SoapBlox

As a group, we're seeing a lot of interest in different platforms for news sites, and general issues about Software as a Service providers. Some recent developments are making it clear that a little caution in choosing a provider is in order, as many sub-par providers are having trouble dealing with their own success and providing sufficient infrastructure.

One example has been the SoapBlox platform. SoapBlox is a very nice turnkey platform, primarily used by progressive political web sites.  A short while back, one of the SoapBlox servers crashed, and the one-man-shop owner made a dramatic announcement that he was throwing in the towel and was going to drop his service.  This turned out to be a rash reaction to a long-term financial struggle for the service, but it threw the progressive blogging community into a tizzy over the possibility of losing a favored platform. A big fundraising effort took place, raising money to fund the company and to improve its infrastructure (backups, anyone??). 

A large part of the U.S. progressive blogging infrastucture was hacked overnight and is currently down or defaced.  Many of the blogs in the 50-State Blog Network are hosted on the SoapBlox platform.  At least one of the SoapBlox servers was hacked overnight, and the sites hosted on that server have been defaced or are down currently.  This includes sites such as

Blue Hampshire
Blue Jersey
Blue Mass Group
MN Progressive Project
My Left Wing (site loads w/o diaries)
Never in our Names
Pam's House Blend
Swing State Project
West Michigan Rising

Personally I have always thought that having large amounts of the progressive infrastructure hosted with one small company was a mistake, which is why we've developed Uppity Wisconsin on it's own open-source platform, Drupal.

Our condolences go out to the various sites that are down, and we hope they'll recover soon.