owatagal

Interesting. Restarting the computer fixed whatever the problem was. But I still don't understand *why* Firefox was having an issue, so if anyone has an explanation, I'd love to know.

Never had this happen before-- Firefox can't seem to load one of my sites. It sits on a blank page, with the loading sign spinning, and doesn't seem to be able to connect to the URL at all. Meanwhile, if I try to load the site in Safari, Netscape, or IE (all on the same computer), it works just fine. I can ping the URL and the packets go through just fine. The site's working, but Firefox apparently isn't--although it's loading all other sites ok. Anyone have any ideas why Firefox would be unable to load the site and how I can fix it?

Will do!

I'm getting some emails bounced -- this is the error message: SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data: host mx1.megamailservers.com [216.251.32.71]: 550 5.7.1 l1R1rYL9030736 This message does not comply with required standards. I've tried Google, but I don't understand email protocols well enough to figure out what the various pages are saying. Anyone have any ideas what's going on here / if there's something I can fix so the emails DO comply with required standards?

You can put blogrolls, rings, etc on their own page without going to a subdomain--I've done it, because I hate links in the sidebar (too cluttered for my taste). Log in to WP's admin panel and click on "Write." Instead of writing a post, click on the new "Write Page" link. I think I called my links page "Interesting Links" (so original, I know). I put all the links in by hand--NOT using WP's blogroll feature. You would need to edit the template files a little bit to use the blogroll feature on a links page, but it should be easy enough (if you're comfortable editing template files, anyway). I just haven't had time yet. To edit your links page, click on the "Manage" link and then the "Pages" link in the subnav. Update the info, and save the page. My links page shows up in the same navigation group as my "About" and "Contact" page. No need for an extra subdomain or even for a separate file--you can edit it within WP just like any of your posts.

You aren't going nuts. Everyone deals with the old IE vs. Everyone Else display problems. Internet Explorer doesn't follow web standards and Mozilla browsers do, so the same bit of HTML code will look different in each of the browsers. It's not Firefox's problem; it's IE's fault for not playing by the rules. I can't speak to AceHTML; I've never used it. But it sounds like it codes to make a site look good in IE, so you'll probably always have problems with Firefox and that editor. I haven't used WYSIWYG editors in so long, I can't even recommend a good alternative; sorry. The ideal solution, of course, is to learn HTML and CSS on your own. A good tutorial or book will teach you how IE and Mozilla are different while you learn the HTML and CSS, so that as you go you learn how to fix these problems. It'll take time, but if you enjoy designing websites, it'll be well worth it. stevevan's advice is good, too: validate your HTML after you finish the page in AceHTML. That will help limit some display problems, and it's good design practice. Without knowing what your code looks like, I can't offer any specific advice on fixing the centering on your pages. Centering IS one of the things I've noticed IE and Firefox tend to disagree about, so I'm not surprised you're noticing a difference. You might try Googling for information on centered tables, Firefox, and IE--this is a common enough problem that you might find a page that already addresses the issue. Or if you let us know where your page is located, someone here might be able to offer specific suggestions--I can try if I don't get bogged down in work the next few days.

I do a mix of web design, work for a local barn, subbing, tutoring, house/pet sitting, etc. All self-employed/freelance work--so I set my own schedule/workload. I'm as stressed as I want to be and I love my jobs... although when nothing's coming in and the bills are due soon I have to say any 9-5 (and all associated stress!) starts looking good.

If you want a border on your links in one state (say, unvisited links only), but you don't want it to appear in the other states (hovering and after it has been visited), you still need to declare a border, you just make it the same color as your background. For example, if I wanted a maroon border for unvisited links and the other to states to look like they don't have a border, in CSS I'd do this (assuming my site background is white): a:link { border: 1px solid #900; } a:visited { border: 1px solid #fff; } a:hover { border: 1px solid #fff; } The border is technically always there, but it's "invisible" in the last two declarations since it'll match the page background color. Your text doesn't shift, because the border's always present. Hopefully that makes sense.

A lot of times on this forum we talk about the benefits of CSS in terms of updating sites--how it's easier to manage the layout from a single file and so on. Smaller page size is a benefit, too, but it's sometimes hard to estimate how much smaller CSS actually makes a site. So here's a completely unscientific case study, using the numbers from a site I'm currently working on. Someone else started this site; it was made using HTML table layouts. No CSS in sight. The navigation menu uses Javascript image rollovers. The current average page size (including all images) is 85 K. Just deleting "font-face" junk in the HTML and using pure paragraph tags (styled by CSS) cut the page size by 2-3 K. Converting the table layouts to pure CSS cuts another 10K. This is NOT a complicated layout: it's a two-column layout with a header. It takes three -div- tags to create the effect of 10K of table layout HTML. Converting the Javascript menu to a text menu with CSS rollover effects cuts another 15K (mostly in image weight). All told, a pure CSS layout cuts 27-30K per page, making them roughly 35% smaller. 35% smaller. Now think of that in terms of bandwidth savings and decreased visitor load time. Nice, huh?

