Site search, which has been broken for the past couple of days, is back working now. Pre-2003 archives are now broken, but I expect to get them reinstalled fairly soon. (Update: fixed now.)
Unfortunately, the inherent limitations of Movable Type and its upgrades are forcing a retreat from one of my long-held objectives, namely to provide this site’s archives with stable longterm URLs. The previous URL formats we used are not supported by MT 4, which means that after our upgrade-in-progress is finished, existing links to individual posts published before March 2008 will mostly break. With minor exceptions the material itself will not vanish from the site, but it will reside at new URLs and you will need to do more searching for it. Sorry.
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An advisory about a few continuing issues arising from our Movable Type upgrade a week ago and the site redesign that it’s triggered:
* We’re experiencing a surge in comment spam which we’re trying to fix. In the past these attacks have sometimes forced us to close comments briefly or have even brought down the whole site.
* Relatedly, we’re suffering email disruptions which are affecting email addresses @ this domain name and at my personal domain walterolson dot com. If you have sent mail to me or Ted through these sites in the past week, it may not have gotten to us. Editor – at – pointoflaw – dot – com should reach me and is unaffected by the disruptions. Using comments on posts as a substitute for messaging is best saved for a last resort. Facebook messaging is another alternative to consider.
* A couple of readers have reported disruptions to Overlawyered’s RSS feeds. If this is happening to you, too, feel free to point it out in comments to this post. I don’t use feeds and rely on readers to let me know when they malfunction.
* I’m slowly moving up the learning curve on customizing display styles on things like font size and white space. The gavel icon is back on the front page address line. Don’t assume that this design is final as I’m by no means done tweaking it — I might even go back to the pink color scheme.
P.S. Prof. Bainbridge likes the new design. But does Ron Coleman? And QuizLaw favors the distinctive pink.
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As you can see, I’ve embarked on a step-by-step redesign of the site, still very rough and unfinished, but I hope smoothing out as we get into next week. Reactions welcome, including whether readers would like to go back to the old pink-and-grey color scheme (widely disliked, but distinctive), which features are best included on the front page, etc. I think a three-column format is now fairly standard in sites of our type and should allow us to keep recent comments and posts high up for the benefit of frequent visitors, while also offering prominent navigation aids for newcomers and those using the site for research.
I expect to restore the blogroll and about-the-site soon, as well as a serif typeface.
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Our new Movable Type upgrade finally allows us to add a feature we’ve wanted to add for a long time, a list of the most recent reader comments. Check out the right-left-hand sidebar.
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With help from the Movable Type people we’ve restored site search, which had been broken for the past couple of days since our software upgrade. In coming weeks watch for some enhancements to the site that will be made possible by the new upgrade.
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We’re scheduled for a software upgrade momentarily which might disrupt the availability of the site itself, comments, or other functions. Should we be knocked off for an unusual length of time, check my other site Point of Law for updates (bumped Tues. afternoon). 7:30 p.m. Tuesday: completed, if you had problems posting comments and the like, try again now.
10 p.m. Site search function is busted, we’re working on a fix.
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We’re responding to ongoing comment-spam attacks (which knocked us offline for a while this morning) with some site maintenance. Comments will probably be down for a bit while we attempt to upgrade. Update 11:15 a.m. EST: Back up and running again; if you notice anything wrong, please drop us an email.
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I’ve been cleaning up and simplifying the organization of the site, specifically the sidebar on the front page. Many readers already follow Overlawyered posts by subscribing to feeds, and I’ve made that easier by enlisting in the popular FeedBurner service. If you’re currently using a different feed method, we encourage you to give FeedBurner a try.
For years I’ve been publishing a short periodic newsletter summarizing highlights of recent posts. It’s a lot of work, however, and at my present level of commitments I’m obliged to conclude that it’s not a wise use of my time, especially with the feed option providing a similar but richer service in real time (rather than days or weeks later). So for the time being I’m going to officially declare the email newsletter dormant; at some point maybe it’ll be worth reviving in some new format.
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Following a long period in which we battled trackback spam, the entire trackback function just seemed to stop functioning a while back. Since it has been some months now since any legitimate trackback has registered, I’ve turned the whole function off rather than potentially mislead newcomers about its availability. Technorati remains the most convenient way of seeing whether we’ve been linked lately on other sites.
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Like many other blogs, Overlawyered was down for much of Friday because of a DOS (denial-of-service) attack aimed at our hosting service, Hosting Matters. Michelle Malkin has some details, here and here. More: Webloggin has some observations about the nature of the DOS attack, while Dad29 proffers an Overlawyered-centric explanation for the whole affair.
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I’ve had to turn off comments for entries older than seven days, because of the unending flood of comment spam. If you’ve got something important to say about an entry older than that — or if you’re involved in a running conversation that gets cut off when it reaches the deadline — drop Ted or me a line and we’ll consider accommodating you.
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Despite our attempt last week to fix our RSS/XML newsfeeds for the benefit of readers who keep up with the site that way, it looks as if we haven’t succeeded. A reader writes:
I was missing my daily dose of Overlawyered, but wrote off your lack of activity to your domain move and hosting issues. But such is not so … your newsfeed from overlawyered.com is broken. The XML has no style associated, and chokes the newsreaders I’ve tried to use on it (Thunderbird, Blagg and a FireFox plugin).
