Dean's diary gives you the gist of what's going on -- but there are some questions in the comments that bear more in-depth answers.
Namely, Why does SoapBlox matter?
So, why does SoapBlox matter?
DailyKos runs on a software platform called Scoop. It's a great platform, but leaves some things to be desired in terms of software maintainability and development. With that in mind, Paul Preston (a.k.a.) SoapBlox, started writing a software platform he called jScoop, which later grew into SoapBlox, as a hosted alternative to Scoop.
SoapBlox includes all the major features of a community blog -- namely, user diaries and other community-building features. These features are NOT readily available in any other software platform WordPress, MoveableType and others make it exceedingly difficult to do things like diaries and frontpage promotions, and SoapBlox makes it easy.
SoapBlox is used by approximately 90% of the 50-State Blog Network -- the sites that were instrumental in the DNCC embedded blogger program, and as a community have worked together to improve and expand state-level blogging across the country. Calitics, My Silver State, NMFBIHop, Loaded Orygun, LeftInTheWest, MN Progressive Project, Burnt Orange Report, Tondee's Tavern, The Albany Project, Raising Kaine, Blue Mass Group, Blue Jersey, and many others use this platform.
One downside for SoapBlox is that Paul has, since the beginning, been the only person actively working on the development, maturation, and maintenance of the SoapBlox system. Another is that all the SoapBlox sites currently affected by this fiasco (which is to say, ALL SOAPBLOX SITES), have their actual content hosted in the SoapBlox system, and not in their own hosting accounts with GoDaddy or BlueHost or another service.
So when the hackers got ahold of his servers, they crushed a bunch of sites all at once. They installed exploits on the SoapBlox servers, which caused the servers to behave badly, and the ISP providing the servers took them down. It's a bad situation, and we need to sort out A.) what happened, B.) how to fix it in the short term so we can limp along for a while, C.) what to do in the long term -- does SoapBlox really die? If not, how do we provide the resources necessary to keep this critical resource alive, functioning, and safe? If so, where do we move these sites?
These are all community sites, and the progressive blogosphere is a community. If we cannot come together to keep these communities alive, the larger community won't be worth much -- and I say that as more than just a blogger whose site got hosed.
This is a critically important juncture for us all.