Category Archives: Site News

We’re Back!

And we’re moved to a shiny new (virtual) server, so with any luck this sort of thing won’t happen again.

Update: It was late enough last night by the time it was fixed that I just wanted to post the notice and go to bed, but if you’re interested in more detail, feel free to read on now. Continue reading

New Look (Finally!)

I finally updated the look of the site! It’s been basically unchanged aside from tweaks here and there since the launch back in 2008. 😱 The narrow columns, the small font, and the white-on-dark-red text have been bothering me for a while, as has the fact that the mobile theme, which worked great for phones, was terrible on tablets.

The main problem: I could never find a theme I really liked, and I just haven’t had time to build one on my own.

I finally ended up going with one of WordPress’s older default themes, Twenty Twelve, which I still use on my personal blog. It’s still old, but not as old, it adjusts to different screen sizes, and it’s a lot cleaner (and easier to read!) than what I had before.

If you run into any problems, please let me know here in the comments, on Twitter at @SpeedForceOrg, or by emailing speedforce – at – pobox – dot – com.

Update: Strangely, Chrome on my Android phone is shrinking the whole layout like it thinks it needs to shrink a desktop site. Fortunately it’s zoomable to readable size, bit it shouldn’t be doing this to begin with. I’ve got 2 other sites using the same theme that work just fine on my phone. Firefox doesn’t have a problem with it either. But it’s 1:30 am and I need to get up for work tomorrow, so it’s time to sleep & I’ll solve the issue later. Update: Found the problem. It was one of the items in the sidebar, oddly enough.

Update: Fixed displaying all authors on multi-author posts.

Slowdown…and ZOOM! (Updated)

I’ve moved the site to a shiny new server in hopes of speeding it up. Unfortunately the shiny new server is in Virginia, and the database is in California. I suspect that’s why it’s about 4 times slower right now. I’ve got a request in to move that, and with any luck it’ll solve the problem.

These things never go smoothly…

Update (Jan 26): The database is moved over, and the site’s not only responsive again, it’s (as I’d hoped) faster than before!

I did change some of the software around (for the techies, I switched Apache to NginX), so if anything’s not working – contact forms, comments, search, etc – let me know at speedforce – at – pobox – dot – com.

Spam Attack

Hi everyone. If you follow SpeedForce on Twitter or Facebook, I want to apologize for the spam flood earlier today.

Someone took advantage of lenient moderation settings on our Flickr photo group and submitted a zillion spam images to the group. Those photos were then auto-shared out to Facebook and Twitter (and Tumblr, but fortunately I have that set to go into the queue instead of posting immediately, and none of them had gone live by the time I started cleaning it up).

Unfortunately, I wasn’t keeping an eye on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter at the time this happened, and it was over an hour before I saw the alerts from readers telling me that something was wrong.

I’ve cleaned up all the tweets and Facebook posts. The account that posted all the photos to the group has been banned and their images removed. Furthermore, I’ve tightened the moderation settings on the Flickr group: Only 6 photos/day are allowed, and for the time being all submissions will require approval.

That doesn’t change the fact that the spam posts went out and flooded your feeds, but I wanted to let you know what happened, and what I’ve done to prevent it from happening again.

Thank you to everyone who reported the problem, and I’m sorry I didn’t catch it sooner.

Follow-up: Lessons Learned.

Reminders: Photo Challenge & Write-In Contest

Doomed! (Flash of Two Worlds)

Our #speedforce5th photo challenge has some great entries so far! It’s open until Friday: Just follow @speedforceorg on Instagram, then post a photo of your favorite Flash item tagged #speedforce5th.

We’re also getting some great entries in our fifth anniversary contest! Write in to year5@speedforce.org and tell us why you like the Flash for a chance to win prizes. The contest is open through Monday.