Site update
Issandr El Amrani
If you're seeing this post it means the migration from self-hosted Wordpress installation to Arabist.net's new home at Squarespace has taken place without problems. This move will enable me to concentrate more on posting and less on technical maintenance, and we hope to introduce some new sections focusing on books and reviews soon. There will inevitably be some kinks to work out, so please be patient.
On another note, at the beginning of 2010 our sub-site Arabawy finally broke off altogether. Hossam, an ardent open-source advocate, wanted to stay with Wordpress. Good luck to him at Arabawy.org, where he'll continue giving some of the best information on the left and labour movements in Egypt, and some of the most abysmal Scandinavian heavy metal videos. I'm glad Hossam — whom I spent over a year trying to convince blogging was worth it — has become such an ardent advocate of social media and web technologies.
Reader Comments (9)
Not quite sure if it mattered, but I'm a reader from America, and the old site was always a super slow loader. So... cool.
Yes - that was one of the main reason for the move, it should be faster for everyone.
Not to be an a**hole about it, but that is the beauty of opensource know-how. It is slow because you do not know how to make it fast. As annoyed as I am by the transition to whatever "special" crap Squarespace uses, I think this website puts out way to much valuable information to judge it on platform alone. I cannot to see more literary content. Keep up the good work.
Meant cannot wait to see more literary content. Good luck.
Hey, I like the idea of open-source, but unless someone is going to be my sysadmin I'd rather pay professionals to do the work. Squarespace is limiting, and sometimes limiting works precisely because you can get tempted by wading in too deep for your own good. I had too many outages, too much bad support for web hosting companies and too many hours of wading through PHP code that I barely understand to make it worth it. I wouldn't diss any platform because it's open OR because it's closed, it's the value you find in it that makes it worth it. Hopefully we'll now put some of that time to creating more of the content you like!
I find this new version cleaner and faster too. Thanks.
Your post on the bloggers arrested last Friday disappeared. Any news?
Congrats for the change !!, site loads super fast now.
Maybe you could have tried Wordpress.com, they take care of the hosting too, but anyway and again congrats !
Nice choice of image for this post.
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