When can we blog again?

This past week we’ve been receiving messages via facebook and e-mails… and for those that know us… a few phone calls.

All these folks are asking a common question: “When can we blog again on Autisable?”

These folks have stories to share, things to get off of their mind.   But more importantly, they have a message to discuss about Autism.

It’s been awhile since we’ve done a proper update as to where we are with the site, and so here are some updates…

Autisable is currently owned by Xanga.com, Inc.  out of New York City.   This is being mentioned on a regular basis over the past couple of years because of how significant the changes are going to be in the near future.

Right now, our website is currently located on the Xanga servers.    We are in the process of spinning off from Xanga completely.   This means that our website will be on new servers.

We’ve already secured a new ‘physical’ home for Autisable, and are working on what is now the BETA site.

The goal is to get the BETA site up and running, and then ‘flip the switch’ to the new site/location when we have most of the functionality on the BETA site ready.

One of the major points of functionality on Autisable was the ability for people to have their own account so they can blog.

Although we highlight hundreds bloggers and non-profits worldwide, we do have a small core group of bloggers right here on Autisable!

The challenge with the old platform that we were using was our inability to really highlight people who blogged exclusively on Autisable.   Everyone we highlighted was thrown together on our main page.   And because our main page was a basic blog template from the folks at Xanga – many folks thought Autisable was just another Autism blog – or an aggregator site (which to some extent we were… but we are so much more then that).   With the BETA site, we want to showcase non-profits, bloggers, and more…..

Another challenge with the old platform were spam account creation.   With the new platform and us having the ability to better monitor accounts, this negative exploit of spam accounts is brought under control.   With the new platform, we have some serious site security upgrades in this area as a by product.

Now – to answer the question of when can we blog again….

A few key facets to Autisable’s functionality have to be addressed in order to make this happen:
1 – the appropriate settings on Autisable have to be made to allow for multi-site use.   Since Autisable is going to be powered by WordPress, there is the ability to set the site up to allow for muli-site.    This would allow for such things as ‘username.autisable.com’ to be put back into place.
2 – addressing how multi-sites would be managed appropriately
3 – how multi-site accounts will be able to connect with each other.  We want people to be able to blog on the site, and quickly find others who blog – read/comment/ and subscribe to each others blogs…. just like it used to be on the old platform.

The good news is that we know WHAT needs to be done and HOW we are going to go about it.   Over the next few weeks we will be diving into the implementation of this functionality and making sure things are set up correctly.

Our goal is to have things ready for the switch sometime in January.

Thank you for your encouragement and support as we push to make this happen.

Blessings,
The Autisable Team

Joel Manzer

Husband to an Amazing Wife, and Father of a Child with Autism. Founding Lead Editor of this site called Autisable. Click here to join Autisable!