Our design update had so many issues, I’ve decided to revert. Our developer dropped the ball in the site conversion, and many things got broken in the process. Behind the scenes I was fighting multiple problems that you didn’t see, and there were plenty that you did. I’m sorry for that.
Our best laid plans blew up. A giant site with 18 years of content 35,000 posts and 5 million comments plus dozens of custom plugins to make things work the way we wanted aren’t an easy thing to migrate. So many things that have to be just right – and they weren’t
So, everything is back to the way it was on August 27th, when I made the full site backup.
Good news: Your old logins should work, and those of you that are subscribers should have your subscriptions restored.
Bad news: We are going to lose some some posts and comments on them. I can restore the posts, but comments aren’t possible. Again I’m sorry.
Please be patient as we rebuild content. I sincerely apologize for the trouble our visitors and subscribers have had. We certainly didn’t expect this to happen.
My admins and I need to take a break as this has been nearly a 24/7 nightmare since Wednesday Sept 10th. We just want to let things settle for a day or two.
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As a software developer, I get it. Sometimes things take much longer than planned, or even crash and burn.
We’re all here, whether the site stays the same or finally gets migrated.
I’m sure that it’s very disappointing to you, but I’ll dare to speak on behalf of all WUWT-dom in saying that we greatly appreciate this forum of free speech and there’s never cause for you to apologize to us for anything!
We spent months and significant dollars on this…back to square one.
That is usually the case… it is so very hard to get projects like this to work.
I’ve seen multi-10s of million dollar project go sideways.
But, from my point of view, I know that 10s of thousand of records seems complex but, with the right tools and skills, that number of records is… not the issue.
“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” — Theodore Roosevelt
Thank you for reverting.
We were satisfied with the “old” version
This is the problem with today’s technology. Much of it is a solution looking for a problem. For many years my family and friends would write a list of things we needed to get at the grocery store each week. The list hung on the refrigerator and anybody to add to it or delete items. All they needed was a pen, which was attached to the list.
Now, one has multiple devices to accomplish the same task. No standards. If you forget something you can access your home’s insecure network to look through the camera in the refrigerator to see what we forgot (maybe). Before we had standards; paper and pencil/pen and simple instructions. The list could be copied, added to, have subtractions, fit in a pocket, a purse, or whatever and we wouldn’t forget much.
Now there are no standards and a frenzy to update/upgrade for the sake of getting something we hope for, at the expense of many things we’ve become accustomed to. Technology no longer tries to do the best, fastest, and cheapest when it can promise the stars and spend countless amounts of time being the not-so-good, very slow, and quite expensive. This is the sad state of affairs in Technology today. 🙁
This site is functional, easy to navigate, works on a browser on a PC or a phone. There’s no need to be everything for everybody. Just keep it simple, quick, and cheap.
“Upgrade” has become the scariest word in the english language.
Log-in ok👍
Darn, sorry it didn’t go as planned. Thank God for backups. Spent decades in the computer service business and can say you are not alone. Major application changes rarely go as planned no matter who’s doing the work.
No problem, personally I prefer the old design.
Yep, same here. If a technical upgrade is needed, so be it, but “new” isn’t always better.
I think the majority of visitors actually welcome the reversal. Maybe because once you get used to a system you dont like changes. The bigger the change usually the more issues. Small incremental changes are often the best policy.
10^42 dittos!
I liked the new look, but I agree I’m on the minority. More importantly, this site hasn’t been so successful due to a look or a software package – it is this successful because of Watts and the writers who post here. Thanks for all the hard work AW.
I prefer the old format !!
Wishful thinking: the green movement ought to do the same, revert. But they are driven by ideology, while WUWT is driven by respect for truth.
Message to self: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The problem with the green movement is that they neglected to create a backup.
I wonder how often they regret destroying original data when they think about updating their narrative? I don’t like using “they” and “their” because of the accusatory tone it points at an unspecified other. Here, I’m thinking more like: Many of us find the “recycle bin” features of desktops and email GUIs a nuisance 99% of the time, but that 1% when it saves the gold bars that have dumbly thrown overboard… priceless.
Don’t sweat it Anthony, the climate will be just fine without you for a few days I promise.
Off topic I know, but just when you thought you couldn’t despise someone more than you already do he sticks his head out from under a rock and does this.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/09/sick-hockey-stick-climate-fraud-scientist-shares-tweet/
Thanks for the link Joe, not surprised.
Will Penn do anything? He should be fired.
Don’t beat yourselves up too much over derailed system upgrades Anthony.
