This unreliable service translates to readers as “500 Internal Server Error” messages, long load times, “Hello, World” postings, and — my favorite — presenting an “install WordPress” option as the home page. This allows anyone on the planet to not only overwrite my version of the software on the system, it gives them access to the entire site! Wonderful!

And clearly unacceptable. While fixing issues on the phone with them went quickly, there were no answers as to causes nor steps that needed to take to prevent problems going forward.When your hosting company’s phone number is on your “favorites” list on your iPhone, your hosting company is a problem.

I had already complained about the reliability and they had moved my sites to a different, not as populated, server. For a time, conditions improved, but then steadily declined as more traffic came online. The server, in a reverse IP search, had almost 1900 sites on it, including K9JY.com.

So last week was a lot of research into hosting companies. My criteria was for reliability of the sites being presented to users, phone support (e-mail support and forum support suck when all your sites are down — like on Christmas Day when all of mine were), and a commitment to not stuff your server with every Tom, Dick and Harry on the planet and call it good.

I think I found a good company to work with that meet this criteria. They are more expensive, but not that much more considering a business is being run here. I moved all of the sites this past Monday. There were the usual couple of hiccups with permissions and a couple minor issues that were resolved by Tuesday morning. Really smooth, by most standards.

You should see some return to normalcy in access. Plus, so far, the site has been operating much faster.

Infrastructure, for all you tech types out there, should be a seamless service that is up and running 100% of the time (save maintenance windows). When you run a global company as Cube Rules, LLC, is, even if it is a small company, we need the reliability so when someone logs in from the United States or Singapore (and they do), the infrastructure will be there to serve them.

We’ll see how this hosting company does. So far, so good. But just like most services, your record is renewed every day so the service needs to work every day.

Sounds just like a job, doesn’t it?

Related posts:

1. K9JY and WriteLog Users Site Down Over Weekend
2. K9JY Hacked!
3. K9JY Moves to Bluehost
4. K9JY Blogroll Updated

You would have received a “Network Timeout” error or an “Error 500 — Internal Server Error” message if you attempted to access the sites.

In any case, all is well now. My pacing has finally stopped. My checking status every two hours has stopped. But this was not fun.

Related posts:

1. K9JY WriteLog Site Update — August 20, 2007
2. Criteria for Moving K9JY WriteLog Site
3. K9JY WriteLog User Site for Ham Radio Contesting
4. K9JY WriteLog User Site Update: November 14, 2007
5. K9JY Site Updates — November 24, 2007

You will note that each comment  now has a “Reply” and a “Quote” link as noted below:

Clicking on “Reply” will put some automatic code in the comment box and when the comment is saved, will show up as “@Rod, W7ZRC” in your comment.

Since comments can come quick and fast, it is easy to get lost as to which comment my one shown addresses. Clicking on “@Rod, W7ZRC” will take you directly to the comment he made that I replied to here.

The “Quote” is similar, but it places the comment you are referring to in your comment, something similar to a “reply” in e-mail where the previous e-mail is included in your reply at the top.

Clicking on “quote” will put some automatic code in the comment box (ending with /blockquote) and from there you enter your comment. In the submitted comment, it looks like this:

“Reply” is probably a bit cleaner if there are long comments, but either should work.

Just making things easier! A quick thanks to Pressography.com for making this plugin. It’s fantastic.

Scot, K9JY

Related posts:

1. How to Comment on K9JY Articles
2. K9JY Site Updates — November 24, 2007

Scot, K9JY

No related posts.

Code, according to WordPress, is poetry, but it shouldn’t be so hard to replace the blog name with a logo as is happening now.

Technology. Sigh.

Thanks for your patience…

UPDATE 24-April: I wasn’t closing the Logo image in HTML and that what was causing the problem. Not that I know code…it was help from a fellow blogger who pointed out the problem. As far as I can tell, all is good in Firefox, IE7, and Safari.

Scot, K9JY

No related posts.

Ever wish you could go back in time and send that crucial email that could have changed everything — if only it hadn’t slipped your mind? Gmail can now help you with those missed deadlines, missed birthdays and missed opportunities.

See the full spoof at the Gmail product site.

Or Virgle Pioneer:

Earth has issues, and it’s time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars.

And here’s one just for readers who work in cubicles — a job in the Google Copernicus Center:

The Google Copernicus Hosting Environment and Experiment in Search Engineering (G.C.H.E.E.S.E.) is a fully integrated research, development and technology facility at which Google will be conducting experiments in entropized information filtering, high-density high-delivery hosting (HiDeHiDeHo) and de-oxygenated cubicle dwelling. This center will provide a unique platform from which Google will leapfrog current terrestrial-based technologies and bring information access to new heights of utility.

Yes, airless cubes for you on the moon…

Apparently, there are more. Have fun!

