The seemingly endless technical problems at AAR

On Sunday, after two of the plugins we use for comments and the forums were updated, five months of forums vanished and the forums themselves wouldn’t function properly. I spent all day Sunday trying to fix it but it was beyond my expertise. Finally, on Monday morning, our tech guy answered his email and was able to fix it although it meant losing everything on the site that had been entered in the prior 24 hours. Welcome to my world!

AAR is over 30 years old and, over the years, it’s been switched to different–and at the time better–softwares, hosts, and technical help. Its pride and joy–our extensive database–is full of iffy code and routinely pulls all the site’s memory when several people are accessing it. Ten years ago, we moved the site to WordPress and while many things about that have been good, unfortunately the theme our designer picked has turned out to be not great. To move to another more stable theme would be expensive–it would require reprogramming most of the site. WordPress also relies on plugins and they don’t always play well together. The site is more stable than a house of cards but it’s not as stable as I wish it were.

I realize that it is frustrating for our readers when the site is slow or doesn’t work. I’m sure there are those who have abandoned us because of our technical problems. To those of you who are sticking around, I say a heartfelt thank-you. And to those of you who donate I send my deepest gratitude. Without your support, we wouldn’t be here.

Here’s hoping we have a spell where nothing goes wrong!