Indivisible Network

Free WordPress hosting from Indivisible Austin

Indivisible Network

Why not Wix?

Indy–advice–

I hear occasionally from groups that are considering, or have already tried, using the heavily-advertised website hosting service “Wix”. It’s a tool, and if it works for you and your budget has the $150/yr (for the minimum plan), then it may be fine. I believe it’s important to have an independent website presence, apart from just a Facebook page or Twitter account, so in my book a Wix website is better than nothing. However. That is an expense, and not just this year, but for every year that anyone wants to keep that site going. And here’s where a big downside of their service becomes clear: you can’t take your site with you when you go. It’s called vendor lock-in, continue reading

Enabling the Gutenberg editor

Indy–announcements–

The release of WordPress 5.0 included an enhanced editor interface called “Gutenberg”. I updated the WordPress software to that version as soon as it was available, as always, but I worried that the sudden and fairly drastic change might catch some of Indivisible.blue’s many users off guard. The solution, as usual for WordPress: a plugin! I installed the Classic Editor plugin, which kept the same old tried & true editor interface in place. If and when site administrators are ready to switch over to the Gutenberg (aka “block”) editor, you can do that via selections under Settings -> Writing in your dashboard. As always, let me know if you have any questions!

Computer Security Essentials for Campaigns (and others)

Indy–how-to–

I saw this interesting post by technical entrepreneur and social critic Maciej Cegłowski recently: What I Learned Trying To Secure Congressional Campaigns. It’s a long account, though entertaining and informative, of his efforts traveling the country, teaching political campaigns about basic computer security practices. As if getting campaigns to meet with you wasn’t hard enough, there’s also the problem of what to tell them. The limiting reagent here is people’s mental capacity for hassle. You have to take pains not to burn through it. It is possible, with whining, to get a campaign to do one or two things. If you catch them early enough, and can visit them multiple times, maybe they will do a third thing. If you continue reading

Indy–micropost, updates–

Caught up on some updates this morning, including WordPress 5.2.1 and a handful of minor plugin and theme releases. Also added a new site for a group in Michigan to kick the tires on!

Security Certificates Available for All Sites

Indy–updates–

This important feature has been available to sites for quite some time, but I’ve neglected to publicize it more: thanks to the excellent Let’s Encrypt project, any site on this network can be configured with a secure TLS certificate, free of charge. A certificate like this is what lets browsers encrypt the data they send and receive with websites. You know it’s in use when the URL begins with https, and your browser also shows a lock icon in the address bar: It’s an important level of protection for users, especially if they’re filling out forms or sending data to your site, and it’s even more important for administrators who are sending their passwords across the web. If you want continue reading

And We’re Back

Indy–Facebook, updates–

…and ready to try to post more regularly here. I’ve spiffed up the theme and tidied up the details of what this is about. Though the network continues to proudly host sites for many groups, this site has looked abandoned for too long. Will I stick to posting better than I did with the three (3) “weekly updates” I posted through all of 2017? Follow along to find out! I’ve become more and more concerned about the power that the giant, corporate social networks have over our lives, information, and discourse, and will probably tend to post about that. For example, this TED talk about Facebook’s role in Brexit: And if you’re interested in that, her behind-the-scenes account of giving continue reading

Two-Factor Authentication Available for All Sites

Indy–announcements–

This has been in place for a while, but I neglected to announce it widely: two-factor authentication is now built in and available to every user of every Indivisible.blue site. Setting this up adds an additional level of security to keep someone from logging in as you. (Here’s a good article explaining two-factor authentication, if you’re not familiar with it.) To enable this for yourself or Indivisible.blue users you administer, start at the “Users” section of your WordPress dashboard. The list there includes a new column that shows whether two-factor is enabled for each user. To change the settings, click “edit” for a user, and then scroll down to the “Two-Factor Options” section. I recommend using “Time Based One-Time Password continue reading

Welcome to Indivisible.blue 2.0

c–announcements–

Though I haven’t kept this blog up to date very well lately, this network of Indivisible sites is still going strong, and still growing. In addition to adding new sites, and keeping the software here humming along smoothly, I have some exciting news to share with you. First is a new partnership between Indivisible.blue and Indivisible Austin. Though a lot of folks have assumed that since Indivisible.blue hosts WordPress sites and is based in Austin, that my own local group’s WordPress site was also hosted here. But as one of the earliest organizations in the nation founded on the Indivisible Guide, their site predated this one. I did work with them to make their popular and attractive theme available to continue reading

Sept. Update: This Network is Now Free

Indy–announcements–

Yes, this project is still a going concern, and yes, it’s easier to say “I’ll write an update every week” than it is to actually do that. But rest assured, software updates and backups have been running right on schedule, regardless of posting regularity. The news I wanted to share with you is that hosting Indivisible group websites on this network will now be provided free of cost. That has been the case from the start, thanks to an early, generous donation and modest expenses. But I’ve decided to make it official, and permanent: Indivisible.blue is free. From the start of this project, I wanted to make sure it would be sustainable over the long years ahead of fighting the continue reading

Weekly Update, 5/7/17

c–updates–

Lots of action in this update (especially since I missed last week’s). Site email – I discovered that automatic email notifications were exceeding my mail service’s quota, which sometimes caused delays in my receiving feedback. That’s been addressed, and I should hear from you more quickly and reliably. Login security – I enabled a small – but I think important – security improvement on the login screen. Normally, if someone enters the wrong login information, WordPress will say either there is no user by that name, or that the password for the (correctly entered) username is wrong. This is a bad security practice, and I’m amazed that WordPress has this as the standard behavior. The reason it’s bad is because continue reading