In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Hello, we’re back, and what happened

tigtog

Nice to be back (ObBritcatchphrase: to see you, nice). Sorry it was for so long, I hope the few of you who saw some updates on Twitter felt reassured.

So what happened? For some arcane reason there are barriers to automating payments from PayPal to our hosting provider, meaning Jill has to do that manually, and currently she’s travelling in India for work and only has sporadic secure internet access. So in the absence of timely payment, our hosting provider suspended our hosting account. Once Jill could securely access PayPal to send some dosh to our hosting provider, then they reinstated our hosting. So that was simple enough.

What’s not so simple is the sustainability of keeping the blog running on the current hosting package, because at the current level of pageviews the advertising is no longer covering our hosting costs. Jill and I are investigating cheaper hosting options for the blog, but it might take us a while to get it all sorted out, because as a consequence of being a blog started way back in 2000 (and for so many years had multiple posts daily), the database is so enormous that the logistics of transferring to another server (especially if we decide to go with wordpress.com or similar) are not as simple as they would be for the average blog. We will keep you informed once we actually have a plan and a timetable.

5 thoughts on Hello, we’re back, and what happened

  2. …at the current level of pageviews the advertising is no longer covering our hosting costs…

    Damn, I’m sorry it’s come to that. Out of curiosity, how many daily views do we normally need to cover those costs? I would reckon around 7,500 based on personal experience, but every WordPress is different…

  4. I’m really sorry to hear that’s the case, though I can’t say I’m surprised- I think despite the heroic efforts of a lot of the authors here, it’s becoming pretty clear that the commentariat is largely gone.

    It’s a shame, really, because I don’t know of many other places for serious discussion of feminist issues online; most seem to be about either ultra-reductive pop-feminism (eg. Jezebel), groupthink shelters for self-righteous teenagers (eg. Tumblr) or terrifying personality cults (eg. Shakesville), if they’re not infested with MRAs and transphobic radfems. Feministe always seemed like somewhere you could have a genuinely good-faith argument about serious issues with smart people, and that’s pretty unique – even if it’s also potentially part of the reason people left.

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