Dear Loyal Readers:

One of the things that Dropout Nation prides itself upon is being a family-friendly site in every way. This includes ensuring that readers can visit the site without any form of trouble. But in the past few days, a hack of the site led to the installation of some nasty stuff. It has meant your editors — most-notably, I, the editor-in-chief — to spend countless hours cleaning off the site and the code the hackers baked into it. This included removing numerous images, uploading a fresh edition of the content management system that is the engine of this site, scanning every computer that comes in contact with the site’s back end, talking to the Web host, and combing through code. And a series of false starts announcing that it was all clear until the true source of the problems were clear.

The good news is that Dropout Nation is clean and ready for reading. Google and other search engines have cleared the site as well. New versions of the Podcast feeds will be up tonight. And a new site design will be unveiled on Saturday.

Until the feeds are back up, you can access all the Podcasts at the RiShawnBiddle.org radio page.

But I am mortified that this has happened. In fact, terribly disgusted with the entire situation. I believe in holding everyone to a platinum standard — and this includes yours truly. And I get thoroughly incensed when anything involving my work doesn’t reach it, outright fails the grade, and worse, may cause inconvenience in the process. Even if the cause isn’t of my own doing.

So we have taken new measures to keep the site as hack-free (and damage-free) as possible. This includes going almost all plugin-free (save for one from Blubrry, the podcast distribution service that supports the Dropout Nation Podcast), and daily inspections of all code. For the moment, this site will also go image-free (save for the podcast logos and the banners for each category) in order to ensure that nothing stands between us supporting the reform of American public education.

As anyone who has built a site using a popular content management system can attest, these problems eventually come your way. Even if you do everything, from constant software updates to backing up databases (all of which Dropout Nation does consistently) it can happen. But Dropout Nation offers no excuses because it isn’t good enough. Each and every one of you who have been readers of this site for the past few years have come to expect better from us. It is because of your patronage that this site has had impact on the lives of so many families and children.

Thank you for reading Dropout Nation. Thank you for putting up with the issues this site has had this week. Thank you for returning and continuing to read this publication. And thank you for doing the most-important work we can all do: Helping every child succeed in school and in life.