Robert Burns lived more than two centuries before the internet came along, but he nailed the process of website updates when he wrote that “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley.” Currently, American Thinker’s “best laid schemes” for an invisible behind-the-scenes upgrade to our system are going a bit “agley,” too.

Thomas Lifson created American Thinker in 2003 as a very specific type of conservative forum, one in which volunteer writers could have a say without having to set up their own website and amass their own followers. This model, which sees a staff of editors review and curate submissions, along with writing a handful of their own, has thrived for over 20 years, and we are very proud of it.

However, what was no longer thriving was the behind-the-scenes publishing system, which was put into place not long after American Thinker’s inception. It was remarkably stable but it was no longer secure and couldn’t be updated to keep pace with changes in the internet.

Image based on a photograph by cookie_studio.

So, we’ve instituted a new publishing system. The change isn’t visible to readers, but it’s a really big deal at the back end. Our technical team worked on it for months to address multiple concerns and we editors are delighted with it.

However, as is often the case when upgrading a system, things aren’t going smoothly. The most obvious problem for readers is these “403 Forbidden” warnings, whether they’re looking at new content or old:

We also lost some comments yesterday and we’re having problems with embedding images in the body of the posts and articles.

Our tech team is working around the clock to resolve the issues, and we editors are learning our way around some of the changes in how we normally handle content. Between these efforts and luck, everything should be back in place long before Monday morning. I hope, therefore, that you’ll bear with us and keep checking in to view our articles and posts (and, as a reminder, we now publish new posts all day long instead of only in the morning).