Hope to be 100% in a few hours.
Surprisingly, it all seems to be working okay. Even the wiki, which I was certain would break.
If you notice anything broken, leave a comment, or email __ask__ (you know the symbol) __johnaugust__ (dot) __com__.
Meta
Stupid MySQL server. Be less crash-y.
And suddenly, we’re up. Honestly, we could have probably been up earlier if I hadn’t mucked around with some things. If the site goes down again over the weekend, don’t despair. Why not see WALL-E?
Off-topic tweaks
I’ve made some tweaks to [Off-Topic](http://johnaugust.tumblr.com), including adding comments. For those who never click over there, Off-Topic is largely a list of things I find amusing and/or interesting, including a lot of videos.
The section is experimental, with the explicit goal of trying new things that are prone to failure. It’s not even hosted on the same server as the rest of the site. It’s a [Tumblr](http://tumblr.com) blog with a lot of CSS hackery to make it resemble the rest of the site, and now a comment system powered by [Disqus](http://disqus.com).
The new comment system is actually a lot slicker than the built-in comments used in the main site. But slick often equates with trouble-prone, so we’ll see if it’s useful and stable.
Gravatars
For the last week, you may have noticed little pictures in the comments section. They are called avatars, and they’re hosted by a service called [Gravatar](http://gravatar.com/).
If you’d like one, you can [register](http://site.gravatar.com/signup) and upload an image. ((Note that it sometimes takes a few minutes for newly-uploaded images to show up, so don’t panic if it doesn’t register right away.)) It’s free and painless. Conveniently, the same picture will show up any blog that uses the Gravatar system, which will likely be a growing number, since the WordPress.com folks just [bought the company](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/17/automattic-acquires-gravatar/).
I debated for several weeks whether or not to use them. Avatars feel a little social-networky, which this site certainly isn’t. But we get a lot of comments — sometimes 80+ — and being able to put a “face” with a name helps a lot. Also, I tend not to remember the names of people who post, but with photos, frequent commenters stand out.
The gravatars are a trial-basis thing. A couple of weeks from now, I might switch them off if I find they’re more annoying than useful. But feel free to use this comment thread to test them out, and offer any opinion on the issue.