We would be grateful if technically knowledgeable readers took a moment to advise us how to get this task done.
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As regular readers may have noticed, we’ve tried out a variety of design tweaks over the last week. In response to reader requests, we’ve also installed a simple font size switcher toward the top of the right-hand column, which however works only for users of the Internet Explorer browser. Users of Firefox, Opera and most other browsers can alter font sizes relatively easily by executing simple commands from their mouse or keyboards. To enlarge the fonts on a page viewed in Firefox, for example, press Ctrl-+ (“Control” key simultaneously with plus sign).
Our thanks also for the patience of bulletin subscribers: Google Groups took more than twelve hours to deliver many copies of last night’s newsletters, and some users (including ourselves) have run into technical difficulties lately with the Google Groups site. To change your subscription, visit this site (requires Google registration). And should you ever wish to unsubscribe from the newsletter without going on the Web, just send an email from the relevant account to Overlawyered-unsubscribe – [ at] – googlegroups – [dot]- com.
Also: after installing the redesign/rehosting, we got word that our RSS feeds were returning broken links to those of you who keep up with the site that way. We think we’ve fixed that problem now, but if not, please let us know.
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* After much tinkering over the past two days I’ve settled for the moment on a modified version of Lilia Ahner’s style Stevenson from the Movable Type style library. Fonts are bigger than in the first Wednesday design, and readability better, but I’m still hearing from readers saying they’d like access to a style-switch or font-enlargement option. Anyone know of one that’s easy to install on a MT site?
* TrackBacks are back, at least for the moment. MT 3.2 supports TrackBack preapproval, and it remains to be seen whether the former rate of 200+ spams a day will resume now that TrackBacks do not appear automatically.
* I’ve installed a handy new archives page collecting links to archives through mid-2003 (earlier archives are here), and fixed (via redirects) the broken URLs on monthly and category archives generated by the earlier version of Movable Type. That still leaves a problem with the 2,700 or so individual links generated by the earlier version, each of which now exists in two versions: a new descriptive-word-URL version, and the old numbered-individual-URL version. Rather than let the old links break, I moved the whole lot of them to the new site via FTP, but this leaves two problems: 1) each exists in two versions now, which is likely to confuse the many visitors who reach this page via search engines; 2) the old version now fails to display styles properly. The logical next step would be to install redirects for all the old URLs, but MT seems unable to generate a simple list mapping old onto new posts for this purpose. If any technically inclined readers can help out on this, drop me a line.
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You can probably tell by the slightly altered style that this is the new version of Overlawyered rehosted on Hosting Matters and powered by the new Movable Type 3.2. A few points:
* I expect to be tinkering further with the style. In particular, I’d like to reduce the wasted space, widen the right sidebar, and give readers a way to increase font size, especially on the sidebar. (Update: I’ve done some of these things in the course of the day, and will be checking out some further suggestions from readers.) Suggestions are welcome, especially from readers who are familiar with Movable Type and stylesheets, I myself being an amateur.
* The new version of MT stores archives using a different filename format. This will result in some broken links for archives and older topical pages, at least temporarily, although I expect to install redirects that will help. All of the archives remain accessible through date-based browsing (see sidebar on front page) as well as through site search (more than one search may be necessary, though).
* I’ve cross-posted a few items I posted over the past two weeks at Point of Law. I trust all of you have bookmarked that site by now, and you should go on visiting it even after regular posting at this site resumes.
P.S. Well, at least we’ve got the serifs back now.
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Readers were not shy about recommending hosting services (thanks for all your emails!) and I’ve now decided to go with Hosting Matters, which has many articulate fans and seems to make a specialty of Movable Type-based blogs. It’ll probably be a few days more before the site is back up and running.
In the mean time, you can follow both my and Ted’s postings at the Manhattan Institute site Point of Law, which has been extra-busy lately (see, for example, its reprint of Ramesh Ponnuru’s fascinating National Review article on trial lawyers and social conservatives). I’ve been juggling a number of other deadlines and published a “Rule of Law” op-ed column on Hurricane Katrina and flood insurance last Saturday in the Wall Street Journal (sub) (more on that). (Bumped 9/30).
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WO writings
For the last 24 hours+ new postings to this site have been disabled due to technical difficulties. We’re back up now, for the moment, but the continuing recurrence of these technical problems is going to make it necessary to move Overlawyered to a new hosting service in place of Verio, which has been our host for the past few years.
With luck, we can accomplish this rehosting within a few days, and the site will resume its normal operation. Till then, expect a brief hiatus in posting. In the mean time both Ted and I will continue to post at the Manhattan Institute’s website PointOfLaw.com. If our ability to update Overlawyered fails again, or if the whole site goes offline, we’ll post status updates on Point of Law, so make sure to bookmark that site now.
Also, reader advice is welcome as we search for the right Movable Type-friendly hosting service. We’ve heard favorable things about Total Choice Hosting and HostingMatters. If you’ve got opinions about these or other services, drop me a line at editor-at-[this domain name]-dot-com, or if that begins bouncing, editor-at-[point of law]-dot-com.
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