by Frank Schroth

Slowly but surely MTM is getting back to normal after experiencing three technical problems over the past several weeks. We appreciate your patience. You will notice that the old layout has been restored. 

The feedback I received was mixed regarding the more simple look and feel. That was put in place to correct layout problems that were caused by a software upgrade. There are several pieces of software that power the site and they need to be “compatible.” Suffice to say the upgrade was not compatible. All the bits are now up to date and working happily which is all more than you need to know. The majority of comments I received favored the old layout and so it is restored.

A second issue experienced last week was all the content disappearing. This too was a compatibility issue – a rather severe one, that. Those widgets you see (e.g. search box, event calendar etc) also need to get along. The event calendar was the culprit and so you will notice that has not yet been restored.

The initial problem was with an extremely high amount of spam comments flooding the server of my hosting provider. So much that they shut me down until I dealt with it. Two steps were taken. I deleted thousands of comments most of which but not all were spam. Some legitimate comments were lost in the clean up. So it goes. In addition, comments were closed for posts more than 5 days old and another level of verification was added. Folks posting a comment will now need to solve a very simple arithmetic problem. Not a big deal. If you get stuck you can use your computer’s calculator. Comments are a nuisance. They are also an important part of an interactive news service that provides the public an opportunity to be heard on issues that matter to them.

I appreciate the continued support and interest of all.