From the Editor: Yes, TvindAlert is still here, despite the lack of new posts for a year. Not to make excuses, but 2018 has been a relatively slow time for news on Tvind. And everyone now at TvindAlert — all unpaid volunteers — works a full-time job elsewhere.
Most significantly, the website’s founders — journalists Michael Durham of England, and Frede Jakobsen of Denmark — had both left by early 2017, turning it over to me and the rest of the team.
We are looking for journalists to replace Mike and Frede. It won’t be easy.
Meanwhile, much has been happening behind the scenes. Research and outreach continue as usual. And we’ve been working on the English translation of key Danish language documentation on Tvind.
New investigative reports will come eventually. In addition, we’ll soon post still-relevant, archival material from the past two decades of TvindAlert, including the old ‘Humana Alert’.
We are pleased to report that a great deal of work has been done to improve the website. Here’s the story:
The original TvindAlert resided on a shared hosting plan in Scandinavia. The design was not mobile-friendly, and the layout and structure made it a bit confusing to navigate. Although the server was secure, the lack of server-side resources meant that it sometimes slowed when under pressure from denial-of-service attacks or attempts to compromise the site’s security.
The initial goal was to provide the new TvindAlert with a secure, stand-alone hosting service, and to redesign the site to make it both user and search engine friendly. Roughly half of the site’s traffic comes from mobile devices, so it was also important to make the content easily accessible on all screen sizes.
Since the first redesign, the site has been responsive and works well with all kinds of mobile devices as well as laptops and desktops.
The new server is in a London data-centre and has sufficient resources to deal with current and future projected traffic volumes.
The most recent redesign has increased the accessibility of the site and made it even easier to read on smaller devices whilst increasing the usable screen area on laptops and desktops.
The site’s structure remains the same but the underlying framework has been changed to provide a level of future-proofing not available with the previous software.
So check out the new TvindAlert!
Wade Larsen, editor
Washington state, USA