stevesh

I access our network at work through a VPN, and installed the new version of ZoneAlarm yesterday. I got the usual notice from ZA asking if I'm using a VPN, etc, and everything works OK. Steve

I've used Phorm (www.phorm.com) for a couple of years now, and it does pretty much everything you can think of, form mailing-wise. Steve

'course, there's always this: Cool!

I used the same encoder method as marie, and have yet to receive any spam to that account. Encoders render the address in ascii. Browsers can read it, 'bots can't (not yet, anyway). Steve

Another vote for Zencart - much better support (in their forums) than OSC. All the open-source carts have fairly steep learning curves, but once you've figured it out, Zencart is amazingly configurable. I use a merchant account from our regular bank (Comerica) with Verisign's Payflow Link. No problems with either. I have also heard good things about Wells Fargo. Just my opinion, but I won't buy from Web businesses which only accept Paypal. Steve

Those look like excellent numbers on the Merchant Account. I've never seen one which didn't charge you for months with no sales. One caveat from my experience - be sure whatever shopping cart you're going to use has a module that's compatible with your specific payment gateway. Steve

I use Phorm (www.phorm.com) for several form-based pages, and it works great. It will send form results to you in an email (HTML, if you want) and will also write to a text file and/or a MySql database. All your email addresses are coded into config files, so there's no spam exposure. Steve

I've spent the last couple of months installing and cofiguring Zencart. Very powerful program with a very steep learning curve. THeir forums are good, though. If you decide to go that way and get stuck, post here and I'll be glad to help, if I can.

I get a little nervous myself about upgrading stuff I didn't install, but the phpbb update went perfectly - no problems.

I have used Voyager - OK, but it's no SmartFTP, which I use now. LeechFTP is good, too. Most of the free FTP clients are pretty easy to use. Although they look kind of intimidating at first, all they really do is move files from one computer to another. In most cases, the default settings work just fine for anything you'll do here at TCH. Steve

I've been using Vonage for 4 months now, and can't complain. The audio quality is as good as my land line was and better than my cell phone. I couldn't switch my existing number (Verizon), but I never considered that a big deal - I just let people I want to call me about my new number. Setup was OK, but might have been a little confusing for someone not computer-literate. My cable Internet service is very stable, so no problems there. You can, in fact, hook the Vonage box to the head end of your home's phone wiring, and use all your regular extensions. I had one problem at the beginning, and was leery about the horror stories I had read about the hours-long wait for Vonage support. I called at 8:30 AM ET on Saturday morning and was connected immediately. The rep was friendly and knew what he was doing. Bottom line is, for 27.24 a month (inc tax) I get phone service with all the bells and whistles, including some I hadn't thought of (Vonage sends you an email when you receive a voicemail, and you can configure it to attach the voicemail to the email as a .wav file.) Another big plus for me is, since most of my relatives have some kind of broadband, I can take my Vonage box, and my phone number, with me when I visit. Steve

Just what I needed to knoiw. Thanks, everyone.

As long as I've been tracking it, 50-55% of visitors to my site stay less than 30 seconds . Does that suggest my site is junk, and people aren't finding a reason to stay, or is there a technical reason for that kind of percentage? Steve

Haven't tried that one, but I have installed both PHProjekt and eGroupware on TCH servers. Both installed OK, but were a bit of a pain to configure. Steve

I have one domain set at 1, with a couple of domains whitelisted, and still get some spam.

I should know this, but.. I switched a domain to TCH a couple of months ago, and everything is working great, as usual, including email. The administrator of my old hosting company let me know today that he is still receiving mail addressed to users on the domain in question on his servers, as recently as today. I'm thinking it has to do with the way spam is addressed, but I'm not sure. Anyone have any thoughts? (I haven't seen any of the emails he received yet.) Steve

I'm probably in the minority on this, but I have SpamAssassin blackhole everything it sees as spam (I have it set to 4), and if one of my (60 or so) users doesn't receive an email he/she is expecting, we figure out why on a case-by-case basis. It doesn't happen often, and none of us has time to wade through the thousands of pieces of junk to find one legit message. Steve

I use Horde, mostly because it allows me as the admin to easily look into users' inboxes and fix any problems. For just webmail, Squirrel is OK. I haven't used Neomail much. You can set up any POP mail account on as many clients as you want and still use webmail when necessary. Steve

Webdrive (http://www.southrivertech.com/) maps a drive on your local machine to the FTP server, letting you copy, move, rename, etc. from Windows Explorer. Very handy when you're updating your website. It's 49.95 after a 30-day trial, and well worth the money. Steve

I noticed that if you click on the 'Domain Registration' link on TCH's site map, it takes you to a different place altogether than the links elsewhere. Different hosting company, and slightly cheaper domain registration.

I'm a little late with this, but we use a great, FREE backup program here to backup our data files to a couple of network machines and ftp to our site with this program: http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cbu6.htm Easy to set up, and works like a charm. (p.s. Read the guy's bio - interesting fellow.) Steve

Interesting idea, anyway. http://anuragjain.blogspot.com/2004/12/de-...-have-been.html

As far as I know, SP2 can be removed like any other program or update. Go to Start - Control Panel - Add or Remove Programs and scroll down to Windows XP Service Pack 2 and click on it to remove. If NAV is Norton Anti-Virus, the trouble you're having, as I understand it, is a Norton thing, not a Windows thing. You might check Norton's website. (Or get AVG Anti-Virus Free Version from grisoft.com. Works fine on my SP2'd machine.) Steve

I use an external client, mostly, and SquirrelMail when I have to use Webmail. Horde is the best if you're doing administrator stuff, as it makes it easy to check all your mailboxes and spam folders.

We use XP Remote Desktop a lot internally and through the VPN. Also, Symantec has a beta version (free) of pcAnywhere 11.5 available on their site right now. Worked great for me going from Xp to 98. Steve