Change can often be a difficult thing. Most of us don’t like it. Yet it’s sometimes necessary if an individual or project are to grow. Since 2012 Memory Hole Blog has been parked at WordPress.com and housed on its servers. WordPress.com is the commercial arm of WordPress that provides rudimentary and convenient services for bloggers who don’t have the inclination to become involved in coding, etc.
Over the past four years MHB’s readership has expanded by the thousands. Further, a thoughtful and sometimes peppery variety of commenters (for which we are thankful) brings life to the posts through their collective remarks and sometimes obscure information and insights on important news of the day. Overall the site remains a forum that welcomes and promotes unconventional news and opinion pieces–those that are anathema to major media and like institutions.
MHB’s development at WordPress.com was restricted in terms of the possibilities for greater interactivity and avenues to make the site more monetarily viable. For example, most “plug ins” that supplement multimedia and are ironically developed for WordPress are not allowed by WordPress.com platforms. Also, while thousands of people read the blog each day very few are willing to contribute either comments or otherwise aid in the upkeep.
Overall the reasons for the change are to continue development and expansion. Despite some aesthetic enhancements MHB will continue to be a place where critical minds can gather to analyze, discuss and share info on controversial phenomena in ways that are elsewhere unwelcome. We hope you’ll stay along for the ride.
What’s the change.
For the existing readership there really won’t be substantial changes. In reality those changes are more pronounced on the editorial/technical end here. MHB’s concern has been that some readers noticed clear alterations in the site and in all honesty these queries deserve to be addressed. Some readers didn’t like the dark background/theme initially used. These concerns have also been addressed in adaptation of a more readable theme. The larger objective is to foster and develop the site’s readership through incorporation of additional multimedia/interactivity, which again won’t impact the everyday MHB reader in any major (or even minor) way.
what changes are you contemplating?
I’m just glad to be able to view the page again; I couldn’t yesterday at all and I have had trouble viewing for several days. Thanks so much!
Sounds good. I love the look of the site today, and am so thankful for JT maintaining this forum for us.
Thanks – much easier to view today.
The site looks great and is very responsive. Very streamlined.
I miss the old masthead though.
Not to cavil, but a very small thing – insignificant really – is the MHB fire logo does not show up on the browser tab.
The pages scroll so easily now. I really like it.
me too. I like the firey pic better than a pile of papers w/a tint.
I think you got it right this time,excellent layout, quick access to top posts and recent comments perfect.
I like it but is there going to be the “like” feature for comments?
I’m just glad the posts are still in my WP reader and that I’ve been getting email updates on new posts. Keep up the great work, James! –Paul
You have no idea how much I pray for you, your family and this site. Thank you Dear Lord for making this happen. We need MHB!! Nice work Tracy.
Thank you for the comments and suggestions. Will continue to work on addressing what can be done re features.
As far as can be ascertained, the ‘likes’ on comments is specific to WordPress.com.
Looks good to me!
The site looks great James, easy reading and so great to hear MHB will progress. Thanks for all you do, your hard work and for fixing the bugs that blocked me from reading. This is a great blog for grabbing insights and little threads of information that serve as connections to other issues needing to be expanded into the bigger picture. Any blog can and must hope for that but MHB accomplishes that. A task well done by all!
Looks much better without the white lettering and gray background, which was hard on the eyes of this desktop user. Thanks for changing it back to black on white background.
peppery variety of commenters
peppery & deplorable!
; D
Indeed!
Nice job, Dr T! I have a blog too (not so popular as yours though!) and went through the very same sort of switch-over last year, for some of the same reasons. WordPress.com is only useful up to a point–and you’re way beyond that by now. Look’s like you’re using wordpress.org now… Hope all goes well, go ahead and plug-in away!