Deverill

Wow, sorry to have started a trend.

It sounds to me like the internal DNS records at your current host are messed up and they are probably way beyond your reach as a customer. I'd ask them about it.

Awesome point, Mike. When I first started hosting with TCH I had a website for a client and had the contact address auto forwarding to him. He was someguy@aol.com and wheneven a spammer harvested his web page email address my site was forwarding to AOL and they reported it back. TCH properly shut off my account to protect the other accounts on the same server. Afterall, if AOL decided that server was a spam source it would have affected many sites and would be lengthy and painful to get turned back on. We found the problem and I have since found another way to get the email to him. It is unfortunate but the health of my site and the others on that server depend on my responsibility for all email going out, automatically or otherwise. Remember, this is not true of only AOL! Any email destination that automatically detects and reports spam is exactly the same... it is just that AOL is the most common about it right now. Anything that could get our servers blacklisted has to be stopped and the auto-forward is the most easily misused feature, even by those who have only the best intentions. We have many alternatives including webmail access and I have sworn off forwarding except to services I know will not blacklist us for it.

It is likely there is a problem with the DNS records. I'm sure if you go ahead and switch to TCH it will all be worked out in the move.

One reason for a dedicated IP over a shared one is that if you are sharing IPs and have a bad neighbor and they get blacklisted for spamming, for example, then the next time you hook up and get that IP you'll be blacklisted by default. We have a zero tolerance of spamming, and being a bad neighbor in general, here so you have little to worry about. In the few cases we have been improperly labeled spammers Head Guru has jumped on the line to sort it out and we've never had any lasting issues like this. I seriously doubt if anyone could be bad enough to get blacklisted before we ourselves shut them off.

I tried restricting the web hosting companies and got an all new batch of hosting companies! I guess I need a page with a more narrow focus for advertising. I don't get much traffic on any of my sites since they are all regional but every little bit helps. I'll have to play more.

Hi K_M! Welcome to the family! I went to your site on a T1 in Key West, Florida and it was less than one second for the first screenful to come up. Netmechanic.com reports the whole page at 3.9 seconds on a 56K dialup modem. Both are very fast. Hope the info helps. Jim

Hey gang, I was looking at the 401 errors on one of my sites and I'm seeing quite a few entries like this: /Administration/\\ I really don't think DreamWeaver could be doing it and I certainly didn't (on purpose) so it got me wondering if this is some kind of attempt to get access to the root folder. Does anyone know why else this weird url would be there? I'm also seeing /&dq=daycare and I don't use any parameterized URL's so What's Up Wit Dat? Any ideas? Thanks.

That seems like a big task Ty. If you decide to do it then I wish you all the best. On one of my sites I have a some-file.php that is basically the head/body/etc tags and stuff and then have a PHP include statement for /Content/some-file.htm to have the changable soft middle parts. I'd like to figure a way to have just one file for the .php thing since it is identical for all pages except the include statement. If that can be done it may be another way to do what you want.

I would like to throw out for discussion this question: If I sign up and advertise Google's Ads on my site is that a good or bad thing? Now, what I see is that it's an opportunity to lose someone which is a bad thing. If Google gets goofy then you may be serving ads for your competitors - even worse! Here's an example: I threw the ads on my web design site and they came up with 4 hosting ads and none of them were TCH! Arrgh! Maybe this can be used as a tool to see what Google thinks your page is about and then you take it back off? Hmmm. Are there any "hidden" bonuses to this? Do the Google gods smile more favorably on you when you help them make money? They say no, but really? What say ye?

Another common problem: If you are using the "tracing" feature of Dreamweaver you must remember that the faded background is only for layout purposes - it is not meant to show on your finished site. You'll need to create a graphics image for the background and put that in the HTML code for the body as in: ><body background="/images/jims.gif">

One experiment that may be worth trying would be to download everything in a tight loop to a local array and THEN parse the array with your splits. Often in programming the Get a line Process it Get another approach has a lot of overhead whereas getting the whole thing and then processing the whole thing reduces that overhead making it faster.

It could be the ISP, especially if you have a moderate amount of email that causes the download to be lengthy. Some systems monitor for what they consider costly operations and reroute them. For example, the reason the phone company hated (still hates?) modems is that in a normal conversation there are gaps of silence and during those gaps they can reroute your call to less busy lines. A modem needs a solid carrier and can not be rerouted without dropping so they were stuck. Too many modems and certain locations get "All circuits are busy now." messages. I know of nothing else off the top of my head to cause it. Try running ping -t totalchoicehosting.com during your next email download and see if the pings get through when email hangs. This may help narrow down the source of the problem.

You must be getting old... KIDDING! It is a new feature that we hope you will enjoy. Be the first, uhm, second to speak out on a topic with this new addition!

Spybot is the program I use too and it's great. I really like the immunization feature. The only down side is that they build better spyware every day and you have to remember to download the latest version.

We're just glad you are giddy about it! Welcome to the family and don't be a stranger. By all means, ask if you have any questions. Now, about that making it too easy comment. You could always download and install all those things yourself if you are a real glutton for pain! At TotalChoice Hosting you have the flexibility to inflict as much pain on yourself as you wish. For what it's worth from looking at my personal sites, there are plenty of opportunities to learn when you get into customizing those packages to match your own tastes and personality.

Thanks for the update, Scott. Your insight is the most valuable I've seen and I appreciate what you share with us. (Especially since you could and do get real money for the same kind of info.)

I would wait. The reason is that if you keep submitting a site to Google they think you are spamming them and may penalize your site. Remember that if you're on there they will crawl your site again. When they do they will pick up any new meta tags, etc. Also remember that if any "established" sites link to you that Google will follow them down the link to you too.

What a great guesture! If HG agrees then maybe we can get Scott to optimize the link for the search engines and make it available for download. Thanks Tonsa, this is what family's all about! :hug:

But Mike... If the link between the US and UK is down then how will they see your FYI? Hey! Don't! Stop slapping me... it's only a joke! Aiiieeeee!

Welcome aboard Dick. You are a valuable addition to the team!

Remember though that the robots.txt file only works on well-behaved crawlers. If it's something you really don't want to get out then make sure you password protect it.

Just a little off topic comment. It's interesting you refer to the jumpers like that. Here's an article about how LA officials want us to stop calling them that because it's offensive. www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=3894931 Sometimes I think people are just too daggum easily offended.

Welcome Chris! As they said, there's a lot of good info hidden in the threads under Web Site Promotion. Scott (dsdemmin) is the best Search Engine Optimization expert I have had the pleasure to talk with. Read his posts carefully and you'll learn a ton about how to get your site on the search engines. Don't be discouraged though. It usually takes a month or two to get a brand new site listed even when everything is done right... just hang in and it will pay off.

And why choice does matter! This is a great addition to TCH for those who need or want that kind of service. You'd better buy a bunch of servers for it because I have a feeling this is going to be a very popular set of service plans!