Deverill

If you have an index.htm page in your public_html folder it should show that. Do you mind sharing the link so we can take a look?

Hmmm. Tell me if I did this wrong: I put a line in .htacess that says: Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.mysite.org/index.htm The problem is that if I go to mysite.org/index.htm the browser redirects to www.mysite.org/index.htm and then it sees it should redirect to ... forever. Without creating a new home page is there any way to "combine" mysite.org and www.mysite.org? Did I do something wrong or is that just how it resolves things?

Scott, You're the man! Thanks yet again!

I route my mail through several filters so I can't speak to TCH's Spam Assassin's behavior, but I will say that I have noticed the spammers are in a constant battle with SA's filtering rules. I have seen several lately that are simple messages that SA didn't catch because the score was too low.

Remember that if you use a java or javascript solution the person viewing your page may have those turned off in their browser and may see nothing at all. This is pretty rare but if you have a commercial site where sales would be at stake then it's worth noting. As "the other Jim" says, e-mail harvesting is a business and they get smarter every time. That's why I personally think things like Spam Assassin and Bayesian filters (like in Mozilla's thunderbird program) are our best bet. For what its worth, I used a java trick on one of my sites and the spams dropped from about 50 per day to about 4 within a week so it definitely helps! Best wishes and if you have any problems just ask!

Soni, I want to second what Andy said... just drop a note in the forums and you'll have tons of help, usually within minutes to hours. I've seen these folks explain some fairly involved things to the newest of beginners and they have patience and a heart to help. Afterall, you're not just another customer for TCH or their customers - you're family here!

Welcome to the forums! Don't be a stranger. Everyone has something to add to the family.

Welcome to the family! It's good to see another "Hosting Orphan" come to TCH where they can enjoy their experiences with the net and not just be a victim. Not every host is evil but the ones I have dealt with are far from the service I get here at TCH and the family-factor is awesome. Where's the love? At TCH! :hug: Enjoy yourself and let us know if there's anything any of us can do ... you're family now.

All right! Congrats, Timur! What paper was that in? It's really cool to see something "real world" for the first time. Good going!

Sorry for the confusing title but I couldn't figure how to word it. I go to one of my websites with the google bar enabled and see that if I go to mysite.com I get a PR of 3. If I go to www.mysite.com I get a PR of 4. Obviously Google is seeing them as two different entities. Some of those links are from my other sites so I can of course change them to include the www. What about the links that exist in the world that are not mine to control? Is there anything I can do to redirect or shuffle them to WWW so Google counts them together? I doubt it but I'm hoping there's a way. Thanks!

Maybe they had slow connections and didn't wait for the download? The link you listed was the first I watched. It's a little abstract for my tastes but I gotta say it was pretty doggone good! I know that I could never make something good enough to keep me watching the whole thing so it has to be good since I watched the whole thing. I browsed over to the Matrix music video and I think that's awesome! The way you pulled the pieces out of the movie and matched them to the feel of the music was awesome! I almost expected the song to end with Neo letting all the bullets fall to the ground though, but that's just my favorite part of the movie when he asserts himself and just says "No!". You have a great thing going, Timur! I wish you all the best in it for the future!

Thanks for the great info, Scott! It is interesting that link:www.covenantwordchurch.org returns different that +www.covenantwordchurch.+org but I guess that's the PR3 thing. I hadn't done that and feel better now seeing some of the links show up. I only use the other search engines for comparisons and optimizing my web sites. Any time I need anything I go to Google without exception. I wonder if we are approaching a situation like web designers have in the past... "Don't worry about optimizing for Netscape, they are such a small crowd it's not worth it." Only this would be the SE equivalent... "Don't worry about optimizing for _____, if it's not Google it is too small to matter." Of course there's always the AOL/MSN crowd that will use whatever's easiest.

I would be careful doing this as Google *may* interpret these empty tags as spoofing attempts and ban you. I am not stating this as fact because I don't know, but if I was Google I'd be suspicious.

It must have done some good if you did contact the host... I can't get to their site today which is a good thing.

Someone recently explained it to me that some systems don't play nice and those may simply be pages that a guy was looking at and when he went to your site it used that address as the referer. Take this for what it's worth as I can't quote sources or anything but it kinda makes sense.

