Freethoughtblogs was first born out of conversations between myself and Ed Brayton in 2010-2011, when we were maximally disgusted with the direction the atheist movement was taking. So we set up our own little domain and tried to recruit fellow humanist/secular writers to fill up our pages. That was mostly successful, with a few setbacks now and then.
Then in 2020, Ed, who was suffering with a chronic illness, checked himself into a hospice and died, peacefully. He passed along all the logistical info for the website to me, we thought, so I had the account and password for our domain host, Bluehost. We kept cruising along.
Then Bluehost made a security enhancement: when I logged in, they would send a verification code to Ed, to make sure nothing underhanded was going on. Ed did not reply, for obvious reasons. So we can’t actually change anything about the domain, which again, was OK. We didn’t need to.
But then, Bluehost needed us to pay for their services. They sent notifications and bills to poor dear Ed, who didn’t care, and didn’t contact me in my dreams or anything, so those bills were unpaid. Ooops. Two weeks ago, they pulled the plug on freethoughtblogs.com. And no doubt sent an informative announcement to Ed, who didn’t notice.
So for the last two weeks, I’ve been shouting down phone lines and internet cables with the simple information that “ED IS DEAD, PLEASE UPDATE THE CONTACT INFORMATION AND FIX THE SITE”, and they would send me all these long legal forms that I would fill out with all the information that I had and send it back to them, and they would ignore me, and the next day I’d get into a conversation with a chatbot who would obliviously send me the same requests all over again.
Then this morning, a breakthrough. I didn’t try to update the information at all. I didn’t explain that Ed was dead. I just said, “I understand our bill is past due, here is my credit card number, can I please pay everything off?” and they said “Yes, we would be delighted to take your money” and they did, and they pushed a button, and our service is restored.
The only drawback is that freethoughtblogs is a company that is still officially owned by a ghost. No one cares as long as we the living pay the bills.
I paid up for five years in advance, so remind me in 2031 that I, or someone, needs to generously cough up a few bucks in Ed’s name.
For now, we can resume slapping words on a wall.
I am really sorry that you had to go through all this, and offer my grateful thanks for all that you do to keep this platform running.
I’m happy you were able to get that all straightened out.
PZ, thank you for resurrecting Freethoughblogs.
This is one of my favorite websites and I and we need an oasis of real Thought in these dismal times when our own fascist government is attacking us.
Welcome back to the living.
Just in time to watch the war against Iran start.
Well done and welcome back! You’ve been much missed.
And here I thought the hamsters had died.
You’re back up!
“And there was much rejoicing.. yay.”
;-)
My morning ritual to see the state of the World: Read Political Wire and Freethoughtblogs. Both head guys (Myers and Goddard) got hurt, sites disappeared, and I have struggled in darkness for weeks. And today, finally, the light is back in all the dark corners. Thank you for being alive and keeping kicking.
The site was here the whole time, you just needed to know the IP quad to access it.
Bluehost could try some other bullshit that takes it down entirely, though. PZ should consider running an onion service as a backup or a status page, if only because Tor is fairly censorship-resistant by design, and it’s harder for a Bluehost-like entity to make an onion service go down.
So where’s the donate button?
Thank you very much for going through all of that to get the site back up PZ. I hope a solution is found for the need to transfer the site from Ed.
Pharygula is the last bookmark left in my atheist folder I’ve had since 2006. You have informed, shaped and moderated my views on a lot of things. Thank you for bringing it back up :)
Of all the phrases to use today…
Wikipedia – Dead Hand
Some years ago, one of my favorite sites, called Cute Overload, simply went dark without explanation. It never returned. Fans, like myself, were concerned, at first, and then devestated when it finally sunk in that it was gone. It was sometime later that I learned the owner became bored, or something, and just decided to pull the plug. Clearly, her right, but a simple good bye would have been appreciated. The past few weeks were giving me that same vibe. Suffice it to say, I am greatly relieved that the death of FreeThoughtBlogs was greatly exaggerated. Congratulations on its resurrection.
Welcome back. Hail Ed (just to be safe)
Ed was a friend with whom I had entertaining and edifying online and real-life interactions. I miss him. I would be delighted to contribute to his legacy. Tell me how.
Glad to see you back. I was concerned especially with slactivist owner dealing with a broken computer so not having updated for a month.
BTW there is a legal concept of mortmain (dead hand) to bedevil law students and lawyers
Great to see you back, PZ.
Great sense of relief that the blog is back. I had other fallbacks, like the Discord server and non-Pharyngula sites, but there was this lingering empty feeling the past week. Thanks for going through the frustrations and hassles of sorting this out for now PZ.
