Deverill

Hmmm, I wonder if it is a coincidence that this is Halloween night?

Conniew, First welcome to the forums! It is good to research your options before getting into a mess. The others have said well the feelings I have about TCH as a customer. I've never seen better. The one thing I'd like to suggest is for you to look through the forums, look at the names over to the left and see which posters are management, staff or moderators versus customers, evaluate the help given and make your own decisions in answer to your questions. You'll see lots of posts by Head Guru who is the owner of the company. In many cases he'd be sitting in the Bahamas drinking Pina Coladas and cashing his checks but that's not the kind of guy he is. He is an in-it-up-to-the-elbows, gotta-make-it-work person and that dictates the kind of company TCH is... we all follow his lead to one degree or another and the ones he pays a salary to must follow it pretty closely I think if you read some of the forum threads you'll make your own mind up about why you should come to TCH. We'll be here when you do come over and will be happy to help in any way possible. :hug: All the best

See, you thought I mad all that stuff up didn't you!

If I remember correctly from the time I had Outlook scanning multiple accounts, the number of minutes between mail checks is configured for each account. This may explain why 2 of 3 break and also will give you the tool to do your work mail often and the TCH mail less often. Check under Tools/Options/Mail Setup/Send-Receive. I believe the settings will be there but we use a local exchange server here so I can't verify it for you. HTH

Hi John, The alt tags are not for the little popup messages as Borfast describes in his post that he linked to. They are, however, used for filling in the blanks if someone is browsing with images turned off, if there's something wrong with your image or if it is a text-only browser which includes voice readers for the blind. Usually when we suggest using alt tags in relation to search engines it is to improve page relevance. For instance, a page about widgets will only be able to mention widgets so much in text without overdoing it. A good thing to do is to make your alt tags say your key words, for instance, "Our top of the line Blue Widget". Then the search engines see that and say, "Wow, this page is really about widgets. I should put them higher than other widget sites for someone looking for widgets." If your images are things that aren't related to a topic you want people searching for then don't worry about the alt tags. I would put a statement at the top or bottom of the page that says what it is in case someone stumbles on it and can't see the images, but beyond that it's no biggie. If, however, you have a topic your pictures are related to that you want someone to find on a web search, the alts can help someone find you.

What the email says is legitimate. This message is being sent all across the internet - in fact I just got one for a domain I have on godaddy.com. If your info is correct then you don't have to do anything and that's a good thing. My guess is that the email was sent from the registrar that does TCH domains on behalf of TCH and therefore it was not from the TCH servers... but that is a guess. There's a similar thread at http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...c=5250&hl=icann

I use the script described at http://photoframe.sourceforge.net/ for doing my thumbnails on the newer stuff. The old stuff is on the "when I get a chance" list. Anyway, it is really nice in that you just put the photos in a folder at full size and it uses PHP's graphics library to create the thumbnails for you! I love this feature because I used to spend hours making thumbs. It has pretty good features to customize it with headers, etc. and the only snag I hit was that it needs a directory named thumbs/ that has specific permissions set. That part was a pain but it works for me and I like it so give it a peek. You can see one of my pages using it at http://www.covenantwordchurch.org/MissionT...reach/index.php (sorry for the long URL). There are probably better ones but this was the first one I hit upon that I liked.

By the way, your title for this thread is appropriate... This Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work sometimes causes a new form of psychotic behaviour recently named "RageRank". A prominent SEO expert was quoted as saying "It's the newest form of road rage on the Information Superhighway." At least 3 cases per week have been seen recently and it is predicted to increase. The most recent case last Wednesday left a mother and her three young children without their keyboard after the father wrapped it around the back of a chair and then drank a case of beer watching the World Series game before the 'net police could arrive and control the situation. In unrelated news, Google is expected to make an initial public offering (IPO) of their stocks soon. Technology brokers are salivating like high-tech Pavlovian dogs.

You can use the DreamWeaver FTP facility to keep your files up to date. I use it all the time with DW4. It's good when you want to synchronize which checks the dates on all files and tells you which ones need to be sent to the server and then *click* they're on their way. On DW4 you just go to your site definition and click on the Remote category and fill in the blanks. I assume MX would be similar if you have that flavor.

I saw your message but nothing came to mind. As I reread it I think of the yahoo/mapquest/etc sites where you can put in an address and they tell you of every business within X miles. Also the personal/dating services do that too. I think it's based on zip code. Maybe something in that arena can help you but I haven't a clue where to look. Sorry

You know, I'll bet that they did that on purpose too! It's a great observation and one I'll have to adjust my keywords for. Thanks!

PageRank is a very mathematically complex thing but in its simplest terms it is a measure of the votes of confidence from other pages. Basically, to improve your PageRank you must get more links from more pages and if those pages themselves have a high PR then it's even better. Also, Google regards a vote from a page that's similar to your more than one that's not. For instance, if I have a used car web page that has 100 links from pages that are all PR3 and they are about playground equipment my PR will not be very high. If thase same 100 sites have a PR6 my PR will be higher. If they are about car parts and car painting and car customizing then my PR will be even higher still. This is an oversimplification of my understanding of it. Others may have better answers and it is even possible that I may be mistaken is some part of this.

Yeah, according to all I read it is still in there doing bad things. I use a program called "Spybot Search & Destroy" that gets rid of all kinds of spyware very nicely. I'll bet it will pick up some stuff if you run it (it's free but donations are requested). You can get it at spybot.eon.net.au/index.php?lang=en&page=news if you'd like to give it a spin. We recently had an office at the company where I work that their entire computer sub-network ground to a screeching halt. Come to find out, they are a bunch of WWW-Playbabies and had gotten so much spyware and "cutsie programs" on their systems that they were unusable. We're making that our case study for the new acceptable use policy.

