Author Archives: Richard

The end of something special

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

Many years ago, back in the ‘90s I started a website.

Actually, it started as a Netscape Bookmark File which had little or no formatting.

version1

The original concept of the site was to provide myself, and anyone else with an interest, with a list of researched links.

At the time, I had no idea where it was leading, and if I had been granted foresight, I might have abandoned it there and then.

My bookmark file grew and grew, and soon it became apparent that it needed a multi-page setup.  Not only that, but it needed a name (and domain name).  And so Irish Lynx was born.

Irish Lynx went through quite a few redesigns as the site became larger and larger.  You must appreciate that at this time, there were very few directories on the Web, and soon Irish Lynx became one of the foremost directory sites out there.

version2

At its peak, it was receiving substantial traffic, mostly from America.  It contained somewhere in the region of 30,000 links.  Updating became a nightmare.

This was in the days prior to server side technology, so I developed an Excel Database with a background macro.  Any time a link was added to the database, the macro would regenerate all the relevant pages with interconnecting links, and the new files would then be uploaded to the server.  It was tedious, but it worked.

version3

Irish Lynx was eventually sold, and was taken off the Internet.  However, I retained the links and the data was eventually put back up but this time in proper MySQL format.

Sadly, I never had the time or resources to keep the directory updated and it lapsed into its own little time warp.

Out of a sense of sentiment and loyalty, I left it there.  It still got regular hits but of course the traffic died off with the advent of Google and the like.

Today I took the site down.

I am sad to see it go.  It was my first web site, and the steep learning curve eventually led me to running a successful web design business.

I owe that site a lot.

May it rest in peace.

Blacklists and Spamhause

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I see Himself has been having a side swipe at my clients.

Maybe not the best of business ideas, but I doubt that they read his rants, so hopefully no damage will be done.

There have been a number of complaints from clients who have been unable to send mails from their accounts.  As they share a mail server with others who have no problems, this led to some investigations.

All these clients complained of the same symptoms – they were able to receive mail, but were unable to send any except via the web interface.  In each case, their mail client configuration was correct.  If I set myself up an account on their domains I was able to send with no problems.  So what was the cause?

I did some sleuthing and found the problem.

In each case, their local IP had ended up on a spam blacklist, Spamhause seem to be one of the major ‘offenders’ here.  The latter seem to be very enthusiastic in their efforts which is fair enough but it does lead to problems.

One client in particular consistently fails to send mails. 

His IP address is listed on Spamhause who claim his PC contains malicious software.  We checked the PC rigorously and found it to be clean.  His is the only device using that connection.

As his ISP provides dynamic addressing, I checked the other IP addresses in the block.  All were blacklisted on Spamhause, therefore reconnecting to obtain a different IP wasn’t going to work.

I contacted the ISP and explained the situation.  They claimed it was the mail server that was blocked.  I told them it was my server and assured them that not only was it clean but that it did not appear on any blacklist.  They finally conceded that it was their addresses that were at fault.  They maintained that it was up to my client to contact Spamhause.

Now, we have a bit of a conundrum here.

If my client gets his IP cleared, his connection is going to fail the next time he gets a new address. 

The ISP maintain they can’t clear the addresses, as they cannot give any guarantee that the equipment using those addresses is clean.

Presumably the cause of this mess is that one of the ISP’s clients has an infected machine and each time he is allocated a new address, Spamhause blocks it, until all the IP addresses in the range are blacklisted.

It is one of the lesser known side effects of viruses and spam and it is damned irritating.

Writing a blog – customising

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If you have installed WordPress, you are presented with couple of themes.  They are not particularly exciting, and most people want something that looks a little more individual.

There are literally thousands of free themes out there.  If you are running the latest version of WordPress (and I hope you are) then downloading these themes to your site is simplicity itself.  You can have a preview of the new theme and if you like what you see, you can activate it.

However, this is still not enough for most people.  They want something that is individual to themselves, whether it is a personalised header graphic or an entirely new colour scheme.

Customising a WordPress theme can be quite simple.  The only requirement is that you should have a rudimentary knowledge of HTML and CSS.

My own personal method of creating a scheme that I like is to browse the Web for a theme that has all the rudiments that I require.  I will then set about customising it.

In the majority of cases, themes follow a similar pattern in that the basic files are common to most themes.

The main files which require moderation are usually

  • header.php
  • Footer.php
  • sidebar.php
  • style.css

These are found in the folder wp-content/themes/yourtheme where ‘yourtheme’ is the name of the theme you are modifying.

Probably the most important of these is the file ‘style.css’.

Say for example, you wish to change the banner on the site.

The simplest method is to right-click on the current image.  It is usually a background image so you select ‘View Background Image’ or ‘Save Background Image’, depending on your browser.  One way or another, this will give you the name of the file – usually something like ‘banner.jpg’ or ‘header.jpg’.

Having retrieved the name, (you needn’t save the file or anything else), you then search through ‘style.css’ until you find a mention of that file.

