Ten years!

Last year we asked readers to donate to help up upgrade the site from an ancient Drupal 5 installation to the more-current Drupal 6. Last fall and spring, you donated $800 to this cause. It took longer to get started than we had hoped, but our own Jason Baker has been working hard on the upgrade since this summer.

Tonight at OP's 10th birthday party you can see the fruits of our labor as Jason will be demonstrating a beta version of the new site, which is actually on Drupal 7! (I know this means very little to most of you, but it's really excellent news for those of us who administer the site.) We are planning to launch the new site shortly after the election.

When the new site is up, we hope to move to a new web host. The current one costs us $35/month or $420 annually. But technology isn't the only cost of operating OrangePolitics. We organize events such as quarterly happy hours and candidate coming out parties to help connect people to local leaders. Most of these events have a small budget for things like food and drinks. Your contributions will help support these events, and also shows that you value all the work we do as volunteers including researching local issues, live-blogging public meetings, conducting online candidate forums, and of course writing thoughtful and informative blog posts. Please visit rally.org/orangepolitics and make a donation if you can.

This year you can also help out by raising funds with your friends. Start your own "fan fundraiser" page at rally.org/orangepolitics/start. We'll be offering OP mugs and t-shirts to the top fundraisers (both by dollars and by number of donors). My goal is to get 120 donations this year, of any amount. That will be one donor for each month OP has been going.

We have never had to take any advertising on OP, and we don't hold you hostage with pledge drives. Since we're all volunteers it doesn't cost us much (money) to keep the site going. But donating shows that you also appreciate the considerable time and energy that goes into running the site. Molly, Jeff, Travis, and I thank you deeply for your support. It really does mean a lot to us. We hope to see you at the party tonight!