I look for community/atmosphere/knowledge base. In the long run, I'll spend more time on a slow-paced forum with those three qualities than a fast-paced forum with a bunch of trolls (even though I enjoy reading trollish posts sometimes). I also prefer forums that are specialized to a degree but not over specialized--e.g. one on horses rather than animals or Dressage. When I need to, I go to more specialized forums, but I like to read over topics that aren't my specialty and see what new things I can pick up.

Interesting. Do you know if it's optional because it's built into the specs to be optional, or are browsers compensating because it's a common error?

The two pages (new2.htm and wrong.htm) appear to have the exact same code to me. Anyway -- the border is black and should be red, right? It's not a class/ID problem, because I don't see you using classes or IDs anywhere -- the code I'm seeing is declaring the CSS right in the HTML tags, like: ><td width="50%" bgcolor="#FF0000" style="border-style: solid; border-width: 3px; padding-left: 4px; padding-right: 4px" bordercolor="#FF0000" valign="top"> The problem here is that you're using a combination of old HTML (width="", "bgcolor="", bordercolor="", and valign="") and CSS style declarations (everything else). And you're missing a semi-colon in the style declaration; there should be one at the very end, for padding-right: padding-right: 4px;" Adding the semi-colon might be enough to fix your problems, but if it isn't, try changing everythign to a CSS style declaration rather than using the HTML, like: ><td style="width: 50%; background: #f00; border: 3px solid #f00; padding-left: 4px; padding-right: 4px; vertical-align: top;"> Using CSS classes and IDs is a whole different story, and you'd need to set up an external style sheet (linked in the page header) or else include all the style information at the top of your HTML page (rather than in each tag, which is where you have it now). But I don't know if you want to get into that or if you're just trying to get what you have working? Edited to add: Semi-colons are tricky, so don't feel bad about missing one; it happens to me all the time. Also, when you're first getting the hang of CSS, it does take time to figure out how to change all the old, familiar HTML codes into the CSS syntax, so if something I'm saying here isn't clear, just let me know and I'll try to be more clear.

Is there any way to view statistics on parked domains? It's not crucial, but I'm curious about how many visitors get to my site via the parked URL instead of the "real" URL.

I don't have IE handy to see what it's supposed to look like, but I'm guessing lineation is an issue. It looks like Firefox is treating the XML tags as inline elements rather than block elements, and the two don't behave the same (I don't believe FF will "clear" an inline element, for example). Specify in the CSS that the XML tags should be displayed as block elements and the lineation should sort itself out.

Start with the site's raw logs -- if you log into CPanel, there's an easy "Raw Log Access" (or similar) icon you can click and then download the logs. Unzip them and open them in TextEdit, Notepad, or similar. Depending on how large they are, it can take some time for your program to open them. Then use the Find/Search function in your program and look for "porno." You can look at each individual log entry to determine the full URL of the referring site (useful because Awstats cuts off query strings) as well as which page on your site the link led to--main page, sub page, etc. You'll also get the IP address of the visitor, which might or might not be useful. That should help you figure out if it's something on your site (since you can check the exact pages people see when they click the link) or if it's someone doing something goofy with the URL (with the full URL--including query string--you should be able to go straight to the site that links to you and see why your site is listed on that page.

With literary journals, I know "store" pages that are basically a list of affiliate links to Barnes and Noble or Amazon.com don't tend to generate much revenue, because readers (even regular readers) aren't going to visit a journal site just to go browse Amazon--they go straight to Amazon instead. (I don't have numbers on this--but I have talked to a couple editors and they all say the same thing) However, some of the editors DO make money off affiliate links, and they say it tends to come from specific, targeted books. For example, they have a "Book of the Month" club with ongoing discussion in their forum. Or if they review a book, they add an affiliate link on the review page--if their review is good enough, people want to buy the book--so they click the affiliate link right then before they forget the title. Or they add affiliate links on people they publish, if the contributors have also published any book-length collections--there again, they're catching readers who are interested in a particular author and click the affiliate link for a specific book. General "store" pages don't seem to work, but targeting specific products and continuously updating the targeted products DOES seem to work. And takes work. Your situation may or may not be similar, but it's something to think about--by all means, have a the store forum you're talking about, because it can't hurt anything, but also look for ways to integrate specific products into your site's regular content.

Thanks, Deverill--I hadn't thought of the cease and desist. I'll pass that idea along to my clients.

I have a client (their site is hosted on my reseller account here at TCH) who is being defamed on a public forum. The issue is serious and is harming their reputation, but they are attempting to resolve this amicably. They have already contacted the forum owner (the forum site, by the way, is NOT hosted by TCH); the forum owner has ignored my clients. My instinct says to move the abuse complaint up to the hosting provider, and I was wondering if anyone here (since you've been so helpful in the past) has experience with this? Is libel/defamation something a hosting provider will take seriously (well... I know that will depend on the particular provider, but in general)? If it matters, the one who started the defamation admits in her original post that her "evidence" is all hearsay; everyone else's defamation is based on HER comments. No one on the forum is even pretending to have facts; they are just defaming my client's business. And how does my client go about making the abuse report to the hosting provider--I have the provider's abuse email address, but what information would my client need to include when making the report? I appreciate any help you can give me; I know how to deal with copyright infringements, but I've never had to deal with reporting defamation before.