For example, the top image on this site is ‘header-bg.jpg’ and it is located in the ‘images’ directory.  If I search through the ‘style.css’ file (which is pretty large) I find the following:

#head {position:relative; width:990px; height:250px; margin:0 auto; text-align:left; background: url(images/top-right-bg-repeat.jpg) 90px 0px repeat-x;}
.crack {position:absolute; left:0px; top:0px; width:990px; height:51px; background: url(images/crack.jpg) 627px 0px no-repeat;}
.header {width:627px; height:250px; background: url(images/header-bg.jpg) no-repeat;}
.logo {position:absolute; left:0px; top:115px; width:627px;}
.logo h1 {font: bold 26px/120% Georgia; color:#602600; padding:0 0 10px 20px; margin-right:16px;}

I can therefore change that line to use a different file, though it should be noted that the alternative image must have dimensions of 627 pixels wide and 250 pixel high, otherwise there may be problems.

Essentially any image in the scheme can be changed this way.  Of course another method is to just rename your new file to that of the existing one, and then overwrite it (So I would rename my personal file as ‘header-bg.jpg’ and overwrite the existing file).

Colours are slightly harder to change.

Colours in CSS files are invariably written in the form #112233.  This is in the format Red-Green-Blue so that the 11 refers to the level of red (on a scale of 0 to 255), 22 refers to green and 33 to blue.  However, it uses what’s called hexadecimal notation which means that 255 becomes FF.  Without going into too much detail, counting in Hexadecimal follows the following pattern:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10, 11 …..  19, 1A, 1B … 1F, 20 …

In other words, F in Hexadecimal is 16 in denary (decimal), and 10 (in H) is 17.

So your colour should always consist of six characters ranging from 0 to 9 and A to F.

As an example of the two limits, Black is #000000, and White is #FFFFFF.

Examples of that notation will crop up throughout your ‘style.css’ and any of these can be changed to provide your desired colours.  The biggest problem is determining a) the code for the number you require, and b) which bit of code refers to the colour you wish to change.  Sometimes it can be obvious – in the code extract above, the font in the header (logo) is set to #602600, so changing this will change the colour of the words “The Other Fellow”.

Customising a theme initially can be a case of trial and error, but if you become familiar with a particular theme, you will soon learn which elements are which and what colour refers to what.

Initially it can be a case of pot luck, but with a bit of practice, you should soon be able to tweak your theme to the style you wish.

Good luck!

Alexa ranking

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Alexa ranking is a very strange thing.

I wrote about efforts to improve the ranking of this site a few weeks ago.  So far I have been marginally successful in that the ranking has risen from 1,627,533 to 1,275,521.  It’s not much, but it’s in the right direction.

What is surprising about the above figures is that traffic has not increased at all in the period between then and now.  In fact, it shows a downward trend.

In contrast, traffic to the other site has remained remarkably constant over the same period, yet its ranking has dropped from 195,510 to 203,289.

I am aware that Alexa is not the best yardstick for the measurement of site traffic, as it depends on the viewer having the plugin installed, but I find the above figures somewhat bemusing.

The one unfortunate thing about Alexa though is that it tends to be used by advertising companies to determine a site’s popularity.  As advertising is contained in both sites, Alexa ranking is fairly important to me.

The only thing I can think of is that this site tend to have more technical content, and therefore is more likely to be visited by people with the plugin.

Writing a blog – where?

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

If you wish to set up a blog, the simplest solution is to make yourself a free one.

There are many sites out there that offer free blog hosting, such as WordPress or Blogger.  A Google search for ‘free blog hosting’ currently brings up over 28 million results, though the majority of those aren’t necessarily quite what you are looking for.

I have a personal fondness for WordPress.  It is the software that I use, and is obviously the software used on WordPress.com, so the latter would be my personal recommendation. 

Signing up is easy.  Probably the most difficult part is thinking up a name for your blog.  If you have sniffed around the blogging world at all ( and I presume you have?) you will be aware that names are virtually limitless in their range.  A lot depends, of course on the nature of your blog.  If you are writing to promote your company for example, then the name should reflect the company name.  Basically it is just a matter of common sense and personal taste.

Once you have chosen your name, it is simply a matter of entering that name and a couple of other simple items, such as a password of your choice and your email address, and you are off.  It is that simple.

So why isn’t every blog in the world on WordPress or one of the others?  The answer is that a heck of a lot of them are.  The bigger free hosts offer plenty facilities to customise your site, whether it is the look or the functionality.

Many however opt to go down the paid route. 

Why should anyone want to pay for a blog, if you can get one for nothing?

While the free hosts provide a lot of facilities, they are limited.  You may want a design that isn’t available of the free platforms or you may require some functionality that requires some simple tweaking.  Having tried both, I would not go back to free hosting as I like the limitless possibilities that self-hosting provides.  I am my own master, and if I want to do something quirky to my site, I can do it.

So how much does paid hosting cost?

The answer to that is of course down to you.  It is not as expensive these days as many would think.  A quick search on the Internet brings up providers who will provide hosting for between €50 and €80 a year.

One thing you need to note is that if you go down the self hosted route, you will need a domain name ( www.whatever.com )  which is usually obtainable through the hosting provider.  .COM domains are extremely simple to obtain, so the drawback is that most of the good names are already gone, but with a bit of imagination, you should be able to find an available one.  That can all be explained and arranged by your provider.

One disadvantage to self hosting is that you may have to get your hands dirty and do some software installation.  Some hosts provide the software pre-installed, and others don’t.  Installation is usually a pretty straightforward job anyway and help is easy to find, either from your hoster or from countless forums.

So what are you waiting for?

Come on in – the water is lovely.