Lots of government systems are dysfunctional / derailed the moment they’re
releasedescaped and inflicted on us reliant public users.And we’ve paid $gazillions for these debacles without being offered any kinds of subscription options.
At least they have global warming to blame.
I preferred this format too. The font was far too big on the new format when read on an iPad.
That’s interesting that the font was far too big on your iPad since the fonts were way too small on my Android phone.
Must have been a nightmare Anthony, but speaking for myself it’s good to have the ‘Home’ tab back. It makes navigating the site much simpler for an old’un of pre-tech vintage.
You have my sympathy.
I started with Hollerith cards on an IBM 1620. One mis-punch on an 80 column card and my frustrations with computers began. It has never ended.
Hollerith cards?
Loooxxury!
We had to chisel binary code in hieroglyphs on to dried out cow pats with our teeth, and then thread them through an abacus to get the computations the application required.
And we counted ourselves lucky –
IBM 1620s hadn’t been inflicted on the unsuspecting public then.
Same here; a Mod I CADET, Can’t Add Doesn’t Even Try.
A fantastic machine to learn how computers work deep inside.
Ha….. Because of legacy code, I was still using ForTran only 5 years ago !
AT&T’s first ESS 101 PBX used card punched out on a template. Remember Florida’s “hanging chad” election debacle so many years ago? Great fun. At least the EE department at KU had a DEC PDP 8 one could cycle through to find a wrong instruction.
I later got to play with a CDC 6400, which had an unusual card reader. Most stacked the cards in the reader chute and had a picker plate at the bottom which shoved one at a time through the reader slot, where electrical brushes detected the holes. The CDC reader, IIRC, was horizontal, and there was some kind of sponge rubber cylinder, looked like a roll of toilet paper, which spun around and a vacuum pulled cards off one at a time. Supposedly could read 2000 cards a minute, much faster than the picker plates (and 50 year old memories may misremember details). But it could read anything. Someone brought in a box filled with 750 bloated cards (boxes normally held 2000 cards) from getting soaked in water. The CDC read them no problem; picker plate readers could not have because they were too thick.
One day some social science grad student brought in some survey data. These were the cards where you poke out the choices with a pencil. The operator didn’t know they were special cards with the easy-to-punch holes; the student didn’t know the reader worked by sucking on the cards. I heard it was a veritable blizzard for several seconds until the operator stopped it. No idea how much data was lost.
I try to remember this every time the computer screws up and something goes wrong. Computers just do what they’re told, but at least it can be funny … later.
The code that put men on the moon fits on a 2mb floppy disk with room to spare.
Some “smart” cars with 10,000 times that have trouble crossing the street.
Not a very good comparison. The moon lander code did not make decisions and had very little to do, and I bet was hand-optimized assembler which took months and years to make work.
It was literally stored on core memory – wires and magnets.
JH kicked off a thread of “uphill in the snow both ways”, tech warrior edition. My first computer had a “Turbo Button” for when you absolutely needed to run at 10 MHz.
The technology reverie reveals demographics that “the media” has hidden for many years. Climate sceptics are not predominately 18th century Southern cotton farmers or monopolist oil magnate trust fund lichen. At least in Internet forums (yes, there’s a sample selection bias), climate sceptics seem to be middle aged tech workers from all over the world.
No problem. Like many here we have “been there done that!”
Test post
If something is not broken, don’t try to fix it 😉
The quip should be: If it ain’t broke,…
Yippeeeee!! And, to make my weekend even better, I found my copy of The Complete Calvin and Hobbes Collection. YAY!
Regards,
Bob
…or something to that effect. 😉
The one thing I found annoying with the new setup was needing to login daily. Sometimes even after a few hours of inactivity. One day I had logged in 5 times. Never stayed logged in.
Anthony, new or old, WUWT is a great website!
Thanks Anthony. Personally I do much prefer this format. And appreciate your work in bringing the news, not many media outlets will. Thanks
I’m sorry for all the pain, but it’s just fine the way it was/is as far as I’m concerned.
I learned a long time ago the truth in the saying: “Inside every little problem is a big problem waiting to get out.”
Obviously you didn’t have your fingers crossed the right way…
… or not holding your tongue between your teeth correctly.
After many years of writing Fortran computer code, I have found that these things matter. !! 🙂
Have a break from it.. come back when you ready..
We will still be here (did I just hear you groan 😉 )
Pretend you’re scrapping the monumental waste of money that is Net Zero, and going back to what works.
Seeing if I can post comments..
Yes, you can.