Free WordPress hosting from Indivisible Austin
Free WordPress hosting from Indivisible Austin
Our server software here at Indivisible.blue had fallen pretty far out of date, and we want to be in good shape for a big election year, so we’ve just moved everything over to a brand new server, running the latest and greatest. We’ve worked hard to make this move seamless, but if you see anything that’s not right on your site, or have any questions, just let us know!
Not a lot of news around here lately, but we just updated to WordPress 5.7, added the EmbedPress plugin, and updated all the themes and plugins to their latest versions. Thanks to all our sites and users, and keep on organizing!
Many of the sites we host here on Indivisible.blue are full, primary group sites. They serve Indivisible groups in a city, district, or even state. But because we have the ability to create a new site quickly and easily (and for free, not counting domain registration), there have also been a few special-purpose sites set up. The most recent of these is a great example: WhoIsChipRoy.com. The activists behind this site have already been getting the word out about it this primary season, from yard signs (below) to promoting it a candidate forum attended by the Democrats hoping to take on Mr. Roy in TX21 in November. That event’s coverage in Austin’s alt-weekly, the Chronicle (“Dem Candidates Wendy Davis & continue reading
Via the resistance developers at Ragtag, I learned that Fight for the Future is helping provide tools to let you digitally join the climate strike. On their site you’ll find social media resources, banner ads, and lists of other participants. The WordPress plugin listed there is installed and ready to use for all sites on the Indivisible.blue network. Just activate it on the plugins page, and enable the footer and full-page widget settings as you like. Contact me by form or email if you have any questions or run into any problems.
A handful of assorted links to share: Indivisible was the cover story in The Nation last week The Indivisible.blue network remains up-to-date, with the recent WordPress 5.2.3 (it “addressed some security issues and fixed 29 bugs”), as well as all plugins and themes updated. Crooked Media’s Vote Save America and Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight 2020 are teaming up to kick-start her organization’s important voter protection work. Learn more and pitch in at votesaveamerica.com/fairfight2020 We spend a lot of time focused on which Democratic candidate to nominate, but none of this will matter if we don’t focus a hell of a lot more on what may be the greatest vulnerability that Democrats face in 2020: the Republican War on Voting. Here’s continue reading
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!
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 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
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
This past week on Indivisible.blue: I updated to the new WordPress core maintenance release, version 4.7.4. From the release notes: This release contains 47 maintenance fixes and enhancements, chief among them an incompatibility between the upcoming Chrome version and the visual editor, inconsistencies in media handling, and further improvements to the REST API. For a full list of changes, consult the release notes and the list of changes. I installed a new theme (Bento), and a new plugin (Page Builder plugin). I also updated 3 plugins and 1 theme. Lastly, I worked with the patient admins of the Bryan-College Station (TX) site, as we worked through some wrinkles with the security plugin that temporarily locked them out of their site. continue reading