St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

Archive for November, 2006

A couple clients (not all) noticed last week they weren’t able to view their web site online. Standards based browsers would just keep trying and trying to find the site, but there would be no error message, while IE showed the page could not be found message shortly after entering the address.
To make matters worse their e-mails wouldn’t work either. Their e-mail clients said they couldn’t find the server. Resetting everything did nothing.

Since, at first, it was just one client, and the problems couldn’t be repeated, we thought it had to be something on the clients end. A corrupted host file (a file in windows that tells Windows were to find the numerical addresses of web sites that correspond with each domain name (ie; look for texxsmith.com at http://62.95.226.01). Unable to diagnose the problem, I called the big guns and got them on the problem. But then it got weird.

The client couldn’t view the web site on neighbors machines. Then I couldn’t view the web site from my computer. No longer could I enter the web sites control panel. At this point now, I’m thinking that it’s a problem with the clients domain name since this client managed his own domain name, I was thinking perhaps some one accidentally changed the setting that tells the internet (A DNS server specifically) exactly were to look for the files that make up a web site.

And then another client called with the same problem. I did some more research and noticed that some web sites on other servers in this part of the country were having the same problems. But what was the problem?

Then just as mysteriously, the problems solved themselves. All web sites and e-mails started working again all on their own. Now what could cause all that? Well the headline to this story is kinda giveaway. There are big fat servers all over the country that do nothing but hold list of domain names and the corresponding numerical address where web-browsers and other internet software should look when some one tries to view a web page or connect to a sever, get e-mail, send e-mail etc. (anything involving a domain just about). One of these servers, the one that serves the Southeast united States evidently, had a partial shutdown and partially stopped functioning.

Then my “big guns” got back to me. Yes the big guns are slow, but that’s because they’re doing big research! They said that the DNS server numbered blah.blah.blah had been malfunctioning effecting thousands of websites (but less than 1% of the domain names it served records for). They also said they alerted Internic (the international organization in charge of distributing the internet domain names), but that Internic was already aware of the problem and was replacing the machine.

Problem solved. The funny part is that if we all would have known what the problem was we could have just sat back and let Internic take care of it. Live and learn right?

Does this happen often?
No. I’ve been designing web sites since 1995 and I’ve never seen anything like this nor have any of the other web designers on the few forums that I give/receive advice from have ever experienced such a thing. A few said (after the fact) that sure they had heard of that, of course they didn’t say anything while I was looking for a solution and trying to diagnose the problem. There’s always a few in every bunch like that isn’t there?

Of course Dream Designs by Texx Smith is open on Holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Being a one man show at the moment I appreciate everyone holding their calls until after a holiday. But please don’t. I’m here working 365 days a year and if you have questions, want to make changes, order a new web design and your working than please call me. Especially if it’s technical support, I always want hear about tech support issues.

I keep waiting for the day when my web hosting server will go down. Since I’ve been on this web host for the last 2 years I haven’t had an interruption in service once. But servers have moving parts in them, hurricanes happen, etc. Sooner or later it will happen and the sooner I hear about it the sooner I implement web site backups and the such.

I’ve finished another web site for a client. Debt Consolidation. In fact it’s a busy month, there will be lots of new web site design being completed soon.

It’s always nice to see a finished web site isn’t it!

Ok so there’s these people going around, giving out cash:

Why? Read the rest of this entry »

Individuals who use the Internet to distribute information from another source may not be held to account if the material is considered defamatory, the California Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a reversal of a lower court decision.The ruling supports federal law that clears individuals of liability if they transmit, but are not the source of, defamatory information. It expands protections the law gives to Internet service providers to include bloggers and activist Web sites.

Kinda a no brainer, if you can’t freely quote people you don’t have much news, if you don’t have news . . .

“Until Congress chooses to revise the settled law in this area, however, plaintiffs who contend they were defamed in an Internet posting may only seek recovery from the original source of the statement,” the decision stated.

The opinion, written by Associate Justice Carol Corrigan, addressed a lawsuit by two doctors who claimed defendant Ilena Rosenthal and others distributed e-mails and Internet postings that republished statements the doctors said impugned their character and competence.

Rosenthal operates a San Diego-based Web site known as the Humantics Foundation (http://www.humanticsfoundation.com), which is critical of silicone breast implants.

Rosenthal had countered that her statements were protected speech and immune under the Communications Decency Act of 1996. It holds that: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

A California appeals court had ruled that Internet service providers and users could be held liable if they republish a statement if it is known to be defamatory.

California’s high court took that decision up for review because the lawsuit against Rosenthal involved an individual instead of a service provider, and opted for a broad view of immunity under the Communications Decency Act.

“Requiring providers, users, and courts to account for the nuances of common law defamation, and all the various ways they might play out in the Internet environment, is a Herculean assignment that we are reluctant to impose,” the court’s justices held in their opinion.

“By declaring that no ‘user’ may be treated as a ‘publisher’ of third party content, Congress has comprehensively immunized republication by individual Internet users,” they added.

Read quoted story on Yahoo News

Everyone who’s been embedding flash into a web page for a while remembers last year when Microsoft changed their browser in response to loosing a patent -infringement lawsuit. And then they changed it again soon after because the first change was so awful (Warnings everywhere!). What they ended up with – that white border that appears around a flash object when it is hovered over and must be clicked on before the movie can be clicked on – isn’t very graceful, but it what it is and there’s no way around it for a web designer.

It may seem like, or even be, a blatant and desperate attempt to get people to stop using the non-microsoft technologies like flash, java, etc. But yet we as web designer must come up with a Internet Explorer Active Content Fix. You could choose to follow the instruction from the new owners of Flash, here’s a link to Adobe’s Active Content Update Fix. But dues that’s like 6 long scripts that you need to choose for your particular

You could write your own solutions. In theory it’s pretty easy, for JavaScript writers, just document.write your normal code in. For php programers just echo it in. etc.

But here’s what I’ve been doing lately. Since I almost always use DreamWeaverMX 2004 on web sites, I found a nice Dreamweaver extension called the Softery IE Flash Problem Solver. It inserts a command that works simply. It only has two options, Fix the IE Active Content Update Problem on the current open document or on all pages with flash in the current local site. It works quickly and perfectly every time.

Don’t ya love it when something works just like it should?