The OC Blog Back Issues Our Mission Contact Us Masthead
Sudsy Wants You to Join the Oregon Commentator
 

Archive for the 'Website' Category

And We’re Back

April 12th, 2007 by Timothy

I apologize to everyone for today’s website outage, we were migrating to a new server. Thanks to Sho for his many years of diligence with this little piece of the web: since 2000 Sho’s been a big part of making sure the OC site looks good and keeps working, and he was a big help getting this blog off the ground on blogger back in 2002. Big up to Mr. Ikeda, even if he does hate me for my whiteness.

Both the domain registration and the hosting have been transferred to me, and I’ll be keeping both paid for in perpetuity or until I can’t afford $4 a month, whichever comes first. Again, sorry for the outage at such an important and busy time of year, but we should be good to go from here on out.

Tinkering

April 5th, 2007 by Timothy

I have installed a new plugin to help with the comments around here. It will automatically close comments on posts after 14 days, so anything older than two weeks can’t be commented on any longer. This should help cut down on the comment spam. It should also cut down on the folks googling up year old stuff from the archive and leaving fresh, new comments.

That is all.

OC Archive Updated

March 29th, 2007 by Ian

The Commentator back issue archive has been updated to include issues released since Hate 2006. Please do let us know if there are any remaining problems or (post Volume 22) missing issues.

The Winter Issue Arrives

February 5th, 2007 by Niedermeyer

It’s the only known cure for Seasonal Affective Disorder… and it’s finally here. The Oregon Commentator’s Winter Double Issue has made it’s online debut, and will be arriving on stands later this week. It’s a Lichtenstein/Comic Art inspired pop nugget, chock full of the Commentator humor, analysis and snark that you’ve come to love. So curl up in front of the fire, with a hot, alcoholic drink of your choice, and beat the winter blahs with the best damn rag on campus.

As always, enjoy the Commentator responsibly!

Upgrading WordPress

January 22nd, 2007 by Ian

Our website has been updated to WordPress 2.1. Other than a slight speed increase, none of the many awesome changes should be noticable by anyone but us. As always, if you see any errors please do report them.

Upgrade Your Web Browser, Cletus

October 23rd, 2006 by Ian

Mozilla Firefox, the only web browser you should be using on Windows, has hit version 2.0. Get the Windows version here and Mac version here. The new feature most users will actually care about is in-line spell checking, but there are a significant number of small-yet-welcome additions and changes.

And for those who don’t value computer security, Microsoft has recently released Internet Explorer 7. IE 7 features such groundbreaking innovations as tabbed browsing (ooh!), RSS feed support (aah!), and a built-in search box (¡increíble!).

Table-Based Layouts are the Way of the Future

June 22nd, 2006 by Ian

I’ve restored the website template, changing a couple of the images and WordPress features in the process. Please reply to this post if you find any problems or inconsistencies with the new design.

Do Not Use Transmit to Upgrade WordPress

June 2nd, 2006 by Ian

’nuff said. Pardon our dust while we piece things back together.

Comments System Upgraded

May 26th, 2006 by Ian

I’ve made a slight change to our comments system in order to help visitors identify comments that are not from who they say they’re from. One of the problems with our comment system is that anyone can enter any username and any email address, so it’s relatively easy for people to pretend to be, for instance, Jared Axelrod. Well, we aren’t removing that ability– anonymous comments are here to stay. But we are enabling people to register on our site and be identified as who they say they are when they post. These users will be delineated by a red asterisk next to their name. So how do you register?

  1. Many systems apparantly recognize our registration emails as spam, so you will first have to temporarily disable any spam filters you may have operating. University users can click here.
  2. Next, click the register link under the Meta section on the right side of the page. Write in the name you wish to be known by and an email address. If possible, use an email address with your name in it so that we can be sure it’s actually you. Your address will remain private and we will never under any circumstances give it to a third party. The only publicly-visible personal information will be your username and your website address (if you specify one.)
  3. Next, check your email. A password will have been sent which you can later change.
  4. Now reenable spam filters.
  5. Finally, click the login link under the Meta section of our website.
  6. After logging in you will be able to post comments without filling in your information every time.

Any “imposter” accounts created will be deleted. If there are any questions, please feel free to reply to this thread or email us.

UPDATE: We’ve received word that some people are not receiving a password through the mail due to the University’s spam filters. If you’ve signed up but not received your password then you should contact us and we’ll give you a generic password that you can change. If you wish to sign up through a University account then first disable spam filtering so that the registration email can go through, then register, then reenable spam filtering. We’re working with our hosting provider to get this resolved, but this should fix things in the meantime.

Dear Everyone,

May 21st, 2006 by Timothy

Please understand the following things:

1) The is the blog of the OREGON COMMENTATOR we are not, in fact, The Student Insurgent.

