Deverill

I doubt the helpdesk techs are clogged or clueless - they are some top class people that are a great help to many daily. The truth of it is that since TCH's techs don't support third party scripts that it has pushed your ticket to a lower priority than other requests they have. I can't speak for them but I'd think that the MySQL will not be updated quickly because there must be testing and they won't risk crashing other customers with properly working scripts for another running a version of IPB that requires a newer database version. While I'm not terribly familiar with IPB, I am a programmer and my advice is to try to find an older version you can downgrade to because as soon as you fix one problem you'll probably uncover another problem since the version you are running depends on having 4.1 and we are running 4.0 on the server. I don't know if the techs can help with a MySQL upgrade so please look for the helpdesk ticket to be answered. I'm sorry you have had such a rough transition to your new home and maybe others here in the forums have done what you are trying and can help as well.

In Linux there is Scribus. They are working on a Windows version but I couldn't find that they have it ready yet. I don't know of anything else for Windows but surely there is something out there.

Thanks! I may need it if DSL doesn't return soon and I'm stuck on flakey dial-up.

Has anyone spent any time on the database utility? I was just curious to hear from a "regular folk" how it works and how much of a pain it is to learn after, say, Access. I'm moving everything under my control (ie. non-work stuff) to OpenOffice because it works well, stores well and encourages the "MS isn't the only game in town" sentiment I so much enjoy.

Yeah, the hot sauce is good for things you're going to eat, but that car is not going to be very tasty with all the mold and mildew. The recovery is progressing but is slow... piles of debris on the roadsides, trashed cars everywhere, the phone is barely working and no DSL for maybe 2-3 weeks, my cell is getting no signal... and I'm one of the lucky ones. Some had 4 feet of water in their homes so the devastation is widespread. Thanks for the concern and I'm trying to find ways to be around here much more often. By the way, what's the low-graphic version of the forums?

Backlinks (links from other, preferably like-minded, sites) will help tremendously. Also remember that, at least recently, Google has had as much as a 1-year wait time to get listed. It is (was?) their attempt to get better results for us. Don't waste your time with submission services or any submission for the "big" search engines - they find almost everything listed by following links - not so much on "submit URL" forms. The directories are different so go ahead and use their submit forms. Anything else, just ask.

Just got access... had to come to work to get online. There are no phones at my house and no cellphone signal. Power came back Wednesday morning. My house is on stilts so it was fine and the wind didn't hurt it. I did have to make a mid-storm adjustment to the shutters but it's all good. The storm was pretty much over, we thought, and the canal started rising. That was unusual but it seemed like a small thing. Pretty soon the surge came in from the other side of the island and crested over the street so in comes a virtual river of water and within 15 minutes we were waist deep in water. The good news is that the important things are safe (all the people) but I did lose my car - the thing fried. It's a pain in the butt trying to figure how to get another good (non-wet) one from the mainland... but that's another small thing. No one died here as far as we can tell and there are no reports of serious injury so we were blessed in spite of the loss of nearly every car in the lower keys.

Well, the winds have begun... probably about 40-45 mph gusts so far with steady at 25-30. I'm not worried about this one since it looks like it is fast and likely north of us but we could get some of that front-right winds everyone talks about. The power is blinking off and on for a second at a time already so I don't know when that will go. I have read about the hurricane foam idea but to me the guy sounds like a crack-pot. I read one article about it that said it would take a plane flying through the hurricane with an unmanagable amount of the stuff to work. I guess the lesson is "It's not nice to fool mother nature" (how many remember that old commercial!?) I'm safe and I think the Keys will just get a buncha wind -- everyone in central & south Florida need to keep an eye out and be as safe as possible and don't take uneccesary risks. The funniest thing was the guy on the Weather Channel talking about how he's standing on a sidewalk and there was a small hill behind him and the water would be way up on that... he was standing on a little slab of concrete where the bank meets the water UNDER the seven-mile bridge. Of course it's gonna flood - you're standing under the freaking bridge you moron!!! Hilarious.

I don't know about the search feature for unrecognized sites, mostly because I don't trust them but the www part is because of how our sites are set up here. Basically, our site lives at "yourTCHdomain.com" for instance and we have a subdomain set up as "www.yourTCHdomain.com" but it is just a pointer to our real site. (For Unix gurus it's a link.) This means that whichever they type, with or without the www, they get the same pages. "Pretty sneaky sis!" Hopefully someone else uses the completion/site-search features and can answer the other part of your question.

Hey Mike, I use a lot of templates to get the general layout down and then customize from there. It's one step removed from actually learning everything about CSS positioning but gives me a great starting point and flexibility to adapt from there to what I want and to learn "a little as you go" on the CSS stuff I want to customize. I'm much more motivated to learn how to do XYZZY when I need to do that for a site than just for the academic pursuit, although that's pretty high for me too You can Google for things like "free CSS website templates" and find some good sites that offer a bunch of nice templates that don't look like templates... and the best thing is that with CSS it's not too hard to change the entire look in a line or two. Raul's right, use tables for tabular data and they'll work great. If you go CSS I'd personally recommend that you give up tables until you get the hang of CSS and can no longer use them like a crutch like so many of us making that transition did.

Well, we made it to the end of the alphabet for named storms. Let's hope this one only finishes the alphabet and not finish anyone or their homes. It's interesting that almost all of Key West is boarded up and closed when the storm is around 400 miles away, not expected until Sunday, and there are only tourist evacs ordered at this time. They're not even ordering locals out until 6-9AM tomorrow. I guess everyone is just tired of this hurricane stuff and just locked up and left... no questions asked. So what do you do? Hope it hits someone else? No way! I just hope and pray that it becomes as weak as possible and that everyone near it pays attention and does what they should to stay safe and sound. By the way, anyone know where we can get about 100,000,000 pounds of dry ice we can drop in the ocean to cool it off?

