26 Million Visits
OTB hit the 25 million unique visitor mark as measured by Sitemeter sometime overnight. Thanks as always to those who visit, link, and comment. Previous milestones: 25 Million- February 16, 2008 24 Million - December 31, 2007 23 Million - November 15, 2007 22 Million - October 3, 2007 21 Million - August 19, 2007 20 Million - July 15, 2007. 19 Million - June 12, 2007. 18 ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on April 5, 2008 12:19
Site Status
My apologies to those who've been trying unsuccessfully all day to access the site. My hosting company turned routine hardware maintenance into an adventure which required complete restoration of the site from their own managed backup. This resulted in not only eight hours of downtime but the complete loss of all posts and comments from yesterday. UPDATE: Working ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on March 2, 2008 13:59
25 Million Visits
OTB hit the 25 million unique visitor mark as measured by Sitemeter sometime shortly after midnight. I installed the counter on February 4, 2003 (five days into OTB's run) so it took a little over five years to reach that total. Thanks as always to those who visit, link, and comment. Previous milestones: 24 Million - December 31, 2007 23 Million - November ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on February 16, 2008 07:38
Fifth Blogiversary
My first post* at Outside the Beltway was at 9:47 the morning of January 31, 2003. If my math is right, that was five years ago. When I started this thing, the blogosphere was in its infancy, with most of the big political sites no more than a year or two old. There were still regular Big ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on January 31, 2008 09:37
24 Million
OTB passed the 24 million unique visitor, as measured by SiteMeter, sometime yesterday. We've been at it since 31 January 2003 and installed the counter the next week. Thanks to all who visit, comment, and link. Previous milestones: 23 Million - November 15, 2007 22 Million - October 3, 2007 21 Million - August 19, 2007 20 Million - July 15, 2007. 19 Million - June ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on December 31, 2007 13:48
Off to Aruba
Kim and I are headed to Aruba to spend the Christmas holidays, returning the 27th. If all goes according to plan, we will be in the air by the time this posts. I'll have Internet access in the room and will do some blogging and checking for high priority emails while we're away but my pace will be ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on December 20, 2007 08:00
Bloggers Create Ruckus at Newsweek
OTB's Campaign 2008 coverage will be featured on Newsweek.com's new Ruckus group blog. Media Bloggers Association president Robert Cox has the details: Media Bloggers Association (MBA) and Newsweek have launched "The Ruckus," a new group blog about politics for Newsweek.com. The blog will feature posts from nine MBA-member bloggers about the presidential campaign on a single page, giving Newsweek.com readers ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on December 18, 2007 16:32
23 Million
OTB passed the 23 million unique visitor mark on SiteMeter overnight. Thanks to all who visit, comment, and link. Previous milestones: 22 Million - October 3, 2007 21 Million - August 19, 2007 20 Million - July 15, 2007. 19 Million - June 12, 2007. 18 Million - April 28, 2007. 17 Million - March 31, 2007. 16 Million - March 9, 2007. 15 Million - February 19, 2007. 14 ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on November 15, 2007 08:50
Blog Reading Levels
Bruce McQuain ran Q&O through an Internet widget and found that the site was written at the College Undergraduate level. Curious, I did the same for OTB. To my chagrin, we apparently write like high schoolers around here. Considering that all the site authors have graduate degrees, that was a bit disconcerting. Out of curiosity, though, I decided to run ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on November 8, 2007 14:19
22 Million
OTB passed the 22 million unique visitor account as measured by SiteMeter earlier this morning. As always, thanks to all who visit, comment, and link. Previous milestones: 21 Million - August 19, 2007 20 Million - July 15, 2007. 19 Million - June 12, 2007. 18 Million - April 28, 2007. 17 Million - March 31, 2007. 16 Million - March 9, 2007. 15 Million - ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on October 3, 2007 06:55
Recent Comments Widget
The "Recent Comments" feed in the left sidebar seems rather flaky and frequently goes down. If it's facilitating discussion and making people more interested in engaging the comments, I'm willing to invest in getting that fixed. If not, I'm inclined to scrap it. How many of you pay any attention to it and find it useful (when it's working, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on September 11, 2007 16:22
New Gig
I'm starting a new chapter in my professional career this morning, having been hired as the managing editor for the Atlantic Council of the United States. Over the next few weeks, I'll be working with CEO Fred Kempe and the senior leadership of the Council in relaunching their Web presence. I'm excited about the opportunity to help make ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on September 10, 2007 09:00
Site Woes
The site woes continue, as the transition to the new server ran into some unexpected snags. Mark hopes to have things transitioned tomorrow morning. My apologies for the inconvenience. UPDATE (Sept. 8): Okay, so it's late afternoon. The site's moved, although there may be continued wonkiness while the domain nameservers port and the inevitable bugs are ironed ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on September 7, 2007 17:49
Testing Word Posting Feature
Per Steven Taylor's suggestion, I'm trying out Word 2007's blog posting feature. Testing numbered list: One Two Three Testing ordered list: One Two Three Testing multiple font colors. Testing highlighted text. Testing blockquote: This is pretty standard stuff if you've ever used one of the many blog post authoring applications. In Beta 2 we support MSN Spaces, SharePoint 2007 (of course), Blogger, and Community Server (which is used for blogs.msdn.com). You can also set ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on September 4, 2007 12:20
Site Issues
My apologies for the numerous site outages and odd mySQL error messages over the past few days. Unfortunately, OTB Media has outgrown its dedicated server. I have entered into an agreement with Rackspace for a much more robust multi-server system. Mark Jaquith will be porting everything over the next couple of days. Please bear with us ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 30, 2007 06:00
