NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Sunday, February 26th, 2012

Pacific NW Portal 5.2 (Seal Rock) released

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

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!

Adjacent posts

  • Enjoyed what you just read? Make a donation


    Thank you for read­ing The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s jour­nal of world, nation­al, and local politics.

    Found­ed in March of 2004, The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has been help­ing peo­ple through­out the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond make sense of cur­rent events with rig­or­ous analy­sis and thought-pro­vok­ing com­men­tary for more than fif­teen years. The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate is fund­ed by read­ers like you and trust­ed spon­sors. We don’t run ads or pub­lish con­tent in exchange for money.

    Help us keep The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate edi­to­ri­al­ly inde­pen­dent and freely avail­able to all by becom­ing a mem­ber of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute today. Or make a dona­tion to sus­tain our essen­tial research and advo­ca­cy journalism.

    Your con­tri­bu­tion will allow us to con­tin­ue bring­ing you fea­tures like Last Week In Con­gress, live cov­er­age of events like Net­roots Nation or the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, and reviews of books and doc­u­men­tary films.

    Become an NPI mem­ber Make a one-time donation

  • NPI’s essential research and advocacy is sponsored by: