Greetings all CA readers. Sometime in the next two or three weeks, Canadian Atheist will be moving from its longtime hosting provider to a new host.
The new host comes with a ton of benefits, not the least being that it’s about 1⁄3 the cost. We’ll finally get that shibby green lock in your browser’s address bar, which is more than just window-dressing. Canadian Atheist has been hacked several times, more than once so badly it was essentially destroyed. The “s” in “https” stands for “secure”, and that, along with some other tools I’ll be using (OCSP stapling, Content Security Policy level 3, and a tight set of cipher suites) should go a long way toward making the blog much more secure. (Unfortunately, we’ll still be using WordPress for the foreseeable future, which is notorious for its security issues. Taking care of that is a long-term plan.)
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve already hinted at several of the new features we’ll be getting, but one I think I haven’t mentioned before is that we’ll have an archive. I will be using that to restore some of the pre-2014 stuff that was lost. (As much as I can. I don’t think any backups were ever saved, so some stuff is going to be lost forever.)
Okay, but enough about what we’ll be getting after the move. Right now I want to discuss what’s going to be happening during the move.
Unfortunately, because of the way I’ll be doing it, it won’t be possible to transition transparently. Which is a tech-y way of saying: You’re going to see some downtime.
How much downtime? I can’t say. It depends on several factors that are out of my control, like the time it takes to transfer domains from one provider to another, and the propagation time of the new DNS info through the network. It also depends on some factors that are in my control, like the time it takes for me to set up the new host, and to rebuild the current CA structure on it.
The bottom line is: Canadian Atheist could be down for a week or more. I’ll try to aim for much, much less than that – hopefully not even a full day. A day or two is a reasonable estimate.
During CA’s downtime, you can follow our Twitter feed at @CanAtheist for status updates.
If all goes more smoothly than I dare to hope, you won’t even notice the change (except for the new green lock in the address bar).