by Unknown | 10/12/2007 06:53:00 AM
You're looking at the slimmed-down, tidied-up, completely-redesigned, face-lifted ProgressiveHistorians. What's changed, you ask?

What's Old

As with any major change, things are lost as well as gained. Most notable in this regard is the departure of one of our Admins, Ahistoricality. With his encyclopedic knowledge of history bloggers and tireless devotion to the site, Ahistoricality quickly became the vital heart of the ProgressiveHistorians community. We thank him for his service, and want him to know he will be missed -- though he promises to return often in comments (a promise we will hold him to, by golly!).

Also departed are the several generous readers who donated their time and energy to the ProgressiveHistorians Volunteer Book Review Board, which has now gone the way of the dinosaur. We thank them for their service as well as for their fantastic reviews.

ProgressiveHistorians is no longer accepting ads or subscriptions, since we are no longer using paid software. Thanks to all who have supported us in the past.

Finally -- and this is probably what you noticed when you first logged on -- user diaries are gone; this is now a group blog, where only frontpagers can post (but anyone can comment). Why did I make this choice? Simply put, user diaries take more time for me to administrate (and recruit) than does running the rest of the blog put together; it was either make this change or shut down the site entirely, something I was unwilling to do. While no new user diaries can be posted, all the old ones have been archived here.

What's New

First of all, the site design is new, and in my (admittedly biased) opinion much improved. I'm quite a fan of the face-lift this site has received! Thanks in particular go to strandsofpearl for designing a new ProgressiveHistorians banner. (If you're nostalgic for the old one, you can still see it here.)

The focus of ProgressiveHistorians has changed slightly, and you'll notice that change reflected in the site's new subtitle: "History For Our Future." Unlike the old site, which straddled the breach between history and politics, ProgressiveHistorians 2.0 is primarily a place to make and do history among a tightly-knit group of fellow-travelers. By the same token, though, we've removed the strictures on what our posters can write about; they're now free to talk about anything from politics to history to toothaches, and you'll probably see a lot more variety of subject matter on the front page than ever before. Our ultimate goal has not changed: to make history useful for and relevant to our own time through skillful intellectual endeavor.

Finally, as you may have noticed from the author's name on this post, "Nonpartisan" has a name! After nearly five years of writing as Nonpartisan, I simply grew tired of ghostwriting for a pseudonym. As such, any posts or comments I make on this site from now on are going to be under my real name -- Nonpartisan is no more.

So please join me and my fellow posters on this new adventure -- I predict many fascinating discussions will be had and intellectual leaps made, and most of all, it should be a lot of fun.

Let the games begin!

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7 Comments:


Blogger Real_PHV_Mentarch on 10/12/2007 12:13 PM:

Hear, hear - and huzzah! ;-)

 

Blogger Ahistoricality on 10/12/2007 2:09 PM:

I'm still here, though I'm definitely in a busy patch -- home improvement, job search, mid-semester crunch, neglected papers -- so I might be a little slow off the block sometimes.

 

Blogger Unknown on 10/12/2007 2:37 PM:

I hear ya -- just finished an 18-page paper WHILE trying to set up the transition here. Not fun!

 

Blogger mrbubs on 10/16/2007 1:27 PM:

I'll miss the user-generated content-- both the opportunity to create my own (which i never did) and the crossposts. is there any way to set up a community to help you with administrative duties?

 

Blogger Unknown on 10/16/2007 2:27 PM:

mrbubs, I'll miss it too -- but my experience with sharing duties in that way leads me to believe that it doesn't often work. We did have an admin group, but I did most of the work myself, and I think it worked better that way, though they're fantastic people and each would be capable of running a site like this in their own right.

Further, given my recent experience in trying to archive SoapBlox content, I would not recommend that software to anyone -- and there's nothing comparable on the market for anything like an affordable price.

 

Anonymous Anonymous on 10/22/2007 12:26 PM:

Aww!

IMHO this was one of the best community blogs on the Internet. I loved the three times that I came here.

 

Blogger Unknown on 10/22/2007 12:50 PM:

Thanks for that! I happen to agree. :)

Unfortunately, I was also for a while the busiest community blogger on the Internet, so all good things had to come to an end.