Andrew

I've got this directory on my site: http://www.kantor.com/usatoday. In the directory is an index.shtml file. Problem: If you try to go to the page without specifying "/index.shtml," you get an error, "Unable to read database or username." I have similar setups throughout my site, but no problems. Only there. There are no "competing" index files (e.g., index.html or .php or whatever), and the page is static -- it's not built dynamically. It's not a huge deal; I just code my links with the full path. But the OCD sufferer in me is driven crazy. Any suggestions? I bet it's something small that I'm missing. Thanks! Andrew

Madmanmcp -- Yeah, yeah -- good point. Mr. Murphy can rear his ugly head. If her name is Britney Speers or something and she registers britneyspeers.com, Ms. Spears might have a problem. But I doubt that anyone's going to fight over "bedumb.com."

All right, this is a bit of self-promotion in a way, but what the heck. Multiple TCH mentions and kudos, for good reason. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/and...iday-gift_x.htm

Is there any way to password-protect a directory without requiring a user name? I want to be able to give a group of people the password, but thought I'd save them the trouble of also typing/remembering a username. Maybe a CGI script out there?

My wife suddenly had her e-mail start to bounce. One of those bounces said that her IP address was blocked thanks to Spamhaus. But Spamhaus listed not her IP address, but one of TCH's. Here's the message: We've changed out outgoing mail server to the SMTP server from our ISP, but I figured this was something worth mentioning. My guess is that either a spammer briefly routed through that server, or was briefly hosted on TCH -- long enough to get on the SBL. Andrew

Cool, and thanks. I wish all these visitors were coming from one place. If it was a wrong link I could tell the site owner, or if it was deliberate I could enjoy the fame. [grin]

Good, then I won't worry too much. I can always just block AOL.

It doesn't look like there's a single source coming in (either a single link out there, or a single IP address hitting it over and over). There are all those AOL people, but that's it. But I may be reading my stats wrong, or missing something important. My main concern is that there's nothing outgoing from penguinbooks.com. Help ticket seems the right idea. Thanks!

As the owner of penguinbooks.com ("Books About Penguins!") I get a few hundred page views every month -- mostly folks looking for penguin.com. All of a sudden, though, my page views have skyrocketed and I'm getting messages about bandwidth being exceeded. As far as I can see there isn't a link to the page from someplace major (e.g., BoingBoing). I do see a lot of page views from xxxx.proxy.aol.com people, which is funny because the site consists of a single page. If anyone can shed any light on this, I'd appreciate it. I'm concerned that maybe something is going *out* via the penguinbooks.com server. Thanks for any help! Andrew

The problem is that the include command is in a lot of my pages (and only these monthly pages aren't working). So I need the .shtml to keep the rest of the site functioning properly.

And I'd really like to know what the include doesn't work anymore. Nothing against PHP, but the include command has always been very very good to me!

Ach, now Firefox asks what to do with the .shtml file -- it won't just open it.

I cut and pasted that code, but it didn't work. I'm guessing that I'm supposed to change something to make it specific for my site. At least the error is gone; now it's just blank.

Nope -- no dice. What's weird is that the same include is in the other page, but without any problems. Argh!

Ooh, no. Hadn't thought of that. I *did* try using the full path (http://...). I'll give it a shot. Thanks!

I made some minor tweaks to a section of my site (www.kantor.com/blog), which sports a server-side include. Specifically, it includes a file called "nav.html" that sits in my root (public_html) directory. This way I can have the same navigation links on every page. Now something weird is going on. My main blog page -- http://www.kantor.com/blog -- has that nav.html file show up just fine. But the monthly archive pages, e.g., http://www.kantor.com/blog/2004/12/index.shtml, will NOT show that nav.html file. I get the infamous "[an error occurred while processing this directive]" message. I use the same code on both pages: <!--#include virtual="http://www.kantor.com/nav.html" --> I believe the permissions are OK (it works some of the time, after all), and I tried using 'include file' as well. But it just won't appear on the other pages. Any suggestions about this? I figure I'm missing something obvious, but can't figure out what. Thanks!

One man's rants are what tiggers do best. Thanks, all -- glad you liked it. But it's well deserved. There's quite a difference between TCH and a lot of other hosts, and I'm glad of it!

See it in the Tech section online. Scroll to or search for "TotalChoice." The important part: Here's a shameless plug for the Web host I use: It's called TotalChoice Hosting (TCH; based, I think, in Michigan), and it's great. Four bucks a month gives you a site with unlimited e-mail addresses, unlimited FTP accounts, and almost-one-click access to things like shopping carts, message boards, chat rooms, Web-site stats, and on and on.

Ah, but I don't want to use Flooble or whatever that is. I want to be able to control it -- and not to have ads!

My niece has a page on Xanga that includes this sidebar thing -- you can enter your name and a quick comment and it appears as sort of an ongoing chat room. (See it at http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=honoring_him on the right side. It seems I could mimic this using a simple guestbook: Instead of opening a separate page, the guestbook would create a simple HTML file that I could 'include' on my home page using a server-side include. Is this possible? Can I configure one of the CPanel guestbooks to generate a simple HTML file that I can then "include" in my index.shtml? Any thoughts much appreciated!

Fastfind: I can make it look like a part of my site (i.e., no ads, no fastfind branding)? That might work!

I'm also looking for a search tool, and ht://dig looks good. Question: How can I install it? The requirements on the ht:// site seem to indicate that I need command line access, which obviously I don't have. I assume I'm missing something, but what?

Nope -- no SA. But it looks like the techs fixed the problem, whatever it was. (As usual!) Suddenly my inbox is full of all those missing messages. Yay, TCH!

Leesville Lake? I've only been here a coupla months, so I have to plead "No clue." But Hamilton -- I know where that is! (I work for the Roanoke Times, btw. Don't know if you get that in Hamilton.)

Okey doke -- done. Thanks!