It was not just you. Our blog was incredibly slow.

I spent all evening optimizing the blog as much as I could, removing old plugins, deleting unused data, adding optimization plugins. I’m happy to say that we’ve seen a significant improvement in the site speed and responsiveness. At the same time, though, you might have noticed a few things have disappeared.

Your profile picture may have changed to a weird looking monster. The old profile picture was part of a plugin that was removed, as we weren’t using most of it’s features. Along with it went the custom profile page and the “Who’s Online” feature. You can still use your own profile picture, though. Just go to your profile. On that page, you will be able to sign up for a Gravatar. Gravatars are free and usable on more than just our blog. If you already have a Gravatar, you might need to relink it to get it to display again.

Also, you might notice the background image has disappeared. That was a mistake on my part. When I was cleaning out old data, I accidentally deleted the background image at the same time. The background image was old, from when the city first opened four years ago. It was due for an update anyway, so in the next few days, I will upload a new background image that will better reflect where we are now.

Now you might be wondering what reason there is to join the blog. There are links and pages that are only available to users who are logged in to the blog. In addition, if you wish to add a comment to any of the blog entries, you will have to be logged in. So, if you haven’t signed up here yet, sign up today. It is just one of the many ways we have to share information with you.