We’re Back!

Sorry for the hold up, but I’ve been on the road all week and couldn’t fix the problem that brought the site down last Friday.

For those of you concerned that enemies of truth, justice, and the American way were at fault, don’t worry.  The problem was one of my own doing.

Thanks again for your patience.  New posts to come shortly.

There won’t be any more posts until late afternoon or early evening.  I’ve got to be in Baltimore today.

How would you like to receive Delmarva Dealings every day that we post, right in your inbox.  It’s easy.

Simply look on the sidebar to your right for the section titled “ENews &Updates”.  Enter your email address and click “GO”.  After verifying your email address, you’ll start receiving daily emails listing the day’s posts with the intro to each.

Our servers were down this morning.  Sorry for any inconvenience.

This is the first time our new hosting company, BueHost, has had such a problem since we signed on.  Therefore, I really can’t complain.  Even the mighty Google’s Blogger service hiccups on a fairly regular basis.

New posts will be following directly.

NOTE: This Post Is STICKY! Newer posts will fall below it until sometime Monday.  Scroll down to find newer content.

We’ve made a few changes!  Some at the request of readers, others because we just felt like it.  In either case, we hope you like them and look forward to your input.

A NEW COMMENTING SYSTEM

At the request of some readers, we have installed a new commenting system.  The biggest change is that all commenters must now register.  Now I know a few of you might not like this, but there are good reasons behind this.

1.  No more waiting for moderation.  Once you have made your first comment under the system and it is approved, you will not have to wait for future comments to be moderated.  They will simply go up automatically.  For the few of you who think that this will allow you to slip in inappropriate comments, forget it.  The system also has a blacklist that will cause the comment to go to moderation if it contains certain words and the comment will simply be sent to spam if other words are used.  Sorry guys – you still can’t use the F-word.

2.  Subscribe to comments.  You can now subscribe to comments for a particular post.  When you leave a comment on a post for the first time there is a little check box to subscribe to that post’s comments.  By checking it, you will receive an email each time someone responds to a post that you have commented on.  This was done at the request of one of our frequent commenters and I thought it was a great idea.  Thanks Chuck!

3. Registration is EASY.  This is much simpler than the standard WordPress registration process.  Simply scroll down the page until you see “REGISTER” down at the bottom of the right sidebar.  Click the “Register” link.  (OR … Click any Log-in Link – the log-in page has a link to the registration page)  A username, valid email address, and password are required.  All other information is strictly voluntary and none of it will ever be shared.  Check your email, click the verification link, and your set for life (or until our database crashes).  Don’t worry, I do frequent backups and our new hosting company does them daily.

NOTE: It’s possible that a couple of you who had previously registered will have to re-register.  However, I’m pretty sure that I didn’t delete anyone who I recognized.

A SLIGHTLY MODIFIED LOOK

We’ve made a few changes to our layout.  Besides the home page, which includes every post in reverse chronological order, you also have the choice of going to a Delaware page, Maryland, etc.  This was done for those few grumpy souls who periodically send me emails saying they don’t want to read any “Delaware stuff”, or “Maryland stuff”, or ‘Virginia stuff” … You get the drift.

Anyway, we’re still trying to work out a few kinks.  The email subscription system (for our daily FeedBurner email) still isn’t working properly, so we’ve added another box to subscribe that does work.  Hopefully we’ll have that bug worked out in a day or two.

CHANGE THE FONT SIZE

Most of us aren’t twenty anymore.  If would help to increase the font size, simply click the “a-” or “A+” icons in the upper right hand corner of each post.

PRINT A POST

Sometime, you might want to print a post and you don’t want to waste ink on all of the stuff around it.  No Problem!  Simply click the printer icon right above the Change Font Size icons in the upper right corner of the post.

SHARE A POST

Ever want to email a particular post to a friend without having to copy and paste a bunch of stuff?  How about an easy way to share on Facebook or Twitter?  At the bottom of each post is an icon that says “Share This”.   Click the link and email it to a friend, send that post to your Facebook Wall, Tweet it, or share it through most other social media channels.

Let us know what you think.  Register.  Check out the new commenting system.  Try sharing a post.  And …

Thanks again for reading Delmarva Dealings.

… Hopefully for More Than a Few Days

Well, after another dosing by some friends, we’re back online.  Hopefully, our latest round of security measures will get us past the Salisbury municipal elections.  It’ just an odd coincidence that this stuff always happens right before an election.

Anyway, thanks again for you patience.

I apologize for not posting the last couple of days.  Some miscreant found a way onto our server and inserted some nasty javascript which was a trojan horse.

It appears that that the problem is fixed.  Again, our apologies.

Everyday we strive to put up content worth reading for those of you who take time out of your busy day to see what we have to say here at Delmarva Dealings. Friday morning, just as I was putting up a couple of morning posts, I suffered a fatal computer crash in my office.

While the problem didn’t affect our servers, I’ve been spending most of my waking hours trying to fix the problem. We’re still working on it.

Posts may be thin for the next day or two, until everything is installed and tested; but we are striving to be up and running today. At least it gave me a reason to install a Linux system alongside, so we shouldn’t have this problem again.

Thanks for your patience.

Hopefully we are done with the upgrade to WordPress v2.3. Sorry for the sporadic posting, but I wanted to get this upgrade done and hopefully prevent some of the problems we’ve encountered during the last few weeks.

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Comment System and most of everything else seems to be running for now. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

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