2) We have covered this purely as newsworthy, we’ve little to say on the content of the cartoons. Personally, I liked Coppertone Jesus, but beyond that found them mostly juvenile and dumb.

3) Before commenting on the relative merits of funding such speech via the incidental fee, please read and understand Rosenberger v. Rector, NEA v Finley, and especially Southworth v Board of Regents. This is at least a decent sample of the case law involved, grok this before mouthing off.

4) If you’d like to evangelize to the Student Insurgent in addition to us, email them or feel free to give them a ring.

The Management Would Like To Lighten The Mood

May 17th, 2006 by Timothy

In the midst of all this cartoon nonsense, things have gotten a bit serious around here. Be sure to check out our comments section for some lovely trolling (Hi guys!). I especially like the “JS Mill would’ve spit in your face, you pig” comment by “ray”. Quite insightful.

Thusly, I think it’s high time for a useless filler post to lighten the mood. Among the 1486 key phrases that our lovely cpanel has tracked, there are a few wonderous gems. Most are variants of “Oregon Commentator” or “Insurgent” with something about “Jesus Cartoons” tossed in for good measure. This is unsurprising, as the most recent installment of As Campus Turns has brought out yet another group of students and non-students who just can’t quite get their mind around simple concepts like viewpoint-neutrality and freedom of expression. But, friends, some of the phrases, documented below, are befuddling in their ingenuity and strangeness. So, below I have picked some of my favorites.

Rebecca Newell Nude
cinco de mayonnaise (#2, actually)
how to thank god by giving me this opportunit to work for t charm
why did you kill me mommy?
Gabe Bradley vagina
brett wheat-simms
total net worth uk us japan france
indonesian girlfriend
sideways vagina
what does v.o. mean in a whiskey

Welcome Web Denizens!

April 28th, 2006 by Timothy

As Ian noted below, Total Choice has gotten us back up and running. He’s also provided a new link to the Insurgent .pdf. The file is unfortunately large (9 megs and change) and all the excess traffic sucked up all of our bandwidth in a matter of days. Our usage generally runs about 2-5 gigs a month, this episode spiked it to 10.63 as of this morning, with more on the way I’d guess. To keep us up and running, even with the no-charge doubling of our hosting for the rest of the month (Thanks Total Choice!), we needed to cut down the size of files going across the server.

To that end I’ve replaced the Insurgent .pdf that was hosted on the OC site with a .pdf that says “HOTLINKING IS THEFT. STOP STEALING.” After I get off of work today I’ll update it to include something a little more polite, and the new URL for the “controversial” issue of The Insurgent. Again, I apologize for the inconvienience, but the website needs to stay up and a 461k file is a lot safer for us than one that’s 9 megs.

That said, thanks to everyone who’s been linking to us. Ian did a great job putting together the Insurgent issue for the web, and we certainly appreciate the attention here at the OC Blog. If you’re new, take a stroll through the archive, read a back issue or two, have a drink, do some coke off of Stevie Nicks, kick your feet up, and relax. And, just FYI, we’re far more Reason than we are NRO.

UPDATE: Rude .pdf replaced with this one (and it’s only 23k!)

Bandwidth Issues

April 27th, 2006 by Ian

I apologize for our earlier downtime tonight. This morning we were using 44% of our 10gb monthly bandwidth allotment. By 9:30 PM, we were at 110% of our quota and our hosting provider promptly restricted access. We’re back up for the moment and the Insurgent .pdf is now being hosted at a different location.

Recent Comments List

April 19th, 2006 by Ian

As you can see on the sidebar, I’ve re-implemented the recent comments list that we had back when we were using Movable Type. Also, the archive is finally updated.

A Few Items

April 3rd, 2006 by Timothy

First of all, to commenter “Nate”, I apologize. In an effort to curb douchiness, well, let’s just say I upgraded my status from bag to nozzle. Having exchanged some email with the more level-headed folks who also post here, I’m going to just own up and say I did the wrong thing. It’s been known to happen with shocking regularity. So, I’m sorry for that, I’ll be leaving comments alone in the future. Email me this permalink if I ever forget it, eh? And feel free to be snarky.

That brings me to item number two, the comments policy. In short, there will be no comments policy. The Commentator reserves the right to remove things we can all agree shouldn’t be posted: actual spam, nazi propaganda, racist bull, links to Barry Manilow songs, etc, but beyond that consider this the official reestablishment of an “open and unmoderated” policy. WordPress automatically moderates anything with more than two links in it, I (or somebody else) will probably get around to approving those every so often, but I can’t make any promises on timeliness.

Anyway, that’s that, I’ll be seeing you. Probably not, really, but you know.