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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My contribution: I’m using Firefox on Android right now, and comment threads/replies look…not good, especially where block quotes are used. Some block quotes themselves exceed the block boundaries.
I didn’t notice these issues on my PC at work, but there I was using Chrome.
I’ll see if I can fiddle things and get it sorted, but the last time I ran into this problem was years ago on a different WP blog. The problem eventually went away, but I don’t know why.
Mobile site didn’t give me the Edit button, either.
Forcing desktop site addresses the threading issues.
Edit button didn’t appear for me in desktop mode, either, but that may be due to what is likely the “moderation delay”?
Threading seems better tonight and in a different style. The block quotes no longer show in boxes, and I’m not seeing avatars any longer, either. (Mobile site mode…desktop mode appears unchanged from earlier.)
If editing works, well, I’ll edit. 🙂
Not on mobile site. Testing desktop mode…
Sigh. Still no edit button, but I routinely have the posting delay regardless of desktop/mobile mode. 🙁
I saw the edit button and had no delays using Chrome on my work PC. Maybe it’s specific to mobile Firefox?
Ooh! Now it’s working!
Sometimes.
Anthony,
Other than the temporary certificate issue I’m enjoying a working site!
🙂
The ad pusher has a permanent addict until they choose otherwise.
They get some eyeballs regardless of where you serve content from.
Filed under: “sad but true”
“the SSL doesn’t become valid until DNS changes fully propagate.”
That claim isn’t even wrong. It makes no sense what so ever.
First, the SSL protocol (Secure Socket Layer) is completely outdated, badly designed, hopelessly broken and abandoned. Don’t speak of SSL as a thing. The SSL protocol has been replaced by the TLS protocol (Transport Layer Security), with the same aims as SSL and a better design.
A certificate is valid for a domain or it isn’t. The IP adresses don’t matter for the TLS layer.
The DNS protocole doesn’t have a “propagation” feature; it only has expiration for records. A record is either unexpired or expired.
If you left unexpired DNS records that contain false information, it’s your responsibility.
If you installed an invalid certificate on your TLS frontend, it’s your responsibility.
I haven’t seen any information that indicates that any error is anything but coming from your part.
To everyone: please don’t accuse any other party without evidence. And don’t accuse or make up theories of bad behavior in an area where you are UNQUALIFIED. Many other people who are qualified not only will mock you, but might also conclude that you are a bunch of ideators.
Sheesh lighten up. Even seasoned network engineers still refer to them as “SSL Certs” since all anyone cares about is that they make it possible to access the resource when requested it via https….or SSL….or TLS 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 or whatever we are allowed to call it in your world. And it is possible that there are other security layers in place that required a little more work than anticipated – Anthony isn’t a network engineer so maybe he was talking about some other appliance that wouldn’t serve up the cert until proper DNS propagation – who knows? He’s not going to broadcast the details of his web hosting network topology right? He was just trying to point out that there was indeed a problem earlier in case people notice. Get off your high horse and give him a break.
“Anthony isn’t a network engineer”
That’s OK. This is not a network protocols discussion website.
So people shouldn’t imply that whatever broke is the fault of Google.
“Get off your high horse and give him a break.”
I’m not attacking him, only the people who attack Google without evidence.
““the SSL doesn’t become valid until DNS changes fully propagate.”
That claim isn’t even wrong. It makes no sense what so ever.”
Just going by what the WordPress tech told me. That’s a quote verbatim. I assume it has to do with WordPress having servers placed worldwide.
As for “The DNS protocole doesn’t have a “propagation” feature; it only has expiration for records. A record is either unexpired or expired.” WordPress provided me with this mapping tool, and indeed, I could watch the propagation:
https://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/wattsupwiththat.com
Not sure why Ottawa, Canada is still out. Earlier, Google’s nameservers were on the list, and indeed once it switched from red to green, things started working again. My complaint emails basically went away at that point and my own 3 network services started resolving the IP address via DNS properly. Apparently there is a lot of use of Google public DNS.
I had nor have any control over the SSL certificate, that’s was and is all handled by WordPress. All I could do is watch and wait.
