Hopefully you’re reading this on the new WordPress template, which should be loading faster and looking cleaner than the antiquated Movable Type version. There’s a navigation bar for browsing, two buttons at the top of every post for sharing, and a couple of other smaller structural changes. The frontpage has been totally revamped to make it easier to browse multiple posts. Under the hood Mere Rhetoric has a totally new permalink structure, with the random numbers having been replaced by intuitive post names. If you’re still getting the old layout – or more likely if you’re getting a single column with no color or background – try cleaning your cache. If that doesn’t work please give me a heads up via either email or IM.
There are still a couple elements that need to be added and some links that might still be broken. Apache’s mod_rewrite plus a few WordPress plugins should be redirecting all the old links but something might have fallen through the cracks. All of that will get cleaned up over the next few days. Hopefully.
One thing that hasn’t changed – and a situation that’s actually gotten more acute in the last few weeks – is that donations are badly needed and greatly appreciated. Citizen journalism differs in a lot of ways from legacy journalism, but one of the most noticeable is that it’s totally unpaid. It becomes particularly noticeable every time a bill from my hosting company comes in.
I don’t want to have to post one of those widgets where there’s a goal every month and there’s a bar tracking how much people have donated. The indelicacy of the guilt-soaked pitch aside, imagine how depressing it would be if the bar just stayed empty week after week. Heartbreak. But the point is that I could seamlessly install that widget – or any other – into since the new WordPress backend can seamlessly add them. Shiny.
So please hit the discretely-placed and modestly-sized tip jar at the top of the sidebar.
Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Lighter Side
* Robots
* Stupid
