The Gazette ... Issue: 206 (10-12-2003)

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Topics in this issue

Johnny's Ramblings
In the Crosshairs
A Word from Our Sponsor
Forum Watch
The Guide Post
Coders Corner
Diamond in the Rough
Hosting Hotsheet
Scumbag of the Week

Moving Day

On The Move...

You move your domain sometimes out of necessity, sometimes for financial reasons, and for a host of other reasons. Regardless of what you've been told, or what you've experienced ... it doesn't have to be a nightmare.

Johnny's Ramblings

Out of necessity, we're moving. Not JimWorld ... my family. We've simply outgrown our little 3 bedroom house. Wanting to spend more time with my family and not wanting to spend as much money as I do on an outside office, I want to downsize that, and move as much as I can into the house. No room here ... time to move on. Time for a total nightmare. Have you house-shopped recently? 300 houses and 50 internal squabbles later, we finally found the place. Turns out that we got pretty lucky in that it's a huge upgrade in size (nearly double the square footage) for basically the same mortgage payment. Now for the fun part. I've never seen such paperwork. Piles and piles and piles of it. Sign here, initial there. Write this guy a check, that guy a check, get the inspector there by Tuesday (oh, and by the way, it'll take 6 hours and you need to be there for it). Get repairs done on your own house. De-Clutter it so it looks nice and will sell faster, paint the walls, hide the cat, stop playing with your toys. Argh. Now that it's all done, we've sold our house and bought the new one ... and then the buyer turns out to be in the middle of an ugly divorce, so we have to cancel the deal, put the house up for sale again .... and now the real fun begins. Moving day. Packing up your whole life, spending all day hauling, lifting, shifting, and driving ... and then all night unloading, unpacking, and trying to settle in. Luckily, that won't happen for another month. With all that goes into a home move, it got me to thinking about all the websites that I've moved. I've had great experiences and terrible ones. I thought it would be good to use this week's Gazette to talk about moving a Web site ... the right way ... the easy way.

Have your own moving nightmare ?... or some advice for me ?

Comments (4)

In the Crosshairs

I've been hard at work over the last 2 or 3 weeks, working on some fun new stuff for JimWorld, and for The Forums. Principally, with the sending of this issue of The Gazette, we're launching 3 brand new things that I'm sure you'll be interested in.

First, a new look for The Forums. As you head back to the forums today, you'll see a nifty new design. We've added some color, and a few things that people have been clamoring for: A separate "new post" and "reply" screen (along with the current "quick reply form". These new forms sport a wysiwyg editor, clickable smilies, and easier access to the formatting codes.

Secondly, I've made The Gazette a bit more "blog-like". You'll notice at the end of each article in this issue is a link. This link will take you to the online version of the article. You'll see that on that page, you'll be able to add your comments directly to the page. These comments are also linked into The Forums. Posts made from the gazette page, and frome the forums are seen in both places, so wherever the mood hits you to post, be our guest, we love the feedback.

Finally ... drumroll please ... meet "My Jimworld" at http://my.jimworld.com My JimWorld is an encapsulation of the major areas of JimWorld, in one easy to use screen. You can get to your inbox, your favorite forums, all of the topics that you've recently posted in, headline news (of your choosing), your own notepad, links to your favorite JimWorld (and other worldly) URLs. It's cool, it's totally yours ... make it your browsers home page, I did ;)

As always, we're open to your feedback!

Comments (14)

A Word from Our Sponsor

Here's something that most Web site owners don't know about, mainly because hosting companies tend to try and take care of everything for you. Usually, that's a good thing, but when it comes to DNS, I think it best to take matters into your own hands, under your control. DNS (Domain Name Service) is probably the most important thing about your domain, aside from actually owning it. In a nutshell, DNS is a big lookup table that ensures that when someone types in "www.yourdomain.com" into their browser, that they are sent to the IP Number assigned to your domain at your hosting company. Without DNS, nobody can find you.

When moving your domain from one hosting company to another, one of the steps is to have your DNS records changed to point "yourdomain.com" at your new IP number. As you can imagine, if your old hosting company was doing your DNS for you, they're not going to have that first up on their "To Do" list ... and they could potentially make it difficult for your new hosting company to assume control over those records. Can you smell a nightmare brewing?

My recommendation is to bypass hosting company control over DNS altogether, and use a 3rd Party DNS service. This puts YOU in control over what IP numbers your domain(s) resolve to. When you move from hosting company to hosting company, all you need is your new IP Number from your new host, then you login to your own DNS service and make the change yourself. This takes all of the "interested" parties out of the loop, and puts control in your hands. You can change your IP numbers, add subdomains, change MX (mail) records, etc. It's my not-so-humble opinion that if you're not controlling your own DNS, you've got nobody to blame but yourself when there's a screw-up. Notice that I said "when", not "if".

