… “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

~ Robert Frost

2020 has been a tumultuous year for all of us.  As the eve winds down we are given to considering everything that has taken place. We are challenged; perhaps our center is askew; perhaps our faith holds a new perspective, or perhaps our exhaustion weighs heavy as we rush turning to the next chapter…. hoping, praying for a better tomorrow.

It seems a lifetime ago; a time of carelessness taken for granted; and yet, I remember it as if it were yesterday.  Driving North to see family and randomly saying “let’s just turn left in Ohio & head west.” It seemed randomly nuts at the time; however, a decade later as I held her hand & gave permission to say goodbye, I was blessed to have made that decision.

Regardless of what tomorrow brings, we have choices.  A new year’s perspective:

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Steadfast doesn’t mean when it’s easy; the term has no meaning when things are working according to our own convenient interests. Steadfast means standing strong when it’s challenging, difficult and unnerving. Just as courage is not the absence of fear, rather it is taking action despite being fearful; so too is steadfast a decision.

Often when things are disconcerting, we retreat to the place where we are comfortable. However, steadfast is unwavering despite the obstacles and difficulties. When we don’t hold the words to comfort the grieved, yet we show up and sit quietly just to eliminate loneliness, that is a steadfast commitment. When we see adversity on the face of another, and we choose to engage with our time and comfort, that is a steadfast decision.

When CTH was formed, it was a small assembly of misfits who were not fearless, but brave enough to be comfortable within our discomfort; and we knew we had to look deeply at the issues which face us. We remind ourselves that ‘truth has no agenda‘ & truth exists despite our feelings of the subject matter. The core elements of CTH are based on this principle of remaining steadfast amid the face of adversity, national, political or even personal.

The CTH armory is insightful, wise and often purposeful, but this assembly is foremost a fellowship.  A steadfast decision to stand together and figure out how all of these intense subjects, issues and events interact, influence and ultimately impact our lives.

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It is amazing to consider that less than 6 weeks ago CTH was notified of the deplatforming of our corner of the internet.  However, what is even more amazing is how fortunate we were to find a group of people, with a very specific set of skills, who knew exactly how to counter these efforts of Big Tech…  And they pulled-off an amazingly stable website architecture in two weeks.

CTH is thankful beyond imagining. Your support in this endeavor is cherished and appreciated.

We are roughly three weeks into the stabilizing phase of the site construct and while there is a lot of work ahead, the outcome is remarkable.   Here’s some updates for readers and users:

What we have created, and are continuing to build-out, is something new in the landscape of web-hosting and websites.  CTH is running stable on a platform where no user data is ever captured.  Not a single element of user privacy is controlled by any internal architecture.  Meaning, there’s not a single element of your CTH engagement that is not controlled by you, 100%.  In the modern era of websites, this is a paradigm shift.

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Stop for a minute.  Stop and breathe….

Stop and sit in peace… Just stop, and join together.

All around us is this great sense of foreboding ugh, and it’s not just connected to an election; it’s everything.  Everything is weird, everything is not comfortable, everything is less joyful and requires an intensity of thought just to carry-on ordinary events.

Christmas, the day we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is a week away; and yet everything around us seems less focused on joy – and more focused on what joy we are missing.  At the heart of that anxiety is this sense of foreboding. A sense of fear and worry; a sense of trepidation.

In our daily lives we encounter ordinary disconnects now. Masked faces are disconnecting our sense of interaction, our human connection. Unfortunately, and as a natural outcome of these challenges, we are accepting disconnect and creating a void inside ourselves. At the same time COVID is physically disconnecting people from their family.  Many families will not gather this year to celebrate the joyous event of Christ’s birth.  Many parents and grandparents will not see their adult children for the first time in years, perhaps ever.

Amid all of this flux and ugh, even simple tasks like decorating the Christmas tree somehow feels, senses, seems less joyful.  Perhaps financial worry stems the joy in shopping for family and friends.  Perhaps the shine within cheer is slightly dimmed because all around us is something we cannot quite describe, yet we feel it.

Perhaps tears flow at times and we struggle to understand what this unusual anxiety is all about. Then, we begin to struggle with the feeling of shame or guilt for being weak and allowing our humanity to pour out of our human-selves.  Then, at the worst possible time in the year, our faith organizations are slow to understand the importance of fellowship and community amid an upheaval that takes our center from under our feet.

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The backside of CTH is very busy…. ergo:

“Seek first to understand, then to be understood”.

1.) First, please READ THIS ENTIRE THREAD – and the full text of any discussion thread you wish to participate in.

Skipping to the comments to express an opinion without reading the content of the discussion is not helpful.

Often, unfortunately quite often, we find many of the points injected into comments are already outlined in the construct of the thread itself; questions asked while the answers are in the primary post.

