and the WP staff (known as “happiness engineers” have conducted themselves with fairness, dignity, and without political prejudice. My hat is off to all of you, because you do in fact uphold the spirit of “net neutrality” while offering a superior platform. They don’t do, evil, and I sincerely thank them their help and professionalism through it all.
This is my first post on the new WP cloud server, where I’ve been since November 2007. God help me if I had chosen Blogspot (now owned by Google and called blogger.com) over WordPress.com back then.
Now, onward, and we’ll see if we can’t get a number of thorny little problems fixed while expanding features. Some comments made yesterday may have been lost, and remain on the old site. There is little I can do about that, my apologies.
Thanks sincerely to everyone for their patience.
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Welcome back! It’s upward and onward from here.
Glad you’re back! By the way, when you wrote “he apparently lobbied Google to have me censured,” I think you meant “censored?”
PS: Like the new ability to edit!
Congratulations! And Mr.Gore then… what a despicable human being he is, a back stabber!
What is this blue “star” “like” thingy for….does it work, and if does how does it??!!
Leally leally love the edit button…option…:)))
3 lines, five edits….going a be fun. 🙂
I see the “blue star” followed by “Loading…” ??
The Like button highlights comments that are approved of by the majority of readers on the site and so facilitates groupthink.
If everyone was signed in to WordPress it would be very damaging.
But as it is you should take it as an advert for Newcy Brown.
“Like” button?
I don’t see that either.
Should it be at the bottom of a comment?
Edit button? I don’t see one.
(I also don’t the other reply to your comment I made a couple of minutes ago.)
Now I see the reply. Just a delay, I guess.
And I see the “Edit” for the first time.
(But all the “blue stars” are still followed by “Loading…”)
Testing 1, 2, 3…
I hope for the best. It is always somewhat traumatic moving cloud servers and services. That people now have an option to vote is nice. Good luck! < bold > < italic >
Portages are never easy, especially over tricky ground. May the new, cloud-based server continue to support a relentless reach for clearer conception of physical reality in an age of fictional scenarios streaming from unproven computer models and politically ambitious minds.
Portages are always difficult, especially over tricky ground.
I chopped down a tree and looked at the rings and then did some S#!!y math and I am pleased to report that your new location will be even warmer and more welcoming than the present interglacial, internet-ial period..
Hang in there, Anthony!
Seems to be an inordinate delay loading on google. I gave up and switched to YAHOO and it worked.
Thanks for all you do, Anthony.
I’ve left a few comments about not seeing what others seeing.
I’m sure some of the issues might be on my end. (Protection software I run etc.)
Perhaps a screenshot of what a normal comment should now look like would be helpful?
PS
There are some people who aren’t just unhappy if you disagree with you; they want to hurt you for doing so.
Once you make a comment, and the page reloads to that published comment, right below your comment should be an “edit” button and a 5 minute countdown timer. You can edit the comment within that 5 minute window.
I’ve only seen the “Edit” button twice…maybe I refreshed or something too soon?
(I have to get off my PC for now so won’t be responding anytime soon.)
Should be:
Just when I needed the “Edit” button, it wasn’t there. 8-(
You have a 5 minute edit window after posting a comment, then the ability to edit, and the button, disappears.
Well , do not know if there is something wrong at my end, but when i enter the site now, I get lot of empty spaces at the top no picture or media visible, side bars etc gone , and have to switch off the page style ( set styling to “no style”) to be able to read anything.
Whatever the problem is, it is on your end. I suggest clearing your browser cache.
Meant to also paste a screen grab of what I see. But no dice , paste button grayed out. And if i refresh the page i get an error message about the page being unavailable saying something like ” no STL handshake ” or somethining such, but it disappers after a couple of seconds, and refreshes the page anyway it seems, And the response time seems to have become significatnly longer when i scroll down.
Again, whatever the problem is, it is on your end. Either your browser is outdated, has old cache, or you are running on an ancient system, or all of the above.
Thank you for patience as I learn the new “ins and outs” of this improvement.
I’ll “poke more” before I comment.
Testing…testing…
great stuff Anthony. Much faster than the old site.