Here's a few services that put you in control of your own DNS:

Register.com: http://www.register.com
Ultra DNS: http://www.ultradns.com/
AllDomains: http://www.alldomains.com/corp/dns.html
Easy DNS: http://www.easydns.com/dnsmanage.php3

If you know of other services, or can add to my basic points, chime in

Forum Watch

JimWorld added four new JimGuides to the mix over the last couple of weeks. Forum regular will recognize "Logan," "OAC," "unreviewed" and "crash" as former moderators. The four of them have been busy working as JimWorld staff for the last several months, and being the gluttons for punishment that they are, have decided to dedicate even MORE time by taking on a JimGuide position in the forums.

You'll find Logan (Chris Logan) taking on the JimGuide position in the Google forum. Chris is a former moderator of the Google forum and one of my favorite Google experts. He's got some great insight and knowledge about how Google works to share with our members.

OAC (Pete McNamara) will be serving as the JimGuide in the Site Review forum. Pete is a former moderator of several JimWorld forums, including Google and Site Review and has dedicated the last few months to serving as the head reviewer for the JimWorld Ultimate WebSite Award. (http://www.jimworld.com/the-ultimate-website/)

The Search Engine Optimization 101 forum will now be headed up by JimGuide unreviewed (Bill Dalton), who used to serve as moderator of that same forum. Bill is a favorite with our new members and has a true knack for explaining basic SEO concepts to members that are new to the industry.

After spending the last few month's running JimWorld's popular "Free Site Templates" feature, crash (Kelly Biel) will also be taking on the JimGuide position in the Webmastering 101 forum. This new position will help Kelly guide Webmasters with issues like DHTML, CSS, hosting issues and editing templates.

We invite you to take a moment to stop by the thread in the member's lounge and give them all a warm welcome to their new positions.

Comments (14)

The Guide Post

Moving is Fun!
I've been moving host for my sites. I've got around ten sites ranging in importance. Here's my experience!

To move is good; it means that you're cleaning up. If you've not moved hosts for the last couple of years it's probably time to check options. The amount of good choices for staying at bigger & better places at the same or better prices than you've got today is astonishing.

I used to pay around 100 SEK/month (roughly US$ 12,50) for 20 MB, now I pay around 10 SEK/month (roughly US$1,25). For my bigger sites (up to 100MB) with features like MySql, Live Statistics etc, I used to pay almost 250 SEK/month (around US$ 30,00), now I pay around 50 SEK/month (around US$ 6,00) and have more features included (like Bulletin Board systems).

The move is in three steps. First you'll make sure that you've got everything from the old host backed up on your local computers. Then you'll copy the content from your old host to your new host. Finally you'll redirect your domains to the new host.

As usual check, check and check again is the mantra for doing such an important thing like moving host.

Check:

that you've really got every file copied
that everything looks ok on the new hosts temporary url
that any forms or scripts functionality is working on your new host as well

Lennart Svanberg

Coders Corner

While in the process of moving your domain, one of the steps you're going to be taking is in changing your domain's IP Number, through DNS. DNS Changes are not instant, and they are not globally done. What that means is that it might take 24 hours for your change to be seen at all by the Internet, and up to 72 hours before all of the DNS servers update themselves. In english ... it could take 3 days for your domain to be "up" in it's new location, and during that 3 days, some people will be "hitting" your new server, others will still be seeing your old one.

If you are a database driven site (such as our forums), this can be devastating. Paramount is making sure that all of your visitors are seeing the same machine all the time, so that your database remains in sync. If you're running apache (you should be...) Here's a way to make sure that happens:

Turn OFF your old domain. Make sure that every single page, CGI application, PHP, etc. are all off, redirected to a "Sorry, we're down for maintainance" page of some kind. Don't worry, that page won't be up long.
Unload/Dump your Database
Move it to the new server, and load it there.

On your old server, use apache's "mod_rewrite" to force all traffic from your old server to your new IP number. The following lines can be added to a file called ".htaccess" that you can place in your root/main web directory:


    LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/mod_rewrite.so
    AddModule mod_rewrite.c
    RewriteEngine  on
    RewriteRule ^(/)(.*)  http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/$2

    Change "XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX" to the IP Number of your new server.

Diamond in the Rough

This week's weekend waster is "Bindows", an API put out by the guys at http://webfx.eae.net I've been a big fan of theirs for a while. Erik puts out some simply amazing DHTML (most of it MSIE Specific). I've long felt as though The Internet is such an amazing resource, but the browser and with it, HTML is so restrictive. Java's cool, but then again ... not really. I've always wished that there would be something to come along to turn the browser ... to turn a Web site into an application, not just "a page". Enter Bindows. Probably not the final solution, but at least these guys are taking a shot at it. It's fun to play with, really does turn your Web site into something more like an application, and will keep you up all night playing around. Have fun with it!

