Well, to be honest, I’ve had it with GoDaddy. The Dead Mule migrated to Managed WordPress on GoDaddy years ago because of the constant threat of attack. Stupid vulnerabilities popped up when trying to manage a site personally. Now GoDaddy is just plain irritating. At $110 a year, the price is decent but it takes over a MINUTE to access the site, and I’ve got really great internet upload/download speeds. It’s not coming from this end, it’s coming from GoDaddy. The site is “attacked” around 35 times a day, according to the GoDaddy plug-in, and the site is slow and awkward in Safari on my MacBook.
The end result of this will, eventually, be a better website. For now, it’s ponderous and irritating to try to load new writing. To load illustrations. To edit pages. If you are scheduled to be published in The Dead Mule in August and September 2022, please bear with me. Migrating the site to a new server/hosting company will take time. If you need to contact me, I’m trying to keep up with messages in Submittable but I don’t always get notifications of your messages.
Bottom line is: The Dead Mule, online for over 25 years with no ads, paid for by us, will continue. Advice from friends and supporters say to do a GoFundMe or something. I’m not there yet. GoDaddy wanted an additional amount of over $400 (I think) to “secure the site” (see the little lock in the address bar and how it’s locked? If I want to continue that, it’ll be big bucks. But the Mule is only literary. No sales, no information taken from the visitors, and it should be of no interest to anyone, nothing stored here. Yet! It’s a target. Bots, most likely.
I’ll update everyone on what is happening as soon as I know what’s happening. Meanwhile, enjoy what’s here on the Mule. I’ll get this straightened out. Apparently WordPress is a common target for mischief.
