To Celebrate Epolitics.com’s Birthday, I Blew Up the Site

Colorful website explosion

I blew up Epolitics.com a couple of days ago, and I feel fine! Actually, I feel fine that real techies could step in and save the day — and the database.

I’d put off essential website maintenance for way too long, in this case including a PHP upgrade and a transition to HTTPS secure URLs. Both potentially required surgery for a site that’s been around for fourteen years, but after upgrading a couple of newer and smaller sites to HTTPS, I tried to take on my own. A few minutes into the process, BOOM! No more WordPress site, only an endlessly recurring series of internal references. A metaphor for our age?

Fortunately, the hosting company helped restore the site backup, and Thomas Wright stepped in to hunt down the bugs and make much-needed changes quickly and affordably. So we are back up and running, and I no longer feel the rush of guilt I would get every time I saw the “not secure” notification in the address line. Plus, with the HTTPS transition, we should start doing better again in Google. Victory!

And what a week for it. Fourteen years ago, I launched Epolitics.com as a platform to explore the world of digital politics and advocacy. 2645 posts and 78 individual contributor/authors later, we are still here because of you, the people who read this site. Thank you for sticking around despite the occasional detonation, publishing hiatus and publisher freakout. Now, what do YOU want to write about?

cpd

Written by
Colin Delany
View all articles
Leave a reply

1 comment