Bindows Home Page: http://www.i-see.net/bindows/

Got a better idea? Is java the only "real" way to do this ?

Hosting Hotsheet

SimpleNet says: It's Moving Day!!! Tired of the downtime? Tired of not being able to reach customer service? Tired of a poor quality product? Then, it's time for you to leave your loser host and move to a better platform at SimpleNet! Quite often, moving your site can seem to be a daunting task when consider the work that must be done regarding your site, email and domain name. Of the many issues that we've seen customers struggle with (transferring files, remembering password information, making sure old and new hosts have enough similar functionality, converting scripts and forms), getting your domain name and email transferred properly is perhaps the most difficult task to accomplish.

Moving your email accounts are tied to the movement of your domain name. What our clients overlook is that the control of the domain name is, often times, in the hands of the registrar (Verisign, Register.com, etc.) and not the web hosting company. Cancelling your account with your old host doesn't automatically move your domain name. Once you've got your new site set up with your new host, make sure that you also set up your email accounts. If you use web-based email, then you will have to check email at both your old and new host to make sure that you don't miss any incoming email during your domain name propagation. Our clients typically forget to setup their email accounts exactly the way they were set up with the old provider. Grab a sheet of paper and start writing down all of the account names, any forwards and where they go, any auto-responders, etc. Then, use this diagram to recreate the accounts with your new host.

At this point, you are ready to initiate your domain nameserver location change. You will need to contact your domain registrar, the organization which registered your domain, and provide them with the names of your new nameservers. How do you figure out who registered your domain name? You can type in your domain name at http://www.whois.net/. The registar is the company name that you will find at the top of the whois report [whois."registrarname".com]. Contact this registrar to begin your domain name transfer. From the time that you have initiated this process, leave your site running in both locations for about a week to make sure that the domain name has fully propagated. Traffic will be directed to your old host until all domain name servers in the world know that it has been moved. This is called propagation and can take up to a few days. At the end of this period it will be safe to discontinue hosting with your old company.

Check out SimpleNet… we'll help you move your site!
JimWorld is hosted at SimpleNet, shouldn't you be, too?
http://www.jimworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=simplenet

Talk about hosting in the Forums...

Scumbag of the Week

This weeks's scumbag will focus not on a single individual, but upon an industry, if you can call it that. Have you had a domain stolen from you yet? Or had one registered the second that it's available before you could renew it? During Jim's illness, we here at JimWorld lost 4 or 5 great domains, as I was unable to re-register them for Jim, and he was physically unable to do it himself. Squatters jumped all over them, and now domains like the1000.com and gazetteworld.com that previously had been a big part of JimWorld, are now home to garbage collectors. While I can't fault them for being capitalists, it's still scummy, especially when they register the domain from underneath you, and then drop you an email asking for $1,000.00 to get it back.

On a similar note, by now, I'm sure you've heard about the sex.com lawsuit. In a nutshell, someone (not the owner of the domain) put in a transfer of ownership request to Network Solutions (now Verisign), with falsified information, and a falsified fax. Network Solutions did not follow their own verification procedures and essentially gave away one of the busiest domains on the Internet to a fraudster. Totally scummy. The story has many twists and turns, and only recently has some headway been made, with the 9th circuit court in CA ruling that Verisign is in fact liable and negligent. This is an interesting study in 2 scumbags ... the guy that completely ripped off the domain, and Network Solutions for allowing it to happen so easily. Domains on The Internet are our property. What happened to sex.com is akin to having your house stolen, and having the title company simply transfer your deed over to some homeless guy because he said he was you. The ramifications of the courts decision will have some pretty serious effects on The Internet asa a whole. Are domains really property?

We're open to your thoughts not just on the sex.com case, but on squatting, and what does domain "ownership" really entitle you to?

Payment Due Notice

The Gazette is not free.

It is 'Helpware.'

This means that you are granted the right to participate, read, and learn from us, if you agree to contribute. Learn something, from here or anywhere else, and pass it on. If you see a Webmaster who's struggling, help them up. If you see someone making a mistake, offer some fix-it advice. In short, you get out of JimWorld, and the Internet, what you put into it. The more you give, the more you get. Even if you get nothing in return, it's important that you share. Karma always comes back around. Trust me, this will make you feel better, and will help a lot of people get their sites running better.

OK, you're on your honor.

Summing It All Up

The opinions expressed here are purely those of the editor, John Cokos. All other small print clauses apply. Such as: Use at your own risk. Nothing in life is guaranteed. Let the buyer beware. A stitch in time gathers no moss.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, without the express written consent of the author. Feel free to send this document in its entirety to as many of your friends as you want. We appreciate that and thank you.

Our sites are generously hosted by the Hosting Experts at SimpleNet:
http://jimworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=simplenet

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The Gazette ... Issue: 206 (10-12-2003)

Moving Day

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