FYI == At the moment https://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/ and https://wattsupwiththat.com/ return different pages.
I get https://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/ when I click My SIte/View Site from my WordPress page.
Click to edit works ! Nice addition. Kip
Suspect the above domain problem may be domain servers catching up still or some internal WP sever setting.
At https://wattsupwiththat.com/ I don’t see my WordPress toolbar at the top anymore.
CLEAR YOUR BROWSER CACHE
Anthony ==> It will eventually clearup as DNS servers catch up — sometimes it can take hours and hours for all the DNS servers to replicate.
I am East Coast US and hitting DNS servers
209.18.47.61 and 209.18.47.62
At this moment, the dual sites still return for me here.
Once again, try clearing your browser cache. If you have shortcuts to go to these locations, they’ll need to be edited.
Anthony ==> The WordPress blog site for WUWT is not synced to the current page.
The admin site for WUWT for authors is still pointed at wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com.
No, it’s not, clear your browser cache.
Anthony ==> It is no use repeating that over and over … I a just trying to ,alert you to a side situation. OF COURSE I CLEARED MY CACHES!
From here in N.Y., going to wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com returns an older version of the site about 14 hours old but does bring up the WordPress admin pages for WUWT.
Hitting http://www.wattsupwiththat.com brings up the newest site but not the WordPress admin toolbar despite being signed I to WordPress.
Comments seem to be at some intermediate stage between the two versions.
I have the same results using different machines running different browsers and different operating systems.
Kip,
I think the problem is that if you ask for a url http://wattsupwiththat.com… it sends you to the old version. If you change http to https it should be OK.
http and https should send you to the same server. What the server does with those 2 depends on server settings, and may or may not be the same content.
“if you ask for a url http://wattsupwiththat.com… it sends you to the old version”
When you have seen that?
I just tested: http://wattsupwiththat.com sends you to https://wattsupwiththat.com/
Summary
Request URL: http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Request Method: GET
Status Code: 301 Moved Permanently
Remote Address: 209.15.20.213:80
Request
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: wattsupwiththat.com
Reply
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Server: nginx
Date: Thu, 31 May 2018 05:04:04 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 178
Connection: keep-alive
Location: https://wattsupwiththat.com/
“When you have seen that?”
I just clicked on the http: link in your comment, and it took me to the old site. Although so did that https: link. It could be a cookie issue.
To exclude cookies (and also HTTP cache, local storage, session storage, indexed DB…), use switch to incognito browsing (“private browsing”, “surprise gift mode”, “pron mode”…). Or another “profile”.
And then you still have your cookies in your profile. It’s easier.
“I just tested: http://wattsupwiththat.com sends you to https://wattsupwiththat.com/ ”
That’s the behavior I observed with chrome. Going to firefox (on a different computer) I did not see that behavior. Could be chrome was trying to be helpful and using the https site where available, but it causes problems when the https has a cert problem.
Nick ==> Thanks, but it seems to be something with either the WordPress site or my WordPress account (from which I author pieces for WUWT).
This url:
https://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/
which should show me the current WordPress site for WUWT is still showing the site with “Ex NASA Employee:” as the top story. But comments (appearing in my WordPress toolbar) include your comment, for example.
Seems to be some kink between the authoring site and the public site.
Nick ==> Do an experiment for me please? Hit
https://wordpress.com/posts/wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com
and let me know what you get.
(You may have to sign in to your WordPress account).
I had to clear my cookies out.
Keen ==> Yes, that should do it for most folks, this was a slightly different issue and has now been resolved
Kip, check your email.
Anthony ==> And Bob’s Your Uncle! Does the trick. Thanks….
PS: I’ve been through the horror of migrating sites many times with IBM in the early days….the more dynamic they are, the worse it is. WUWT seems to have survived the worst of it. Congrats.
Kip,
I got a wordpress page saying that I didn’t have any wordpress sites yet, and would I like to create one?
It’s true that I have an account but no sites.
The url shown was
https://wordpress.com/posts/wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com
I think the last “wordpress.com” is a problem, although if I edit “wordpress.” out, I get the same result.
