Computers.
Can't live with ’em, can't live without ’em.
Yes, GetReligion went offline yesterday afternoon for reasons that are still mysterious.
I thought it was my fault, seeing as how the disconnect took place an hour or so after I went to the Network Solutions homepage to pay another three years of fees to retain the rights to GetReligion.org and GetReligion.net. Then we vanished and it seemed that our URL was pointing back to TypePad, our home long ago in the early days of the blog.
Well, the Rt. Rev. Douglas LeBlanc was on the West Coast and away from his laptop. So I -- Captain Useless -- was stranded after hours. And on a writing night for the Scripps Howard News Service column, too. Ugh.
Needless to say, the folks at Network Solutions -- the ones in answering-service hell, for starters -- are gifted with the ability to speak in an unknown tongue and I have not been given the gift of translation. Finally, a dear computer-professional friend from West Palm Beach days who now works here in D.C. (I could tell you where, but I'd have to kill you) helped out and, with the right server info from On High this a.m., dug in and Reformed our settings. Yes, there is a reason that R is uppercase.
Or maybe Doug lept in from some zip code out West and healed things. It also appears that Network Solutions was having some problems of their own. Obviously, I am still confused.
Anyway, we are back in business. So, for starters, I would like to call the attention of longtime readers to the post in which I asked your advice on some tweaks to the site. In particular, I would like suggestions about which categories to add and which to remove. World Religions? New Age? New Old Age? Is it time for Mormonism to get its own folder? I always wonder where to put posts about church life and/or worship.
Other suggestions out there? No, we are not ready yet for separate storage areas for Episcopalians and Anglicans. That's coming soon enough, only I would vote to move the Episcopalians back into the Seven Sisters.
Anyway, thanks for the emails of concern. We'll have some fresh posts up soon.