The Wrack: website

Just a few minutes after we sent out our email newsletter asking readers to RSVP for this weekend's events via Facebook, the social networking site became unavailable. Was it just a coincidence, or were you all inviting so many of your friends to Punkinfiddle or EcoSports Day that the FB servers couldn't stand the strain?

In late January I asked our facebook fans "Will the groundhog see its shadow?"

February second has always been a favorite of mine, but this year my query was dually inquisitive. Yes, I wondered if this wimpy winter would get serious before being over, but I also wanted to know if the new wellsreserve.org would be on display by then. Or if it would remain under ground for another six weeks.

2/2 — Clear and bright. Website work continues.

Now, well short of March 16, we've stirred from hibernation. Yes, 11 more days would make it more perfect, but we'll ease into the site, work out the kinks, start to really stretch, then poke our nose above ground, reintroducing ourselves to the wonders around us.

This will be the last blog entry at laudholm.org.

We began this experiment in late 2005 as an attempt to get news and information out to members and supporters more quickly. Four years and nearly 200 entries later, we can see that we have largely succeeded.

Ten years after first setting foot onto the worldwide web, Wells Reserve and Laudholm Trust recently strode into a major redesign of our websites. We hope the result has caught your attention.

Late last week, our webhost moved several of our databases, including the ones that hold this weblog and the Wells Reserve Community Forum, to new servers that are physically closer to their web servers. That's a good thing. The databases (and our websites) should be faster and less prone to problems since our traffic won't have to travel all over their network.

Unfortunately, when the databases were moved to the same database server from multiple servers, some of our configuration information had to change. As a result, our blog and forums were down over the weekend. Sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused.

Laudholm Trust is adding features to our website that will help members stay abreast of our work on behalf of coastal environments, as well as the latest information about activities at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve.

Please let us know what you think, either by commenting here or by communicating with us in person, by phone, or by email.

This was the first blog entry at laudholm.org.