Well the hard drive on the server died shortly after my last opportunity to add to the site from work. As far as I know these were unrelated incidents.
Due to complicated technical and emotional events of four years ago, it is a very tricky business continuing to use the site as we did before. Basically we were able to restore the site so search results will still be able to see it. But we’re no longer able to add content.
There was some consideration of just jacking the whole thing in. I mean no advertisers want to touch us with a bargepole, and we seem to be making enemies at a frenetic rate (which is fun for a while but loses its appeal over time). The site consumes a great deal of time and effort. This is all to say nothing of regular legal threats from Liberals.
Give the ALP some credit, we give them a very hard time (they are in Government) but while Labor folk have left rude comments and sent chastising emails they’ve never brought out the really heavy stuff the way Liberals do.
Sure, we know from experience that threatened writs never actually appear. But the stress involved each time is not something I’d wish on anyone.
I should thank the other guys in the team for standing by me in the fights I’ve gotten us into, sometimes ill advisedly. There have been times when I’ve considered buckling on a point of principle, down at the pointy end. But every time when I tell the guys what the deal is, and the trouble they could be getting into, they invariable say words to the effect of “stuff the bastards, lets keep going”.
Anyway the offers of help and concern during the crisis were such that we decided to keep going forward.
As you can see we’ve changed engine to WordPress which we think offers some amazing functionality (and will let us fiddle with it without getting technically petrified like we did last time).
It’s possible we might find a way to revert to the old site in the next few days.
For now you’ll need to register to submit news (on the other hand just email it in to root@the-riotact.com).
We haven’t caried over any of our previous registration information, so you’ll need to sign up again.
You won’t need to register to post comments, but the server will want to know who are (and for a moderator to have allready approved an earlier comment) before there will be open slather. We regard this as a compromise from our oft-debated intention to remove anonymous comment alltogether.
There are more changes than we can mention in this space but feel free to ask questions in the comments or via email.
It’s not going to be the same comfortable space we knew (and there are plenty of changes to come, because right now it’s on the ugly side), but we’ve decided to turn this problem into an opportunity.
Loading ...