I moved my forum to a subdomain because I want to track the stats separately from the rest of the site. The move went fine -- ht*p://forum/mysite.dom/ appears to be working correctly. Unfortunately, so is ht*p://mysite.dom/forum -- I understand how subdomains work and that this is the actual folder and all that, but is there a way to redirect any traffic that happens to go here to the subdomain address (ht*p://forum.mysite.dom)? I want to make sure the traffic is counted in the subdomain's Awstats, not the main site's Awstats. I hope I'm making sense. I'm just afraid trying something like a 301 redirect (ht*p://mysite.dom/forum to ht*p://forum.mysite.dom) will cause an internal server error, blow up the Internet, cause a rift in space/time, etc. (Kidding... but with my site at 400x the normal traffic for this month, I really don't want to cause an internal server error and lose this sudden new audience, even temporarily).

It was a balmy 8 degrees F here today. And no, I didn't forget the zero there. I did hear it might get up to 30 this weekend. Heat wave! Break out the t-shirts!

The menu looks ok in Firefox on Mac, except that it's wider than the content. But it's all one row for me. I can't view the menu at all in IE because I disabled Javascript in IE and can't find the button to turn it back on right now. It's been that kind of day. If you want to convert the menu to a CSS solution, Google "Suckerfish dropdowns." There are a lot of tutorials out there, and it's a thing of beauty. Also, if the menu is only wider than the content in Mozilla browsers, it's probably a box model problem. Briefly, if you have a content element that is, say, 100px wide, and add 10px padding, 10px margins, and 10px border, IE will subtract all the padding/margin/border from the 100px and leave only 40px for the content itself. Mozilla, on the other hand, adds the margins/padding/border to the content width and makes the whole box 160px wide. So if your javascript menu is setting both the width of each link AND assinging padding, margins, or borders to that link (or any element in the link menu), then in IE it'll fit your content perfectly and in Firefox it'll be too wide. I don't know javascript well enough to even guess where that is happening in your menu file, but that's the sort of issue I'd be looking for.

I've had cases where the warning letters got filed in Gmail's spam box, so even if you've received them in your inbox before you might want to double check and make sure they aren't ending up in spam or junk folders now.

That makes sense. Most of my sites have the container div and fixed width too. The problem I'm having is when I take away that container div/fixed width -- I want the main content area to expand/contract with screen size while the nav area remains a fixed width so I can create a faux column effect -- and still keep nav after content in the HTML. I think that's why the author of the ALA article went with negative margins -- you can float the main content area left, leave its width at 100% (so it still takes up all the available screen), but add a negative right margin to make room for the fixed-width nav box to move up next to it. I'll keep playing with floats, though. Your comments have given me a couple ideas for rethinking my approach here.

Surefire, That's a far more elegant solution than the negative margins. And I agree-I'd rather throw in extra divs than box model hacks as well. Right now, because my nav bar is a fixed width (250px or something), I only have one image making up the faux columns -- it's set as a background image on one of the extra divs and just runs down the right-hand side of the page. I'd worry, if the nav div was also a fluid width (38% instead of a fixed 250px) it would sometimes be too large and overblow its background image/the faux column effect. How are you handling the faux columns with two percentage-based widths? Background images on two divs, I suppose, instead of one. I'll play around with it and see-- I definitely like your simpler approach.

I'm using some code from A List Apart that allows me to put the main content first in the HTML, followed by the navigation menu. On screen, the navigation menu is on the right-hand side of the screen and is a fixed width, while the main content area is fluid width. ALA's suggestion was the only thing I've seen that allows that to work, but it relies on negative margins. My problem is that the negative margins do not always come out right when the page is displayed -- sometimes the main text slides under the navigation menu on the right. It doesn't seem to be browser specific -- sometimes this happens with Firefox on Mac, other days not. No real reason that I can see. IE on PC is the same-- sometimes, sometimes not. Usually a page refresh fixes the problem, but how many visitors will bother to try that "just in case"? It seems worse with slower connection speeds, although why connection speed would influence how a browser interprets CSS is beyond me. To see the page in action -- h*tp://crankywoman.net Any ideas on how to get the browser to pay more attention to the negative margins and keep the text from sliding under the nav menu? I'd be willing to try a completely different approach to this as well--the important thing here is that the navigation menu is after the main content in the HTML and that the main content area has a fluid width (I can do this fine with a fixed-width content area, but I'm tired of fixed-width). The ALA article I used is at h*tp://www.alistapart.com/articles/negativemargins They've closed their discussion and unfortunately I think they don't archive old discussions or I'd see if it was already seen and solved there.