One of you wonderful writers recently pointed out to me that the star rating plugin the site has been using for years, GD Star Rating, has become well known in the WordPress community as a resource hog. You may know that 50WS has struggled lately with getting flagged by our host as wasting server resources, resulting in downtime while I tried to improve the site’s performance.

It looks like GD Star Rating was probably the culprit all along. So I’m switching the site to a new ratings plugin that will hopefully prevent any future issues.

The downside of the switch is that there’s no automated way to import the old ratings right now. I’m confident that I’ll be able to find a way to get the old ratings converted to the new plugin, but it may take me some time.

So in the meantime, we’re going to be starting fresh on all of the story ratings! Eventually the old ratings should return, but for now I hope you enjoy the blank slate.

Thanks for your patience!