I value everyone's input whether your name happens to be Scott or not so don't feel like I'm just waiting for him to answer - although it is always educational when he does. From my readings, Google seems to only list backlinks that have a PR of "the high threes" or better. Sorry I didn't clip the reference for that... it may have been the Google webmaster chat area. I guess #3 on altavista is pretty good since I've been focusing entirely on Google, but I'll never "settle" for that! I'm going now to check on the other sites to see what else I can find that gives them an edge...

Welcome, Chuck! Have fun but work hard! It's good to have yet another great person to add to the family!

EEEK! And I just read that Google filters out the backlinks from sites that have a PageRank below a certain threshold... it should be the other way around. Thanks for the warning! (It's still cool though! )

Thanks for the link, Mike! I hadn't seen that one yet. Good to know about Google too, Dave. Thanks guys!

Consider 2 web sites. Mine at http://www.covenantwordchurch.org and another at www.worldwide.cogop.org. We'll call mine CWC and the other we'll call COGOP just to keep it simple. My question is how did they outrank me for the search term ["Key West" church] on Altavista. Observations: 1. They only refer to Key West because of an obituary (2 articles, one is his passing and the other is about the service for him) for one of their Bishops. It's less than 25% of the home page. 2. I have attempted to optimize my page for just such a term, they being a global organization, have not. I have used Titles, headers, meta tags, bolding the keywords (but could probably have it more in the content) but still this puzzles me. 3. The COGOP site doesn't even rate with Google. They say their pagerank is 0/10. (I know it's altavista but Google does show roughly how relevant a page is.) Backlinks to this site on Google show none. 4. If I don't quote "Key West" in my altavista search then another site at www.stpaulskw.org which was created with Front Page and not cleaned up after even rates above me. This site doesn't even use meta tags and more confusingly rates below me if I do use quotes. At least Google says they are 5/10 so they have some powerful backlinks to them. I checked backlinks to my site and something is amiss there too because I have a couple of sites I maintain that link to them but they aren't showing as link: entries on Google. Altavista says I have 3 pages of backlinks to that site. I also noticed that because my host lets me, I got sloppy (read inconsistent) on naming the site. One place has covenantwordchurch.org and another will have www.coven... This is true of my nav bar too. I noticed (and changed) the link to home was "\index.htm" not "http://www.../index.htm" I believe this may count as an outgoing link and would not count as a link back from my secondary pages to the main which probably has a big affect on things. Can you guys help me understand these: 1. Why does the COGOP site rank higher than me on Altavista? 2. Why does it make a difference quoting or not quoting "Key West" in the search since all 3 sites only have 'West' after the word 'Key'? I thought it would be the same in that case. 3. Why did Google get amnesia about all the sites that link back to me? My stock answer is that SEO is Voodo but maybe the "high priest of the church of the painfully obscurred" (Hi Scott! ) or one of you other fine folks could shed some light on it? Thanks!

Congratulations Head Guru! I don't think I have heard of any web hosts that are part of the BBB (although I'm sure they exist.) This is a great accomplishment and shows the extreme effort you put into having a world class business.

Here's a thread from July that may help shed some light on the issue: http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...6&hl=resolution

What a great (and honest) review! Thanks for sharing your experiences and views on our favorite hosting company!

Here's a link to an article on MM's website about telling DW not to rewrite html (usually imported from other sources.) Basically this option tells DW that if HTML is already written, don't mess around with it. http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts...h_templates.htm

Hi Jennifer, Welcome to the family! As others have said, there's not much you can do through technology to stop people from doing this. They can do a screen-grab and nothing you do can help stop that. I know you said you didn't want to involve lawyers, but most folks get the stuffing scared out of them when they receive a cease and desist letter from a lawyer. You could probably get one written for US$25-$50 and that may be the end of it. Of course, you could create "How Buffy stole my work" page but that makes you seem petty. The best bet is to digitally sign it as was mentioned and send her an email saying "If you check with the _____ program you will see my signature. The next contact will be from my lawyer since I have established ownership of the files on your site." It all just depends on how much enegry and effort you want to put into it and how much pain it causes you to leave it like it is. Best wishes!