I thought it was time to update you on several things that are happening all at the same time.
Many of you know that Juana has been ill; but in fact she is very ill and that has now necessitated her forced retirement as editor due to ill health. She did a fantastic job keeping everything running smoothly, but it is now time for her to take some rest.
Last year she was diagnosed with kidney cancer and after surgery it was thought she was cancer free. Sadly, this was not the case and the cancer has now spread alarmingly. There are no treatment options, sadly. We had planned a transition from one editor to the next, along with a transition plan. That has not been able to happen.
We have been rocked by developments – hence the lack of content. These are the perils of a small but enthusiastic team, reliant on one or two key people.
At the same time we decided to retire The BFD name. It was always temporary, but events of Covid and then illness overtook us all.
WordPress has been creaking and become unsustainable financially and technically to continue smooth operations. Consequently, we made the decision to migrate to a more stable and cost-effective platform.
When you put all these things together you end up where we are today.
Rest assured the migration is currently underway, as is the design and look and feel of the new site. In the meantime we will continue as we are, albeit with a few changes.
The BFD will become [The GOOD OIL], with me as managing director and day-to-day editing taken up by our weekend editor as we bed in new processes and workflows.
The name was chosen to reflect where we have come from: what I created with Whale Oil and where I have arrived at after my stroke. The Good Oil will return to hard-hitting journalism as well as providing you all with quality content as usual. And we can go back to calling our community Oilers.
The new platform is far better and more stable. It gives us most of the same functionality and smooths the membership process. It also gives us the ability to add increased functionality like newsletters that are easy to subscribe to.
We still have a bit more work to do, but we aren’t far off moving platforms. We will advise you when we move and some of the things you will need to do to ensure continuity (don’t worry, they are easy).
Until then, please thank Juana in the comments for a fantastic job well done. She really has done an amazing job over the years.
Please share this article so others can discover The BFD.