Finally! Thanks for getting it back up. I felt lost without my daily fix.
Wait – the Evil Cat™ (having found it too easy to destroy a mouse) has been totally exonerated??!?
One of those hands only has three fingers!
“Paging Giorgio Tsoukalos”
IT’S ALIVE!
Glad you’re back and the hiatus was an admin issue only.
Dear PZ,
I was more concerned with your recovery from the accident, but, I am so glad you got the site back up. I’m sorry you had to go to so much hassle, again. blue host is a miserable hosting company.
Take care of yourself.
Also, you put in so much effort to communicate to us and to allow us to communicate, too. I want to help defray to cost of the hosing and would like to send you some info and a usps money order (we had a company disclose our personal info, so we don’t conduct financial transactions online). Can I send it to your residence address?
Thanks again.
I’m going to echo what others have said already.
Where is the donate button?
I donate to my causes every year.
The animal shelter.
I always give to Wikipedia because they are worth it and they always tell me I’m part of the 2%. At least that is a 2% of the population worth being a member of.
Etc..
Thanks, PZ.
All this time I assumed something had been tweaked to finally block me from accessing the site on my outdated browser. So it was actually a nice surprise to try one more time and get through! Sorry for the hassles on your end though. Welcome back!
Larry @13 – A fellow who had contributed to Cute Overload, created a replacement site, https://cutetropolis.com/. It’s similar, but different, but also serves the same grim-times palate-cleansing function. His comments are often very, very funny.
Thank you PZ
@12
Holy crap, Marcus tried to warn us!
(Notice how when there’s a hiatus like this, the trolls all disappear? The only commenters are people who actually care about the blog. The trolls (they know who they are – hai capt’n! hai weeaboo!) have decamped looking for more fertile fields. Don’t get me wrong, they’ll be back. But only when they’re satisfied they have sufficient prey to feed on.)
What a royal PITA! Glad you’re back.
At first I thought my browser must have gone wonky. Tried another browser, same result. Then I’m wondering if religious zealot hackers nuked the site, or maybe you got hijacked with ransomware? Must have Googled “what happened to Pharyngula,” or “what happened to freethought blogs,” 20 times, with absolutely nothing in the results. Then I finally started accepting the fact that this site was just gone. I decided to quit trying. Saw you were back in my WP feed.
All that might say more about me than I wanted to know ;)
Thank you so much for all the hard work to get the site back up! I’ve been checking every day; it’s just a great start to my day, to read your blog and others as well. I mean, it was also fun to watch your videos, but FTB has a special place in my heart. ❤️
Thanks, PZ.
Great to see we’re back. It just occurred to me, wasn’t there a Pharyngula IRC channel way back when? Does that still exist?
The problem, as noted, was with the domain: ,
freethoughtblogs.com, as a domain record. The server itself was up and running and accepting connections as usual; it was just that any attempt to resolve the domain resulted in not getting an IP address for the server, but rather a parking domain server.It took me a while to realize this, but once I did, I uncommented my saved IP addresses for the server in my hosts file, and I was able to access the server.
For anyone who is interested and has the technical knowledge to either configure their own hosts file or their local DNS server, those addresses are:
104.21.234.50 freethoughtblogs.com
104.21.234.51 freethoughtblogs.com
Welcome back FtB, you were missed.
Phew. I had other sites go dead to me at the same time, related to the fact that I use a Firefox 115 (esr) on a Windows 7 computer (yes, I am a dinosaur). Firefox just did their very last update, and some websites have removed it as a valid browser.
I figured it was similar here (though my fixed didn’t work). I’m just glad the problem was on your end, and fixable (and fixed!).
Glad you all are back!
I think Ed would get a real kick out of his ghostly overlording of us all.
Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.
I say it will end with us all trapped on hold for an automated support line, desperately attempting to convince someone to allow us to pay to keep the lights on.
Like a church?
@ ^ Rich Woods : Liek NorthKorea even?
.***
Ed Brayton was such a good human being.
I learnt so much from his blog and loved that. I still miss ‘Despacthes from the Culture Wars’ and sometimes wonder what he think and say if he were still around now.
I’m so glad Pharyngula is back and the other FTB blogs too. Do read them pretty much daily & stillelarn from and enjoy doing so.
Thanks, glad you’re back. This failure to take account of the unfortunate fact that people die seems to be remarkably common among commercial organisations. The Grauniad’s consumer column regularly reports cases of widow(er)s and children of the deceased struggling to close accounts, or transfer them.
So I go away for a few days and do not trouble the authorities and bingo! all is well again. Any more problems, just ask and I’ll go on vacation again. It’s a tough assignment but someone has to.