Please Help Put SoapBlox on Sure Footing

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.