In a word, yes. AOL does no research on the source of spam. That's why we stopped forwarding there from TCH. All it takes is for an email to come through here (not originate here) to an AOL customer and they click "report spam" and we're on the hit list. They also check for "spam-looking" stuff so it's entirely possible they are blocking it in your scenario. Also, remember that Gmail has spam filtering stuff too so it could slip through the cracks there. I hope you get a solution that works well for you! I'm doing the TCH->gmail->AOL and it seems everything important is getting through to my client so it can work when the moon is in the right phase.

Congrats guys! Here's to many happy years together!

Remember also that the submissions, while they may still work, are a declining feature for some of the engines such as Google. They prefer to find your site by following links from already listed sites. I'd put more effort in that for the search engines... the directories will need to be submitted to though.

Indeed, Mike. They are not "safe" if the governments want to find them. Any signal can be traced and any person can be persecuted for any thing in many of these countries so it is indeed a false sense of security. (By the way, I've deleted three "political" comments just to write this so be careful this doesn't turn into a political dissidence/my-country-is-better-than-yours/etc. topic. )

Why anyone would wish that on any community, I'll never understand. Remember, politically heated comments are against the board policy.

Read an interesting blurb on why Opera is free now... I hope it works... but not well enough to hurt firefox

The TCH Techs don't help install third party scripts such as WordPress or MT. There are, however, lots of folks on the forums here that are familiar with the systems and can offer assistance if you get stuck.

I found this. I hope it helps.

Although Marathon is 33 miles away I stayed buttoned down yesterday. Came to work today to get everything back in order though. Here's a lesson for anyone in the path... Rita went from a "Oh, it's nothing, it's just a tropical storm" to a "Destructive Category 2 Hurricane" in 4 hours! Much too close to decide to leave when it happened... even if I wanted to. It jogged south so we were spared the worst of it but it could have been very ugly very fast so if you are in an area prone to them, don't take them lightly... Mother Nature is a nasty lady at times.

Probably the final update as far as the Florida Keys are concerned... The hurricane, which became a Category 2 as it was in the area, is now about 65 miles away and the winds and rain are quieting down. Still gusty around strong Tropical Storm or barely-Cat-1 but not the constant barrage it has been since about 11AM. It seems everything is pretty good here - not much flooding and few downed trees from what I'm hearing from others I know here. Please, everyone on the "opposite cost" of the gulf watch out - this got relatively big fast - it was a tropical storm at 11-ish and a Cat 2 by 3-ish. I did buy a generator after Dennis and hadn't used it yet so when the power went out I was happy I had it and ready to use it. I went out and filled the oil and poured the gas and found the switch and got ready to pull the cord and the power came on. I started it anyway The power went back off in a minute or two so I cranked it back and got a fan and light going and was trying to figure how to get online. I had the extension cords but they were 2 prongers and I had 3 prong power strips that I needed to use. Well, about the time I got everything figured out the power came back on for good. I'm glad I have it and don't need it rather than the opposite. So... who in our family is in the path now? Please be careful and let us know how you are!

Well, we're still here! My neighbor lost a few shingles from his roof and everything around here blows... but we are all safe and dry... except me who went out in the middle of it to see what was going on with the house. Good thing too, I was about to lose a big strip of my vinyl siding and caught it in time to keep it from peeling off. Water's rising but no flood problem at my home - Key West is probably up to car doors by now by just guessing. The power just went off so we'll see what happens with that - that's the problem of 150 miles of wire supplying the power - any place that breaks plunges the whole place into darkness. Again, all is well as of 3:33 pm - I don't expect anything else to happen cuz we should be passing the worst of it now. Thanks for the thoughts and prayers - they are appreciated!

Still looking good here. The winds picked up a bit but nothing terrible. I'm not seeing any flooding where I am but I live 17 miles up the road from Key West proper... they have more problems there because of the layout of the land. The path is looking better and the strength is not as much as they first feared so it's promising to be a minor event for the most part. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers - they seem to be working! Just wanted to check in and let you know we're ok so far.

Rita is anything but lovely. She's a big bag of wind! The storm soon to be known as Hurricane Rita (should we change the name to a symbol? ) is on her way. The winds here in Key West area are gusting from 25 to 35 mph so it's not bad yet. The flooding is not happening either so that's great news. They are on the radio saying they have downgraded their estimates from 90MPH to 80MPH when it gets here and the path is veering ever so slightly away from what it was before. Of course, no one knows... But anyway, my neighbor took down his maibox so it doesn't get destroyed but this morning I look out and he has 2 plastic trash cans sitting out there... go figure! Anyway, we seem to have paid attention as a community and almost everyone is boarded up so damage should be minimal. Yesterday they were panicing and saying Category 3 and Georges-type damage... fitting the movie Cry Wolf is out soon. People will stop listening if they keep doing that. 2 out of 3 of the fire pager towers are "malfunctioning" so I hope we don't have any fires soon after the storm. We got about 12 more hours of storm/flood potential. I'll post as I can for updates. Pray for the folks in TX / LA where this thing will probably go after here.

It's a manual process but a new thing Google is doing with their Gmail product is allowing you to use alternate From: lines. You *could* tell them to get a Gmail account and apply to use theirname@yourTCHdomainname and Gmail will fire off an email to you that you could approve and then they could use that -- but it is very risky because of the spammer problem. If nothing else you can have them use one of the many free emails - Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, etc, etc... then you can let those guys worry about the spammers BTW, welcome!