danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

Things in my life are a little crazy right now.  Please excuse me if I do not post anything for a while.

Filed under: Website on August 23rd, 2010 | No Comments »

This website now looks better than ever thanks to Steve.  He fixed many small glitches with the code that had been bothering me since I switched to this new theme.  Now, for instance, when you select a previous month from the archive menu in the column on the right, you can see entire posts displayed.  Previously, the posts were abbreviated, disguising the presence of pictures or links.  Also, he put in an “edit” link at the bottom of posts, which, although invisible to you, is extremely handy to me.  And, he added the name of my site to the banner at the top of the page.

So, thanks, Steve.

Filed under: Friends, Website on February 9th, 2010 | 2 Comments »

You may notice that things look a little different today.

I finally ditched my old host and signed up with a new one.  Since I was going through the trouble, I thought I ought to change the appearance of the site, as well.

Intersabre.com is the worst possible web host.  As you probably witnessed in the past, my website was frequently down.  Usually it was just for a couple minutes, but sometimes it was longer.  The worst part was that it was almost every day.  I would write to them to ask what was up, and they’d say something like, “It should be okay now”, but that didn’t change the fact that it was down all the time.

Then, about two or three weeks ago, I was checking my email at home, and I got the typical error message in Outlook that I associate with my website being down.  I tried a while later and got the same thing.  I could get my website to load, and I couldn’t get Intersabre’s website to load either, so I couldn’t submit a service ticket.  Days went by, and by then I thought they’d just closed down and not told anybody.  That would be like them, I figured.

Then some people told me that they could see my website, and I checked at work, and I could get it there, too.  So I realized that, for the second time, Intersabre had blocked me from accessing my own site.  In fact, they had blocked my IP address from accessing any of their servers.  They offer no method of contact besides their own webpage, so I had to write to them from work to tell them to unblock me.  Of course, at work I didn’t know my home IP address, and they don’t respond to emails sent from anywhere other than their own webpage, so I was out of luck and out of patience.

I looked around online for other hosting services, and I settled on the one that had the highest percentage of positive reviews.  Arvixe.com seems to have been around for years, and almost everyone who has used them says good things about them.  Plus, the have a twenty-four hour phone number for technical support.  Also, they are cheaper than Intersabre, and give me unlimited bandwidth and storage.  I could upload huge HD movies to my site now – not that I ever will.

Naturally, there have been the typical challenges associated with moving an entire website.  But, Arvixe took care of the whole thing.  I just gave them my log-in information for my old host, they backed everything up, moved it, and put it all together nice and pretty for me.  Even my email was moved.  Last night, when I needed to ask them a question about resetting my password, I called their number, and, for the first time, got their voicemail.  I left a brief message, and–this is absolutely true–they called me back in less than a minute.  I didn’t even have time to walk out of the room before my phone rang.

So, if you ever need a new web host, Arvixe seems pretty darn good.

Now, I still need to tweak some things with my new theme.  For instance, I don’t like the font at the top, or the way the “D” in my name is capitalized up there.  Also, I don’t know if I like the green hyperlinks.  And sometimes the text doesn’t wrap around the pictures.  I need to work on all that.

Meanwhile, it’s good to be up and running again.  If you feel like it, read my latest post called “Toward Entartete Musik”.  It even has footnotes.

Filed under: Website on February 4th, 2010 | No Comments »

This website will temporarily disappear in the next few days.  After years of putting up with the world’s crappiest website host, I’ve finally had it.  For the last several days, I have been blocked from accessing my own site and I cannot receive my email.  What’s worse, I cannot access my host’s website either to complain.  This has happened before.  Coupled with the long history of outages and absurdly slow access, it’s time for a change.

A new site–with a new look–will appear soon, and you’ll still be able to read all the old content you know and love tolerate.

Hard times come again no more.

Filed under: Website on January 21st, 2010 | No Comments »

After months of delay, I have finally posted the final chapter of our Puerto Rico adventure.  The best parts of the trip are included therein, including horseback riding, kayaking, and a journey to the center of the earth.

Filed under: Website on December 29th, 2009 | No Comments »