This evening, we’re pleased to take the wraps off a new ver­sion of Pacif­ic NW Por­tal: Ver­sion 5.2, code­named Seal Rock.

This is a main­te­nance release — the sec­ond in the New­port series — so there aren’t any grand, sweep­ing changes in this ver­sion. How­ev­er, we think you’ll agree that the improve­ments we have made make the site more use­ful and functional.

Like every pri­or release, Ver­sion 5.2 is named after an Ore­gon coastal town. Seal Rock is a sea­side vil­lage, locat­ed between New­port and Wald­port. It is one of the many beau­ti­ful places that can be seen from a trip up or down U.S. 101, which stretch­es from south­ern Cal­i­for­nia to Olympia, Wash­ing­ton. Seal Rock is one of more than a dozen unin­cor­po­rat­ed com­mu­ni­ties in Lin­coln County.

The fol­low­ing post con­sti­tutes our offi­cial changel­og for Ver­sion 5.2. Please feel free to leave ques­tions, sug­ges­tions for future ver­sions, or oth­er thoughts on Seal Rock in the com­ment thread.

Seal Rock, Ore­gon, from the bluff, tak­en Sep­tem­ber 14th, 2007 (Pho­to by PFly, repro­duced under a Cre­ative Com­mons license)

View larg­er ver­sion of photo

Here is the list of changes for this release:

• Speed boost. In keep­ing with New­port’s theme of speed, we’ve moved Pacif­ic NW Por­tal to our new serv­er clus­ter, which is faster and more pow­er­ful. As a result, load and refresh times have decreased. Here’s a typ­i­cal com­par­i­son between Ver­sion 5.1/Agate Beach (the pre­vi­ous release) and Ver­sion 5.2/Seal Rock (this release): 
  • Agate Beach load time: 3.25 sec­onds; aver­age speed per KB: 0.04
  • Seal Rock load time: 0.56 sec­onds; aver­age speed per KB: 0.01
• Pacif­ic NW Por­tal moves to its own domain. In con­junc­tion with the serv­er move, we’ve giv­en Pacif­ic NW Por­tal its own domain: pacific.nwportal.info. With this change, all of NPI’s projects now reside at sep­a­rate domains. NPI pub­li­ca­tions, like The Advo­cate (this blog), will con­tin­ue to live at nwprogressive.org along­side NPI’s Core Ency­clo­pe­dia. We think the new URL neat­ly encap­su­lates Pacif­ic NW Por­tal’s prop­er name as well as its pur­pose: to serve as a news­read­er and infor­ma­tion hub for pro­gres­sives. It’s also short­er, eas­i­er to say, and more memorable.
• Pacif­ic NW Por­tal’s old domain now works again, too. Back in 2005, when we first launched Pacif­ic NW Por­tal, it could be accessed by typ­ing in nwportal.org (which would redi­rect to the Por­tal’s loca­tion under NPI’s pri­ma­ry domain). Unfor­tu­nate­ly, a few years ago, that domain did­n’t auto-renew like it was sup­posed to, and our unhelp­ful reg­is­trar — a GoDad­dy reseller — sold it to some­one else against our wish­es. Fol­low­ing that inci­dent, we sev­ered all ties with GoDad­dy and its affil­i­ates (learn why you should too), and moved our domain port­fo­lio to a new, cus­tomer-focused reg­is­trar (Tucows). Just recent­ly, we suc­ceed­ed in reac­quir­ing the Por­tal’s orig­i­nal domain. So hap­pi­ly, nwportal.org points to Pacif­ic NW Por­tal again.
• Cam­paign Buzz now includes many more cam­paigns. The front page’s Cam­paign Buzz feed now index­es blogs for can­di­dates in high pro­file races around the Pacif­ic North­west, includ­ing Jay Inslee, Bob Fer­gu­son, Jeff Merkley, and Jon Tester. In addi­tion, we’re track­ing net­roots-sup­port­ed can­di­dates in fed­er­al races else­where in the Unit­ed States.

Our thanks to all who con­tin­ue to sup­port Pacif­ic NW Por­tal. Enjoy the new version!