One thing I have not talked about in a while is Weblogs.us. Currently, we are busy designing and deploying what I am calling the Generation 4 Layout. This new layout includes a migration to Nginx, PHP5.5 and a few other goodies that will make things faster for everyone.

A big benefit for this new layout is it will be easier for us to support HTTPS on end user sites. Now that Google is pushing everyone to this, we’re going to be ready. Since we have a limited number of IP addresses available to us, we will be using Server Name Indication extensions to TLS to do this. Additionally, as of now, only users with their own domain names who purchase a TLS/SSL certificate will be supported. At the moment, we are not planning to purchase a wildcard TLS/SSL certificate to cover all subdomain users.

Deployment Timeline

Currently, we are in the process identifying candidate sites to migrate to the Generation 4 Layout as part of a test roll out. Initial deployment is slated for mid May. Starting in mid July, we will start general deployment of the new layout. The plan is to decommission the old virtual machines holding the Generation 3 Layout by the end of 2015.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]