Anthony ==> DNS servers do have to propagate — meaning that they have to update against a master DNS sever — it can take some time, The mapping tool shows this clearly, and it has always been so from the first time a second DNS server was setup.
There is still a problem somewhere in the WordPress admin site thingy that sends this URL:
https://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/
to the old site (featuring “Ex NASA Employee” as the top story.)
My WordPress account will only link to the above…
Kip, Check your email
“Not sure why Ottawa, Canada is still out.”
Maybe the replication (or propagation) of the updates among the names servers (“NS” DNS servers) worldwide was slow. You would have to ask the people responsible for openhostingservice.com
Anyway… there were a few technical issues which were resolved.
Few posts complaining about a problem contain useful complete technical information to analyse the issue. Many people just jump to conclusions.
Without any trace of evidence, people accuse Google of wrongdoing or at least incompetence in handling Google Public DNS; a deficiency from Google Public DNS or any other service cannot be excluded, but it cannot presupposed either.
And it doesn’t stop with attacking Google! The move to secure transport over the Internet (notably from HTTP to HTTPS), which is supported by a strong consensus, is attacked as useless and evil, because:
– “TLS doesn’t prevent MITM” (what?)
– transport security isn’t even an issue, interference with transport doesn’t happen (what?!!)
– certificates could be denied to some people (other necessary Internet resources wouldn’t be denied?)
Some of that discussion looks a bit like a Conservapedia page (Conservapedia is the crackpot “conservative” encyclopedia, the alt-stupid rightist/retrogradist equivalent of Wikipedia).
Getting a ‘Not secure’ warning from MS Edge. I must add that the warning is coming from Avast Anti Virus and is only a warning, still able to view WUWT no problems.
For example, that page includes the image:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/usb_datalogger_160ad.jpg
So some of the content is apparently served over an insecure network protocol.
That makes the content of the page apparently “not secure”.
Is there a way I can send a .crt file from Avast?
Web design tip: https media embedded in an http page works fine. http media in an https page generates warning messages. Making image, .js, .css etc. links all relative URLs or https (when possible) keeps the web browser happy.
You can also use protocol-less URLs in modern browsers, as in //url
Congratulations. I hope your cloud shines hight.
I like the small font size.
Thanks Anthony for what you have long done and continue to do so well.
I recently changed my home page and search engine from Google to Duck Duck Go, thinking I’d give it a go but probably be disappointed. Touch wood, so far the result has been better than expected and certainly a lot better than when I tried DDG a few years back. I’ve needed only a few resorts to big brother Google, and experienced a welcome change in terms of search relevant results returned rather than “we’ve selected here what you really need to know” type responses.
God bless. Glad it worked, with some contretemps, and you’re back and hale. It can be unbearably frustrating to deal with powers that be, over you. Thank god there’s alternatives.
I hope you still own the DNS domain? I have my Brave browser (brave.com) configured to send to you every month, and I just want to make sure it’ll get to you. They had some problems with payments for a number of months, but it seems like things are (finally) flowing now.
Anthony
I can’t see that anyone else has mentioned it, but in the top right hand corner of the page I used to get an image of a bell. When someone replied it became red, this was very useful when you have posted various comments in various threads over a period of days. The feature still appears on Climate etc.
Getting an email response as is an option has never worked for me on this site (it works with jonova) and anyway it can result in a deluge of emails.
Has the bell facility been disabled?
BTW the site looks neat and sharp on the whole, although as others have mentioned I need to adjust the font size and the font style is rather faint compared to the previous one. However that is a small price to pay and well done for a (relatively) painless transition
tonyb
That was a feature I had no control over, but I’ll see if it can be re-enabled.
Anthony
Thanks. Its not the end of the world but it was a very useful feature to keep track of replies.
tonyb
tonyb ==> If you see this (which you might not because you are missing your “bell”), hit the url:
https://wordpress.com/posts/wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com
and let me know what you get. You will have to sign-in to your WordPress account.
Kip
Thanks for your help
the linked site actually has the bell, which I note is labelled
” manage your notifications.’
There is no place to sign in.