Yes. You'll have to check but I'd bet there is a small financial advantage to doing it as a reseller too. It's like buying 12 cans of soda versus buying a case at a time.

Actually, Shakes, you can buy Homesite 5.5 from the Macromedia website for $99.00 It is included in DW for free but that's not the only way to get it. It's too bad you feel DW is "web-authoring-for-dummies" because some of the best websites ever were created with it and I doubt that reflects negatively on the developers. It really is a powerful tool that has its place in web development, although I will admit it's not for everyone.

Hi gang! I wanted to take a second to give credit where it's due. As you know if you've read this forum much I have had a lot of questions about how to improve my site. This is especially true of the ranking on Google which is my main interest currently. TCH has made this an awesome place to host my site and they have given us these forums so we can get help from our other family members as well. THANK YOU GUYS! This is worth as much as the most expensive hosting plan you offer all by itself! Here are some stats about one of my sites and it's rank on Google. I owe it all to the advice I have gotten here and especially to Scott (dsdemmin) for the excellent advice I've been given free and enthusiastically! The starting figures are what I was able to accomplish myself by searching the web for every technique and trick I could find and it's nothing to brag about. "key west fishing boat" Date Rank on Google 9/03 Position 32 - Page 4 Now Position 16 - Page 2 "Key west charter boat" 9/03 Position 45 - Page 5 Now Position 24 - Page 3 "Key west fishing" (My main desire to conquer is this keyword!) 9/03 Position 69 - Page 7 Now Position 37 - Page 4 "Key west shark fishing" (a niche for my client) 10/11 Not in top 100 Now Position 3 - Page 1 Please notice. I have not yet implemented all that I have learned and have not optimized more than just 2-3 pages within my site. My plan is to focus certain pages on certain keywords and benefit from that as well as just the main page and a couple of others. My PageRank on my index page is also a pathetic 3/10 so I definitely need to work on some quality links as well as internal link adjustments. I am quite convinced that the climb is not over and that as I apply more of what I've learned it will indeed pay off greatly. I have also benefitted on other search engines also. Without any conscious effort, the site is at Position 18 - Page 2 for my best search term on Lycos, Position 34 - Page 3 on MSN and similar positions on Iwon, Yahoo and others. It's even Position 8 - Page 1 on AllTheWeb. If you EVER get advice from the TCH Family Forum always consider the source and wisdom of it, but consider it! These folks are the best and I've not seen anyone try to hurt anyone yet! As I said, I wanted to give credit where due and to thank you all for helping me do a much better job for my client. It's no doubt that... Rock Sign

Be aware that Hotbar is what's called spyware and is reported to track you web browsing habits and has also caused some problems with Outlook and XP. It does way more than it advertises and is very difficult to remove. You can read more about it by going to google and typing "hotbar spyware" as a search term.

That, my friend, is why the email services are free. The advertising you provide them is "paying" for your email service. As Jim said, it is added after it leaves your hands so there's nothing you can do about it.

DF, They already have that. Go into IE and click Favorites on the toolbar or Ctrl-I and it shows all your favs in a window on the left side. Didn't want you putting all that effort into something already there!

Mozilla Thunderbird has a Bayesian Filter which I think is awesome. It uses complex mathematical processes to identify spam. It also weighs more heavily toward not-spam than spam so you get fewer real mails filtered. It is around 98-99% correct after it has had a chance to learn what is and is not spam. I also found an addon for Outlook called SpamBayes that works the same way and is very easy to use and seems so-far to be equally effective.

If you have the luxury of time you may want to chat with HG about it. This will let you ask "how much is too much" and it will forewarn him of the specifics of your one-shot deal.

Also remember that with a reseller account you can adjust bandwidth and disk quota settings on each of your sub-accounts. If you have, say, 2 50GB sites now and one only uses 20 and the other 51 you're in trouble. As a reseller you can give one 25 and the other 75 and still be in the same total range. This is the single biggest benefit I see from my own account. I have a lot of small accts and it's much more efficient to give them only what they need than to have 5 boxes all the same size. Also, if you want to do this, submit a ticket to the help desk and they will work with you on consolidating your accounts and they can also work out the amount due based on what you still have pre-paid versus what the new account will cost.

There are sometimes licensing restrictions on pre-setup and ready to install packages. Head Guru and the guys are often on the lookout for new things but some of these take awhile to work out the details with the authors. If you have a favorite package I'm sure you could suggest they consider installing it for us, but make sure you do any groundwork you can to make it easier on them. For instance, if it's a Mcrosoft-only product don't bother because TCH is run on non-MS systems. It's good to see that you were easily able to do what you wanted for your site. This is one of my favorite parts of TCH and that's the ability to add all the cool and powerful add-ons they offer without having to know much about their installation and configuration.

The thing I wonder is "Would customers download a patch once per month that's a bazillion bytes (Bb) instead of 20 during the month that are 1 meg each?" Especially the folks still on 56k - won't they just hit cancel when they see a 40 meg download?

I use Mozilla Firebird so my homepage has 4 tabs that open when the browser does: Google TCH Family Forums My Web email service (non-TCH) My ISP home page for notices/etc. (Bell South DSL) From there I get pretty much where I want most of the time. I really like Firebird's ability to open multiple tabs and then save that as your homepage.