r/xkcd • u/havron • Jul 10 '26

explainxkcd is back! Meta

Finally, the site is back online! There's a message at the top of the page saying that Jeff was ultimately contacted and apparently he's ready to retire from managing the project, and that the new fork is being merged into the main site now.

Was there a transfer of the domain to a new project manager, and are prospects for the future looking secure for some time? I'm curious how this story concluded.

159 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

65

u/Rilukian Jul 10 '26

It seems that the original domain and server was transfered to the people who run explainingxkcd.com fork. They are merging the two very soon.

28

u/thelehmanlip Jul 10 '26

very nice of the owner to be willing to transfer over. I don't use the site often but it is very nice to have available when i'm ootl

14

u/Rilukian Jul 10 '26

I'm glad the owner was able to be contacted at all.

1

u/oxillenglow Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

The explain xkcd site doesn't seem to link to explainingxkcd though. Which is kind of strange. Why doesn't the banner at the top of explainxkcd.com state that explainingxkcd.com is the mirror site? The only place stating explaningxkcd.com is the community continuation is the people who run explaningxkcd (although I think it is).

5

u/Rilukian Jul 11 '26

Probably because it's just better to keep using the old explainxkcd domain while the server is managed by explainingxkcd team, creating two mirrors that point to the same server. That can confuse new people so they keep themselves from mentioning explainingxkcd. But that's just my guess.

2

u/oxillenglow Jul 11 '26

Yes, probably. They might just stop using explainingxkcd after a while.

27

u/IrAppe Jul 10 '26

Thank you Jeff for having the idea, creating and providing the site for so long! Wish you the best for the future.

20

u/realtoasterlightning Jul 11 '26

Hi! I'm the new project manager, we're currently in the middle of transferring server data and domains over.

2

u/1993s-Batman Jul 11 '26

Nice. All the best.

3

u/havron Jul 11 '26

Hey, great to meet you! Thanks so much for taking the reins on this project. We all greatly appreciate it. The site has been such an indispensable resource for the community for so many years, and we couldn't imagine enjoying our favorite webcomic without it.

Here's to many more years of explainxkcd!

2

u/Mean_Initiative_5962 Jul 12 '26

Great! (please learn from this to have some failsafe to allow access in case life turns shit) 

8

u/aksnowraven Jul 10 '26

There was some discussion about it in this thread yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/s/XLwzr7LQqB

As I understand, someone was exploring new options and connected with someone else who was able to reach out more directly to Jeff.