Scot, K9JY

(Cross Posted at Cube Rules — nothing yet for ham radio operators…)

Related posts:

1. Ham Radio Sunspot Saturday — April 25, 2009

Essentially:

1. I replaced the theme with the one you see here on this site. It’s tough to maintain different themes — too many places where things are hidden that are in the documentation…somewhere.
2. Updated all of the "plugins" that are used to help the content for the site.
3. Updated the version of WordPress being used on the site.

The theme uses a smaller, non-expanding central column for information. Consequently, some of the pictures can be too large for the column. I spent a good amount of time getting the pictures into the column — but I have more to do in this area.

In addition, I fooled with the code a bit to get the columns right. I thought things were fine — looking at it with the Firefox browser — but then looked at it using Internet Explorer 7.0 and saw the whole thing totally screwed up. So if you came in on Saturday with IE, you probably had an interesting reading experience…

More work to do.

Scot, K9JY

Related posts:

1. New LZ9W M/M Web Site Updated
2. Criteria for Moving K9JY WriteLog Site
3. Updated Software, Updated Instructions
4. Update on WriteLog User Site – 07-AUG-2007
5. K9JY WriteLog Site Update — August 20, 2007

Consequently, I spent most of yesterday going into each article I have written since the beginning of the blog — 131 of them — and updating the picture framing.

Interestingly, I also found a lot of missing in action items which I didn’t realize were gone from my conversion from Yahoo! to Bluehost hosting and transferring the articles over. So much of the day was replacing pictures and fixing up the content.

Here is some of what got updated:

TI Antenna Setup — it was missing the pictures of the antennas…

Searching for Salt Water and the pictures for the County and State Parks were missing pictures.

Icom 7700 You Tube Video — the link properly displays now on the blog…and this is one of my more popular articles on the blog! One could see the video OK if you clicked on the link over to You Tube, but this fixes it so you can see the video on the blog itself…like it should be…

General fixing of the pictures was also done. Plus, I updated the series of rotating pictures at the header of the theme. Hopefully, they will represent ham radio and contesting well.

I’ve also added in a “Similar Posts” plugin that will automatically bring up other posts relating to the one being viewed.

Scot, K9JY

Related posts:

1. K9JY Site Updates — November 24, 2007
2. K9JY WriteLog User Site Update: November 14, 2007
3. Update on WriteLog User Site – 07-AUG-2007
4. K9JY WriteLog Site Update — August 20, 2007
5. Update on WriteLog User Site — 10-AUG-2007

It started simply enough — upgrading the underlying WordPress software to 2.3.1 using a one-button upgrade button from my host last weekend. Easy — but then the normal upgrade stuff started to happen. First, not all the plugins (plugins are snippets of functional code) work in their current version. Upgrade the noted ones and then install them on the five sites I have.

Then, some of the plugins simply don’t work with this version of software and the authors haven’t upgraded them to match the new code. Hard to complain — the plugins are for free.

The critical plugin that didn’t work for me was the “share this” plugin found at the end of each of my posts. It took me all week in my spare time to find another version because sharing stuff is a good thing. The first one I found and tested didn’t work. The second one, found in the “Bookmark Options” link below is the one I ended up with.

Then today my theme kept breaking the underlying database — so I changed themes, at least for the time being. I had found it on my travels for the new plugin. The theme offers up rotating header pictures and a lot of white space — very different from my previous theme.

Then I also added a “subscribe to comments” plugin that allows you to get subsequent comments to yours in your e-mail (I do nothing with your e-mail except protect your privacy). It’s great for following a conversation without having to check back on the blog.

The final thing you will notice is that the old header had some direct links — especially to the K9JY WriteLog User Site. You can still see all of those links on the left by K9JY Resources.

Summary of changes since last Saturday:

• New theme with rotating header pictures and a lot of white space for easier reading
• New social bookmarking plugin under “Bookmark Options”
• New “subscribe to comments” plugin
• Five updated “under the hood” plugins for the site
• Upgraded WordPress software

And I had a little turkey and and dressing in the meantime.

Hope your contesting is going well! If you get a chance, click on over to the site and take a look at the new look.

Scot, K9JY

Related posts:

1. K9JY WriteLog User Site Update: November 14, 2007
2. K9JY WriteLog Site Update — August 20, 2007
3. Update on WriteLog User Site – 07-AUG-2007
4. WriteLog Site updated
5. Radio Sport Updates Web Site

First, Post Contest.

This section describes all of the activities that can be done after the contest is over. This section tells you how to edit your log, export your log, submit your log, create reports, and how to QSL using WriteLog.

Second, I’ve added in sections on Specialized Setup that includes the Tools and Contest menu items from the WriteLog top menu.

Left to complete is the “other subjects” section.

Too slowly, but surely, this is getting done. Thanks for the patience.

Scot, K9JY

Related posts:

1. Update on WriteLog User Site — 10-AUG-2007
2. Update on WriteLog User Site – 07-AUG-2007
3. K9JY WriteLog Site Update — August 20, 2007
4. K9JY Site Updates — November 24, 2007
5. K9JY WriteLog User Site for Ham Radio Contesting