by Colin MY COMPUTER TUTOR
Yes, this is my 100th post. Not sure what the average postings for bloggers is, but I think I've been "blogging" for two-and-a-half years so I post roughly once every ten days. That's more than I thought, considering I've let it go for two months not so long ago!
Web Design: A Salutary Lesson
I've designed and published four websites, including my own, over the last three years. I practised with HTML and CSS on my own computer to see what the results would be, and then a friend asked me if I could design a website for his B&B business. It was one of the fastest decisions I've made in my life - I said yes, I could. I dashed home and frantically studied the ins and outs of domains, registering them, hosting etc. etc. and convinced myself that I could do it.
My friend got an absolute bargain - he had no artwork, no logo nor any sort of branding and I put in hours and hours of work to make sure he had a robust, informative and welcoming website. I'd already quoted him the overall price and generously said that it would include two years' hosting. But it was my very first professional attempt....and I've learnt a lot since, not least about pricing!
And having used him as the 'guinea pig', I went ahead and designed myself a website for My Computer Tutor. Since then, I've had a couple of other commissions and the experience of using music players and picture viewers - I've had to do some study, but I really enjoy the challenge.
And I really thought I'd got the basics sorted...until two weeks ago when my web hosting company informed me that they'd moved my domains to new IP addresses. I was told I didn't have to do anything, unless I was "managing your own DNS entries". They said that this was "unusual", so I assumed that I need do nothing. But then a week later, all four of "my" websites went down.
Now, it's not like me to panic. I thought that an email to Mine Host would sort this out:
Dear Sirs,
My websites have disappeared. Please tweak whatever it takes and make them appear again before my clients notice. Lots of love..
I'm not going to name my hosting company - they've been very good over the years, and I have had prompt replies on previous queries of mine. It's just that they seem to have got security-twitchy. Whereas previously they were happy if I quoted their "ticket" reference to convince them that it was indeed ME, now they insist that I give the last four characters of my password OR the last four digits of the banker's card I use to pay them OR the PIN for my control panel....on EVERY email I send! But eventually I got the expertise I needed.
Their new computer doesn't like
index.htm
The "home" page of a website is usually identified by the file-name 'index', and as the file is written in HTML the extension for HTML files can be .html or .htm
Given the choice, I thought .htm was better because
- It's consistent with the great majority of 'extensions' which are three letters
- Typing three characters takes less time and effort than typing four!
Well, how wrong was I? Mine Host's new computer uses UNIX or something. whereas their old one used Windows, which is - of course - good ol' Microsoft! Now don't get me started...as a rather geeky friend pointed out to me the other day:
As long as Microsoft are around, you'll never be out of work, Colin!
I spent a very tedious couple of hours last night going through all the files of all "my" websites changing all references to index.htm to index.html It's solved the problem. The websites are all up and running again. Hey ho! There's always something to learn..............
Colin
