Bottom of the Eighth and Start of the Ninth

By -

Eight years ago, I was on a celebratory vacation with my family in Cancun. My wife and I had sold our0328-eigth start-up business, Prophet.net, a couple of months before, and now that we had tidied up all the loose ends, we wanted to go have some fun and spend time with our two young children.

My wife had been prodding me for some time to start a blog, but I thought blogs were just a fad. I finally gave in, and I wrote my first post on March 29th, 2005.

Today, therefore, completes eight full years of the Slope of Hope. There are millions of blogs out there, but I imagine the list of blogs that have been consistently updated for eight years, uninterrupted, is probably a pretty small list. I don’t know how many posts have been made in that time, but it’s well over 12,000.

And thus, tomorrow – Good Friday – commences Slope’s ninth year. I wish the market gods had given us a more appropriate backdrop – – a record-high close on the S&P 500 doesn’t exactly create the festive atmosphere that I’d prefer – – but that is, quite obviously, not something I can control.

I have some important news about Slope: the blog you see is going away. Hold it, hold it, don’t burst into tears! It’s being replaced by something better! Let me explain……..

A little more than a year ago, I wanted to create a premium version of the site (“Slope+”) I had a make-or-buy decision, and for reasons I don’t need to go into here, I decided to “buy” it. In other words, I had an outside firm create the site. To make a long story short, I wasn’t happy with the results.

In the meantime, I also created a new site the way I do most things – – on my own – – and I was happy with how it turned out. That site is SocialTrade, and I’ve talked about it plenty during the past year. In its brief history, it has accrued thousands and thousands of interesting charts, articles, and other trading-related postings.

So early this year, I was considering my three web “properties” – the Slope of Hope, which you are reading now, Slope+, and SocialTrade. I made a decision to do what I should have done in the first place: create a brand new web site on my own, without “outsourcing” it to someone, and integrating all this content into a single supersite.

So, after a meaningful amount of time and expense, I am pleased to tell you that Slope is going to begin its ninth year with a totally new blog, new look, and new functionality.

I’ll leave all the explanations about what it does for the days to come. For the moment, I just wanted to explain what to expect Friday morning.

0328-newSlope

There will be some downtime early in the morning as to point SlopeOfHope.com to the new server farm. If all goes well – and it always does, doesn’t it? – the new Slope will be up with the merged “Slope+SocialTrade” user database. There will no longer be separate logins for the two sites; it’s all one site now.

Here is the single most important thing I have to tell you: your email is now your username. So even if you’ve historically logged in with username “IggyBacon“, that isn’t your username anymore; you would instead use whatever email address you used when you registered (e.g. “Iggy@Bacon.com“) The password is the same.

Again, if all goes well, all your “stuff” should come along for the ride, which includes your badges, your comments, your positions, your SocialTrade stuff – – the works. There are bound to be a few goofy cases where someone used one email for SocialTrade and another for Slope, but we can sort those out. For the vast majority of folks, once you sign in to the site, you should be all set.

So, in closing:

(1) Thanks for keeping Slope going all these years; here’s hoping for a great 9th, Beethoven-style!;

(2) Remember your username is now part of Slope history; your email is your new username;

(3) Please be patient on Friday in case we have some downtime or bumps along the way. Happily, it just so happens that Slope’s birthday falls on a market holiday this year, so it works out pretty well.

I’m looking forward to a successful new Slope!