Mind you, I got your message via the ‘Bell’ on climate etc as it shows all word press responses to any WP comment I make.
So one way or another I can get messages, although not when in WUWT
tonyb
tonyb ==> Yeah, I assume that WUWT is one of the WP sites you “follow”. If not, add WUWT to your Profile and repeat the exercise.
You seem to have the same phenomena as I do, though, which is reassuring.
Anthony ==> The Bell feature is part of the WordPress toolbar and is somehow attached to one’s WordPress sign-in.
That toolbar includes a WordPress logo at the left, followed by a link for Reader, on the right hand side there is the “+ Write” that I use to get to the WUWT WordPress add a new article page, and then on the gar right, the “bell” that says I have a new comment on a post authored by me or a response to a comment made by me (on any WP site I am ‘following”).
The WordPress toolbar fails to appear for me on the current updated version of the site but does appear on the version of the site at this url: https://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/
This is what I have been mentioning all along.
I think the problem is a link in the WordPress admin page….? or in my (our) individual WordPress pages (to which we sign-in).
Kip
I noticed that the bell on the wordpress reader (it’s the same toolbar that used to be on the WUWT page) sees replies to my posts on the new web site and the conversation reader is keeping track threads on the new site. If it helps, the name of the toolbar seems to be something like wp-admin-bar.
Whew! i thought the site had been hacked, and looked at other sites (Jo Nova, Cliscep, et al) for news. It’s good to see that it was just a transition. The story of your treatment by Google, however, is quite disturbing. Even though Algore is on Google’s board, and it IS Algore’s amazing Internets, that kind of thing should not be happening.
And I DO love the timed edit feature! [Added after the original post. In fact, this comment was added after the original comment! Way cool! No more excuses for missspellings! {sic}]
Not another migration caused by climate change. Sigh. 😉 Congrats and best of luck.
Eamon.
I like the timed edit feature. I may not be fast enough to catch all my errors in five minutes.
Jim
I seem to only be directed to the OLD page with no new updates. I had to search for this particular post to get to the new one. How do I reset it so that I go to the new page? Clicking the home button above does not work.
When writing a comment and hitting the “post comment” button, it takes be back to the top of the article. Anyone else or is it just me.
Tom – It does the same for me. I’m wondering if it’s because I’m now using Firefox (had to switch because Chrome keeps taking me back to the old site – is that Google messing with us again?)
Firefox is a horrible browser now, full of entropy, I abandoned it a couple years ago after using it for several years. I use Chrome now. Just clear your cache and cookies and make sure your bookmark for the site is at https://wattsupwiththat.com rather than wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com
The clarity of the page is improved. Images at right are slightly bigger & more readable too. Thanks, Anth*ny and WUWT.
Click to edit feature, too!
It is possible to craft a realistic budget if you know what you’re doing. The P.Eng. in charge of physical plant at our school had a thirty year history of on-time on-budget projects. His successors … not so much.
Hot Dog! Was stuck on the old site and couldn’t see any of the newer ‘fix it’ comments! Used DuckDuckGo to boot up WUWT and, although it showed the old wordpress.com site with ‘Ex Nasa Employee….’ as the last post, it did show me updated comments. Deleted the old site bookmark and shortcuts, dumped the browser history et.al, and a new search for WUWT brought up the new site!
Found this post, but clicking on Home takes me back to wordpress site.
Robber – clear your browser history/cache and try again.
When I post a comment, the view jumps up to the top of the post and the comment does not show for about 5 minutes. I’m not seeing ‘edit’ buttons after I post a comment either.
You might need Java installed
Yep. If I use my favourite brain dead browser, Dillo, some very strange behaviour ensues. In particular, my comments don’t properly become replies to the comments I’m replying to.
PS Don’t take any of my … observations … as criticism of the change directed your end.
No complaints.
Just trying to figure things out.
What do the Aussies say? “Good on ya’!”
Test.
Test 2.
Test 3.
Well this is darn exciting. Wow and I can edit now. I have to say it took me seconds to get to this new site.
Hmm , i had the countdown on the edit and wrote something extra but didn’t show up so guess I will have to write quicker but a lovely extra facility.