Category: Technology

I am trying to transfer a customer’s web site over to my hosting service as painlessly as possible but have been thwarted by a MelbourneIT reseller!

When there is a change of hosting providers, the domain name records must be updated to ‘point’ the domain name to the new host. Updating domain name records is usually a simple matter of logging into the domain registrar’s web site with a password the registrar has provided.

The domain ‘whois’ check showed my client’s domain was registered through MelbourneIT. My client didn’t know her domain password so we had to arrange for this to be reissued. I printed out MelbourneIT’s registry key (password) retrieval form and sent it to the client, with instructions to sign and fax it to MelbourneIT.

Instead of the registry key, MelbourneIT responded with instructions to email their reseller who manages the domain.

After two days with no response from the reseller I phoned them. Apparently the form I went to all the trouble of preparing and explaining carefully to the client is not enough – the client also has to email the reseller to confirm what they want to do.

This frustrates me because I did all the running around in an effort to streamline the process, since my client doesn’t understand all this business about domains and registrars and servers. I’m afraid I had a bit of a go at the reseller, asking why the form signed by the client was not good enough.

The reseller got all shirty with me which wound me up even further. It took enormous restraint to remain civil with her. In the end I wished her a good day and hung up, steam coming out of my ears.

Just sat down and constructed a carefully worded email to my client with further instructions, then gave her a call explaining the situation. She doesn’t have internet access at home so it is a real pain having to do this extra step.

Rant over, I feel better now!

My desktop PC is an old faithful but is getting a bit jaded.. it is about 5 years old and running like a dog sometimes on 256 MB RAM. Some new software I bought recently wont even run on less than 384 MB, so it is time for an upgrade. The finances at present don’t support a new PC so I’m going down the memory upgrade route.

I’ve never done this before so I’ve been doing some reading. It has been pointing me in the right direction, I think I know which RAM to get – I’ve been looking at a 1GB stick from upgradeable.com.au.

My Dad has more experience at this than me and has offered to help so I’m going to rely on his expertise and advice!

A client I visited the other week is transferring her web site to my server in the lead up to her new site being developed. I had to make a few little mods to make the old site work on my server because the homepage file has an unconventional filename.

If you browse to a domain url without specifying a filename (eg. http://www.thewebsite.com/) the server will look for a default homepage file, which has been specified by the host in the server config settings. In most cases this default file will be called something like index.html, home.html or default.html (plus respective file extensions htm, php, cgi, shtml etc). It is a common naming convention, and several names can be listed in the config so if the server can’t find a file of one name it will look for the next in the list and so on.

This client’s homepage had been named “the_glen_home.html”. Rather than rename the file and go through the entire site modifying links I uploaded an Apache directive to serve the_glen_home.html as the default homepage. It was a simple matter of entering the following line into a text editor program (I use EditPad) and saving the file as .htaccess – note there is nothing before the dot “.”

DirectoryIndex the_glen_home.html

Then I uploaded the file, in ASCII format to my web site in the web document root. Note – it only works on Apache web servers, and be careful that you don’t overwrite an existing .htaccess file. If .htaccess file already exists, download a copy of it and add the above line to the bottom. If you Google “.htaccess” you’ll discover a ton of neat things you can do to change how your server operates.

The other thing I discovered about this site is it is a dog’s breakfast of upper case and lower case file naming, for example all the graphics files were saved in a directory named “Images” (with upper case) but some of the HTML in the web pages referenced files in an “images” (lower case) directory. This isn’t a problem on a Windows server, but on a case-sensitive Linux/Apache server the files aren’t correctly referenced and show up as errors in the browser.

It seems so sloppy not to be consistent with file naming. I’ve had lower case filenames on the brain for so long now I really look down on camel case. Same for file names with spaces!

This is one I’ve been working on intermittently the last couple of months – client is still in the process of compiling content but the bulk of it is done now – there is light at the end of the tunnel! This is the client with the Mac.

The logo was designed by her graphic designer Nathan from Hive Communications, I designed the rest of the layout. Client loves bold colours and designs and seems pretty happy with this final result.

So she can make her own updates to the site it is wrapped around a content management system – CMS Made Simple, the second site I’ve used this system for. I’m still working on a mailing list manager solution. Dada is looking good so far.

UPDATE 2nd May: Client just emailed me this –

Hey wow melissa, I just took a deep breath and summoned my nerve up to take a look at the site….and I’m hornswoggled!

It’s incredible! I had no idea it would be so good! Thankyou so much! You are a genius. And you have anticipated a few things I hadn’t got around to mentioning to you!

Someone just sent me an email tonight describing it as “impressive”..so I thought I better take a look – I reckon I suffer from “fear of seeing myself on the web” phobia. Wow!!!

I feel so excited, I want to phone everyone I know and tell them to take a look..but I’m some how going to hold off until next week when I will have emailed you the remainder of the pages. Best wishes, Geraldine

Doing a web site for this client has been an extra challenge because she is on a Mac system, I’m on Windows. I’ve been using BrowserCam to see what the pages look like and uncovered a multitude of sins through Mac IE 5.2 – which my client happens to have.

The CSS for Mac IE is stricter than Win IE so you get things like floated elements taking up full width instead of adjusting to width of contents; so if you want a horizontal menu made up from list entry items you need to specify a fixed width, which is a pain – but hey it works.

Also found a useful tip regarding background images in the stylesheet – if you specify the URL with single quotes it wont work in Mac IE, use double quotes. This tip suggested no quotes would also work, but I couldn’t get it to.

I’m working on a web site using a content management system called CMS Made Simple. Unlike some other CMS packages I’ve used, this one is nice and straightforward. Full admin control over the layout (no having to modify obscurely hidden files), smarty tags for content, nice admin control panel that clients can understand.

My client wants to send newsletters to her customers. This CMS has an add-on newsletter module, called Newsletters Made Simple. Like hell it’s simple! I’ve spent an afternoon on the users forum trying to find out why bits of it don’t work. I discovered a lot of the functionality is wishful thinking. Such as adding html templates and sending mail in html format. Still, I can’t gripe too much since it is open source. Will be a good module if development continues on it.

In the meantime I have to find another solution for my client. We currently have phpList set up for her, it is very powerful with a lot of features (that work!) but it is not very user friendly. I don’t know if she has used it, she didn’t give me a straight answer. I know I find it awkward to use, because I installed it for another client and she always asks me to send her newsletters out!

I’m about to try another list manager called Dada Mail, written in Perl. There is a free version with links back to them, and a pro version without the links. Hmm.. I like this feature:

Visitors to your list can also browse past messages sent with Dada Mail, a complete, dated archive is available to your visitors. Every archive screen also includes a subscription form to allow your visitors to subscribe to the list right there if they like what they’ve read.

It sounds pretty good, let’s test it.