NEW SITE ANNOUNCEMENT
As many of our regular readers doubtless already know, OffG is in the process of switching our hosting service and moving our site. We are moving off the wordpress platform, to a new (more flexible) host. This is allowing us to re-design and upgrade areas of our site where we have previously been hindered by the wordpress native platform limitations.
One of the primary reasons we are doing this is to improve, and adapt, our comment section. The default comment system is very basic. Currently users cannot edit their own comments after posting – we get several e-mails about this every month – this will be fixed.
OffG is much bigger than any of us ever expected it to be. 3000 articles, 8000 media files, 10,000s of comments. And all of this needs to be transferred to the new site as cleanly as possible. It is a slow, thorough process, but it is nearly there. To aid in this work we are officially placing a 2 week auto-close function on our articles. Every article over 2 weeks old will automatically close its comments section. This is a purely temporary measure, and will be reversed once the move is complete. If a comment section you were talking in is suddenly closed, do not worry. It is not censorship and we have not been hacked. We’re just packing it up and shifting it over.
This is being done entirely in our time and on our own dime, juggling career and personal obligations, so it is slow by but steady progress. The new site will be well worth all the trouble (we hope).
To repeat – we are closing comments sections on article over 14 days old. Any new articles will still have their comments open, right up until the very moment we move, sometime in the next few weeks.
We will be announcing the specific date closer to the time.
All the best,
OffG Editorial team
UPDATE 20/03/19:
Just an update to answer the questions BTL.
Firstly, we are not moving our address at all. All the urls will be remaining the same.
Secondly, to clarify, we are moving off the wordpress.com hosting platform, to a new hosting service. The site itself will still be built using wordpress.org tools, but the move gives us greater flexibility in design, lay-out etc.
For those of you who asked more specific questions than that, I’m afraid we don’t especially want to disclose specifics at this time.
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Dear commenters, Would you trade the editing function for the ability to comment as a guest?
Whatever the weather, can you please start writing about 5G? This is too important to ignore, we need quality journalism on the subject and we need direct action. I am hearing all sorts of terrible things about it, that it is effectively a kill grid. It is being at least partly developed in Israel, yet Israel is not rolling it out on home turf. It’s a special Goyim only technology, which coincidentally kills people. Nice. Anyway, we NEED good info on this, so could you please provide some, if nothing else to raise awareness.
I’ve been following 5G developments and can put up a list of links here to resources on the subject? It’s scary but it just adds to the long list of things that are going to kill us all.
As an enthusiastic long time lurker who seldom comments just wanted to offer a big thumbs up and good luck, I know these site moves are a nightmare. I suppose Antonym will tag along too…
Naughty of you to direct such a barb at one of this site’s most highly esteemed contributors, Karen.
And by ”naughty”, I mean, of course, ”very funny.”
:o)
Dear Off G,
I only came across your site a while back but have really enjoyed your very informative articles.
Looking forward to the new site.
Thank you for your great work.
Great! am looking forwards to it.
Much love and respect.
Good luck with the renovations! I, for one, am very happy you are here, a place where one can find actual reason and sanity in this mad world we find ourselves in (through no fault of our own, I think, in most cases). Thank you for your hard work!! Further, it will be nice to be able to edit comments because I tend to make mistakes, probably aging – my brain doesn’t well as well as it used to.
Even tho I’m pretty new to OffGuardian, its great how much you’ve grown that you need to move to a new site. I’ve had no problems with the current site except very occasionally a reply made to another commenter ends up anywhere except under their comment, and even more rarer, a little message pops up ‘youre posting too quick’. The more that visit OffG, the more eyes are opened. Good luck with the move. I hope no one puts their back out lugging about all those files….. Cough.
we are closing comments sections on article over 14 days old
Those damn Zionists are behind this too!
Oh behave. Is there any reason for tongue-in-cheek smarm?
Life is simple according the the Gospel of Mark: “anything bad ever was/is due to the Jews” & “no need to look beyond Israel on the globe”. Rejoice!
Abolish History, Geography etc.
Hopefully the site will be completely redesigned. Something a bit more user friendly would increase your traffic. It’s just too damned hard to find anything at the moment.
Good to hear OffG is doing well and expanding.
I’ve been impressed with the articles and the quality of the comments.
A couple of days ago I wrote a big comment on the topic “Russian Stalemate”, but it was never published. Apparently, some kind of error…
Anyways, glad to hear that positive changes are coming!