Nick ==> Anthony got this sorted….it affected guest authors of WUWT with WordPress accounts.
All better now.
Thanks for assisting in the effort to sort the details.
Okay. That explains why I was blocked out yesterday.
Anthony great job!
By the way the web site icon used in browser tabs appears to be missing in action.
Yes, not everything migrated, fixing little details as I go along…
Al Gore is on the Google BOD? Never knew that. It does explain a lot about the obsession with forcing HTTPS onto website operators though. Another scam not very different from the climate change one.
Likewise, it seems to have become an article of religious fervour for its supporters, one that you dare not criticise. I’ve been flamed quite a few times for pointing out that on sites with ads it DOESN’T protect against MITM attacks anyway.
A worrying aspect is that if HTTPS becomes compulsory it could be used to silence people, by denying them a certificate. I sometimes wonder if that is the objective. Along with selling certs, of course.
When you think about it we’ve been using the Web since 1993 without having a horde of KGB agents snooping on us. So, why is it suddenly so essential? If we need protection against snooping, then we need protection against Google. Guess what? HTTPS doesn’t do that. Big surprise there.
“It does explain a lot about the obsession with forcing HTTPS onto website operators though”
Absolute BS.
“Another scam not very different from the climate change one.”
Securing the transport of information on the Internet is a scam?
“Another scam not very different from the climate change one.”
Ridiculous theory.
Mr s-t,
You seem to be a one man defence team of Google, but then that is the beauty of free speech which is banned here in Britain.
My point to Mr Watts and others on here is who in their right mind would use biased guuggle when there are so many trustworthy alternatives.
The only search engine I use is duckduck.
So congratulations Anthony on being the most popular and honest climate website.
I’m defending Google? Where?
Do you support the idea that HTTPS is useless as a security protocol? Ian Macdonald implied that supporting HTTPS is useless with zero evidence.
Do you defend insecurity?
This thread is depressing and sad.
https is generally preferred to http. An exception is when the https server has a problem, in which case forcing https rather than allowing http is dysfunctional. I also see the treatment of self signed certs as worse than http as bothersome.
So far https://letsencrypt.org/ has worked well for the https sites I operate (excepting poor error handling when running their script without necessary operating privilege) If I ever do spot overt bias in who they’ll service, they’ll get holy outrage from me.
Seems to be working OK. Have yet to wring the site out. Am using at present Safari on IPad 11.3, even though .4 was just released yesterday. Never upgrade until the new release is proven stable. Made that forced mistake with High Sierra. Never again
RSS is still working, apparently with no dropout. Now let’s find out if I can still post…
….and now javascript is required to post. 🙁 Presumably that’s due to the edit function, so not the worst tradeoff.
Javascript for basic functions isn’t too bad. Javascript without a noscript block notice, or served from a dodgy 3rd party, is asking for trouble from security savvy users.
Good stuff. Ever upwards and onwards against the forces of anti science and dumbassery.
Oh… and we have an Edit Button…. Cool!
Well, you’re back up and running. The Hurricane (Alberto!) landed a few inches of wet stuff on my front steps. The air has cooled considerably since yesterday. The petunias were all refreshed by the rain. And the catnip reseeded itself in one pot from last year, so I guess I should plant more, eh?
Oh, yeah – the calico cat bumming food from me brought me a rabbit yesterday morning. No, i did not cook it. I have meat in the freezer. I patted her on the head, picked it up with a plastic bag and put it in the trash, and went back into the house. She must think I’m going hungry or something.
Also, am I logged into WordPress or not? Can’t tell from here.
Sara, you should have cooked it for the cat.
Eeeeewwwww! Gutting and skinning a headless bunny at 6AM!
Yeah – NOTHANKYOUVERYMUCH!!!
I would rather be stepped on by a space alien!!!
Sara — I wish I could borrow your cat for a few months — we have rabbit problems here. They eat all my wife’s vegetables, and last year they ate all our zinnias. They aren’t afraid of humans, but I tried a rabbit trap, and they just ignore it.
Welcome back and congratulations. I have worked many start ups over my career and each one offers unique challenges and twists and turns.