The Open Thread is a general place where CHP commenters can come together to talk about the issues in our campus and local community. As long as it’s related to this year’s elections (and you’re following the Commenter’s Code), anything goes.

For those new around here, we use Disqus for administering our comment threads. That means it’s really simple to sign in using a Disqus Profile, Facebook Profile, Twitter Account, and more. Anonymous (“guest”) comments are permitted, but discouraged. Comments by guest commenters may be automatically flagged for review by the system before they’re posted. If you’re having trouble with our comment threads, send us an email at mods@cityonahillpress.com.

We’ll see you in the comment threads!

We would like to inform you that the security of our website, cityonahillpress.com, was compromised early Thursday March 3. The breach occurred when an attacker exploited a previously unknown vulnerability in OpenX Ad Server, the software we use to administer the advertisements on our website.

We are unsure how successful the attacker may have been, but we are erring on the side of caution. We have removed all ads and the ad system until such a time that we can internally certify that a clean version of the software is available.

For those receiving browser errors, the site has been cleaned of all known attack vectors and cleared by Google, but changes may take a while to propagate across all servers. Things should return to normal in a few hours.

We are encouraging those whom visited cityonahillpress.com between 4am and 11:30am to take necessary precautions by scanning their computer for malware. If you don’t currently own anti-virus software, we’d like to offer you some helpful tips:

TrendMicro House Call: http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
Microsoft Security Essentials: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

This list is not all-encompassing and is not intended to endorse any particular product.

Please note that this attack is known only to have affected the main cityonahillpress.com website. All other systems, including CHP Newsletters, the CHP Jobs & Internships Portal and Disqus comment threads were not attacked; however, they may still yield an error.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email webdev@cityonahillpress.com.

Sorry, but our comment system is having some issues. Most comment threads are working okay, but we have a few cases where the system is generating multiple threads for the same story. As a result, some comments appear to have “disappeared” from the site.

Not to worry… your comments are still saved in the system and we’re working to get comments migrated to the right threads. We’ll update this post when we know more.

Thanks for your patience as we work to resolve this issue.
-CHP Web Team

Tomorrow, on October 7, we’ll be deploying a major update to our website. Some of the biggest changes include:

• New homepage design, to help make browsing stories a bit easier. We’re also adding a video player on our homepage, always up to date with our latest videos from our YouTube channel.
• Comments are now powered by Disqus, a platform for administering comment threads. You can leave comments using your Facebook account, Twitter account, a Disqus profile, or any other OpenID compatible site.
• Small improvements to archive pages and posts, to make it a little easier to browse around.

With these changes, we have a couple of things to take care of. First, we’ll be updating in the evening on Oct. 6, so the site may be intermittently unavailable beginning at 5 p.m. on Oct 6, continuing into the morning of Oct. 7.

Second, with the changes in our technical infrastructure, we’re revising the Commenter’s Code and Privacy Policy. You can view these updated policies at:

• Commenter’s Code: http://www.cityonahillpress.com/commentoptin/commenterscode.php
• Privacy Policy: http://www.cityonahillpress.com/commentoptin/privacypolicy.php

For current commenters, we have the technical capability to import comments over to Disqus automatically. However, because of the change in commenting platforms from a system maintained in-house to a third-party, we’re making this an opt-in process.

If you have left a comment on our website previously, you’ll be receiving an email from us very soon providing information on how you can opt-in, or you can email us at mods@cityonahillpress.com using the same email address you used to create your comment.

If we don’t hear from you by Noon on Oct. 11, your comment will be removed from our systems in preparation for the transition. Further, beginning today, in order to prepare for the switchover, we’re temporarily closing the comment threads and closing new account signups. Because Commenter Accounts won’t be required or used on the new Disqus system, we’ll be removing all Commenter Accounts beginning at 5 p.m. on Oct. 6.

As always, we thank you for your continued support and hope you enjoy these changes.

Be sure to check these photo essays out:

Photo Essay: Autumn
By Rosaria Serna

Photo Essay: Expression
By Devika Agarwal

Photo Essay: San Francisco
By Nita Rose-Evans

Photo Essay: New South Wales, Australia
By Isaac Miller

Sizes: 800×600 | 1024×768 | 1280×1024 | Widescreen

As always, thanks for being a fellow CHP reader. Remember, you can find us procrastinating on our midterm studying hanging out on Facebook and Twitter, and you can subscribe to our RSS feed for the latest updates.

And, don’t forget, we’ve got new newsletters! We’ll be starting to send CHP Weekly out very soon, so be sure to sign up today so you get the one and only inaugural CHP Weekly Newsletter delivered right to your inbox. While you’re there, be sure to sign up for Breaking News Alerts, so you’ll be the first to hear when something big is going on at UCSC and in Santa Cruz.