Russian Roulette is an interesting business. But I prefer to play Dr. Zhivago on my bass balalaika.
Best: Type your comment in a text file. Save it. Copy and Paste it into Comments. Post comment.
Second best: Type your comment into Comments. Copy it. Post comment.
Risky: Type your comment into Comments. Post comment.
Congratulations on the growth beyond expectation, and good luck with the migration.
Praise the Lord, this frigging dog’s breakfast of a site is to get an actual proper design. It is without any question, the worst site I’ve ever had the misfortunate to attempt to use, in 36 years of intensive internet use, 27 of those through www. It has been so shockingly awful from the UX point of view, that I never come here (besides today to comment), depending entirely on digested/rehosted pages of your individual articles on other alt med sites: for obvious reasons a hit-and-miss affair. I’ll await your new site with scepticism, well you can hardly blame me.
Hi Mom – sorry I forgot your birthday 🙂
Hmmmm….I’m puzzled. I am quite comfortable with the usability of Off Guardian just as it is. I cruise around to other sites a bit but feel quite at home here. What am I missing? Really. I would appreciate being directed to a site which would boldly stand out as being vastly superior in usability. I need this education, as you’re observations are making me think that there might be a significant element of online interaction enjoyed by others that I am entirely missing. Thanks.
Are you saying you don’t like this site?
“for obvious reasons a hit-and-miss affair”. Not obvious to me. But there again I’m a ‘non-techy’ pensioner, using the basic desk-top computer (Windows 8.1) that I’ve had for eight years. Touch wood, I have yet to encounter any major problems reading Off Guardian articles, links and comments, and posting my own comments.
With any luck you might find after 37 years of “intensive internet use” you finally discover where you’re going wrong so that we can all have the benefit of your valuable pearls of wisdom.
So glad to hear things are going great for Off-Graun. I remember coming here several years ago when it was brand new–I think that was 2015, right?–and being so relieved to find a group of other people on the internet who were as angry as I was over The Guardian’s growing comment censorship as well as their increasingly atrocious coverage of Russia and Syria.
The article aggregation here is pretty good, but I especially like the original pieces by Kit and Kat. Those we can’t get anywhere else! So keep up the good work …
(BTW, if there are other regular readers/commenters here who still haven’t made a contribution, this would be a splendid time to do so. It doesn’t have to be a large contribution. Mine wasn’t. I’m not a man of means either! But even a little bit could help them with their server migration. OK, end of sermon!)
To clarify, it looks to me like you’re moving off the wordpress.com hosting service, but still using the WordPress platform. This is a common source of confusion. The WordPress platform (aka WordPress content management system) is community software developed and maintained by the wordpress.org organization. WordPress.com is a private hosting service that (exclusively) uses the WordPress software.
I understand that they are moving away from WordPress as a CRM altogether. It may or may not be currently hosted on WordPress.com, but hosting choice would not affect features such as commenting, I doubt very much.
There are plenty of news CRMs / templates out there which are nothing to do with WordPress at all and are better customised than the jack of all trades WordPress.
Okay, so you’re using WordPress self-hosted. I used it for 7 years but on a shared server and the site got so slow I had to move it (nearly 20,000 articles). Much more control over the site when self-hosting but moving content is a massive operation! Took me weeks to do it (links go missing, graphics go missing, a nightmare).
All the best for the new, improved site.
On behalf, I’m sure, of disillusioned ex-Guardian readers everywhere, I thank you. You are invaluable!
Good news, looking forward to it!
Now this is real news. Bravi to you.
“OffG is much bigger than any of us ever expected it to be.”
So there is hope after all!
To the Off-G team: thanks for doing what you do. It is very much appreciated, and very important. This website means a lot to me.
I hope the move goes very well for you.
Gwyn.
What platform are you moving to?
Congratulations on developing a site which does not pander to the powers of USA-and-allies by promoting fake-news.
Dear Off-G
I greatly appreciate your site and your articles. I will be patient indeed and await the new site – which I am aware will evolve slowly.
Also looking forward to, when it comes, an improved comment section – with proper nesting, voting and views (most pop, newest etc). And no moderation (excepting spam).
More power to your collective elbows.
So what platform? Cost? I’m on WordPress too (before that self-hosted WordPress) but I’m not too happy with it. And any problems transferring data?