2.) STAY ON TOPIC – please do not post something unrelated to the specific matter and content of the thread subject. There is a ALWAYS a daily open thread available for any subject you feel should get attention. Never place unrelated, “O/T”, or “Off Topic” comments on a thread unrelated to the topic. It is not ok to say: “sorry, O/T but”… or any iteration therein, it is actually quite rude.

The Treehouse operates on the ‘old school‘ standards and practices of civil discourse amid the original blogging community.

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As you can see CTH 2.0 is launching a new comment platform to improve the features and user engagement we have all come to appreciate.  Here is some background information about this comment process that will likely answer questions.  Please book-mark this post and share it for those who do not read the site updates and just go into the comments.

Because we are free from the constraints of WP/Automattic we are able to explore features that many Treepers have asked for.  We have selected comment software from WPDiscuz (not affiliated with Disqus in any form) specifically because we can control the platforms internal content according to our privacy demands.

No outside system is gathering any user data or content on the commenting platform, everything within CTH 2.0 is being built on a very stable and private proprietary foundation.

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As we work through bugs associated with CTH 2.0 launch, consider this a thread to provide information, report user issues, ideas and concerns. Please read the information provided below as it might answer many questions in advance.

Again, my sincere apologies for any site disruption and/or user issues you may have encountered or might be continuing to encounter as we level the ship.

The majority of major site issues have been reconciled over the past 36 hrs.  CTH 2.0 is flying even and stable.

The DNS issues are resolved, and all inbound links to TheConservativeTreehouse.Com should now be landing on the correct and most recent homepage.   There was an issue with dual cache conflict between our new server host and a mid-way cache service intended to assist with the overall site demand.  That was causing older pages to propagate upon user entry. That problem has been resolved.

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As we work through bugs associated with CTH 2.0 launch, consider this a thread to provide information, report user issues, ideas and concerns. Please read the information provided below as it might answer many questions in advance.

Today, December 2nd, was our official eviction date as established by WordPress/Automattic two weeks ago. Considering the scale of moving 11 years worth of data (56,000 articles, massive media file, 7.2 million comment library), the tech team did a great job.

That said, we anticipated some issues, are encountering others, and we are carefully working through a checklist.

First, we wanted to migrate the data and site in the least disruptive way to the CTH community that provided continuity and familiarity.

Despite the tech issues with the disconnect from WP/Automattic servers to our own proprietary server system, that overarching goal was achieved. Now we are getting into the weeds.

First, some background so everyone can understand the big picture issues. Obviously WordPress/Automattic wanted us gone; however, in hindsight the unspoken purpose and motive behind our eviction is now making a lot more sense.

Based on insider information, there were two distinct issues that merged; sunlight upon them is against the interests of massive multi-billion dollar organizations, but at CTH the truth has no agenda, so here’s the inside explanation as it appears.

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Data Engineers Have Optimal Solution To Restore Comment Function:

Success !!

It appears we have a workable solution achieved.  Excellent….

….Welcome Back Gang… let’s test drive this thing.

Run it hard, use this thread to try out the stuff you are familiar doing. Let’s see what we need to tweek modify or adjust to get back to peak operational condition.  Share your issues and ideas in comments.

We are no longer on Automattic/WordPress servers and despite the extremely tight forced eviction timeline we have achieved a safe rebuild ten hours ahead of deadline.  Quite an accomplishment considering the scale of the task at hand, and a holiday in the middle of it.

There are a few random reports of regional DNS issues and here’s a few tips we are discovering from users:

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“Glitches” seems like an easy catch-phrase to explain encountered problems in the world of technology; but “glitches” doesn’t reconcile the real human frustration people encounter when they engage with a system that is experiencing a rather unique challenge.

I won’t say we are experiencing a glitch…. CTH 2.0 is experiencing a challenge that has actual emotional consequences…  Here’s the issue in as much non-technical wording as I can muster.

SIDEBAR: For other websites with considerable scale, and considering the deplatforming issue underway, this might also serve as a guide.  Additionally, for site users in any website this might explain some background decision-making on commenting functions that is often left unsaid outside of closed-door meetings.

First, my sincere apologies for the trouble everyone had, and is having, as we launched CTH 2.0 with new host servers.  As you know, our commenting community is our #1 priority and we have years of relationship and trust together.  The challenge before us today is considerable.

When we were told we had to leave WordPress/Automattic platform it was important to us to retain the entire site library that includes over 56,000 published articles and over 7.2 million comments.

Some articles carry up to several hundred citations and the average amount of content within the 7.2 million comment file alone exceeds 40 million lines of metadata.

All of that CTH data took approximately 60 hours to export and transfer (import) to a new site and eventually new host servers. The data was first uploaded to a test site to gauge the scale of data and time.  After that initial transfer timeline was determined the data was then imported to new host servers, CTH and CTH 2.0 were mirrored, and fully migrated away from WordPress/Automattic servers.

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