Tag: SoapBlox

Last Tuesday night, before I went to bed, I noticed that I couldn’t access the Swing State Project. I figured it was a temporary hiccup that would clear itself up before long. On Wednesday morning, though, as I’m sure every SSP reader noticed, the site was still inaccessible.

A post at SoapBlox, whose software powers this site and many others, sent my heart through my chest: Hackers had gained access to the servers and had apparently wiped out untold reams of data. Two years of SSP posts, diaries, comments, jokes – all gone. It was worse than my worst nightmare, because I never imagined anything like this.

Fortunately – extremely fortunately – after a few hours of frantic behind-the-scenes scrambling, sites started coming back online, including SSP. We can’t say for sure just yet, but mercifully, our archives look to be intact. Still, it was a truly terrible morning.

And it came about because we’d been asking too much of one man, Paul Preston, for whom SoapBlox was and is a labor of love that, of necessity, has to come after his day job. However, BlogPAC has stepped up and put forth a detailed plan for ensuring SoapBlox’s future security and stability.

Of course, this sort of thing takes money. BlogPAC’s plan will cost $17,400 to implement. While I’d always prefer to ask you to donate to Democratic candidates for office, this too is a worthy cause.  Over 100 progressive blogs rely on SoapBlox, which offers critical community-building features found on no other blogging platform. In particular, only SoapBlox provides, out-of-the-box, the user diaries which separate ordinary blogs from true communities.

I love what we’ve built here at SSP and I couldn’t be prouder. As I’ve often said, the biggest and best part of our success comes from having a dedicated and enthusiastic group of readers, commenters and diarists. While Swing State could surely move to another software platform if we absolutely had to, I know things would just not be the same.

It goes without saying things are tough economically, so I know this is not an ideal time for an ask. But if you can spare a few bucks to put SoapBlox back on surer footing, we’d be exceptionally grateful. Thank you.

UPDATE: Non-U.S. readers can donate via PayPal (click on the button below). Paul informs us that so far $50 has come through via PayPal, which means we are still about $350 short of our goal. If you’d like to see a list of some of the concrete changes already taking place at SoapBlox, check out this post.

Many people who read Swing State Project have never heard of Soapblox. It’s an “inexpensive, community-building content management platform developed by Paul Preston and currently used by over 100 progressive blogs,” including this one and several of my other favorites: Open Left, La Vida Locavore, and Progressive Blue.

The Iowa blog Bleeding Heartland, where I do most of my writing, is among the two dozen state community blogs for Democrats that use Soapblox.

This week hackers got into Soapblox and wreaked havoc with some of the servers, temporarily forcing several blogs off-line, including Swing State Project.

Preston has always charged low monthly fees to make the platform accessible for progressive bloggers, allowing many new community blogs to get going in the past few years.

If you appreciate this and other community blogs, the number one thing you can do to keep them going is to help BlogPAC save Soapblox.

Chris Bowers gives some background in this diary and explains what Soapblox needs “to become safe and secure once again.”

He has set up a special ActBlue page to raise money for Soapblox. They need $17,400 to complete the security measures.

On a related note, BlogPAC has done wonderful work supporting progressive change. For that reason, I have donated my share of the Bleeding Heartland advertising revenues to BlogPAC since I started writing there nearly two years ago.

In addition to raising money for Soapblox, BlogPAC is helping Tom Geoghegan for Congress in Illinois’s fifth district (the seat vacated by Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel). You can read more about Geoghegan here. If you can spare a few extra bucks in this tough economy, please consider throwing them his way.  

Paul (aka pacified) is the creator of the SoapBlox blogging platform – ie, the software which powers this site and many others, such as our friends Blue Hampshire, Burnt Orange Report, and many more. Paul is in the midst of working on some new SoapBlox features and is asking users for feature requests. So if you have any, please head over to this thread and fire away.

Also, Paul is taking SoapBlox open source and is looking for Java developers who want to help make this happen. If you are interested in getting involved, check out this thread and also this one.