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I’ve had some reports (and seen on one friend’s computer) that the embedded videos don’t render for some people on this site. I don’t understand why…if you are one of the affected and know the reason, please let me know. If you don’t know the reason, please post a msg with your OS (”windows XP”), browser (”IE 6″), and information on where you are accessing the net from (work, home using cable, home using DSL, etc.)
Here’s a sample:
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I reorganized the site. Everything seems to be working adequately now, although the AJAX search is flakey in IE. Also, I had to simulate position:fixed using javascript for IE, which is pretty flickery. I will probably put up a notice to let users know why.
So far I’ve been concentrating on layout and functionality; I’m going to spend some time prettying it up during the week.
Notes on decisions:
- Optimized for 1024×768 resolution
- Content pane is wider, allowing me to more easily post code samples without wrapping
- Degrades to 800×600 gracefully
- Google/amazon ads are now off to the right edge for wide monitors
- Ads can be seen at 1024×768 if user scrolls right
- Search / Categories navigation is emphasized
- AJAX search preview (NB flakey in IE!)
- Amazon ads on single post page instead of google, since they’re more easily contextifiable
- Content sidebar is on the left, emphasizing it
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UPDATE 2 - They have made good. This may just have been a series of unfortunate events. However, if you’ve experienced similar bad service with them, please leave a comment on this post.
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UPDATE - this may have been a glitch in their customer service software. Colin, their customer service advocate, is working on getting this resolved.
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DH2, my webhost, have terrible customer service. They didn’t used to.
Their plan allows you to have 5 addon domains. The control panel used to allow you to add/remove domains, so you could service them yourself. However, a bug was discovered in their software in March, so they removed this feature. Their reps assured me that if I wanted to do any switches in future, I could just contact them, and they’d do it for me, free.
So, 3 weeks ago, I needed to switch a domain. I wrote to them. They wrote back, and said “sure, for $35.” ($35?!!! I could host a domain at a whole variety of places for $35. Additionally, for what is at most a couple of apache configs, $35 is ludicrous.) I reminded them that they’d promised to do it for free.
They blacklisted my IP address.
That’s right, they blacklisted my IP address. Now I can’t get to their website, and their “live chat”, from my home computer.
Nevertheless, I’ve sent them 6 seperate emails over the past two weeks, and have received automated acknowledgements from all of them. However, their reps have not replied to any of them. I did reach a rep once on live chat from my work computer; she said she would sort it out, but nothing has happened.
I’m very close to pulling the plug on the contract and moving to a different host.
Moral of the story: avoid DH2. They’re just not that good. (There have been a few outages etc over the past 9 months, also, and they have a terrible “security” filter which prevents you accessing all features in wordpress, prohibits you from typing certain unix paths, e.g. fwdslash-etc without escaping part of it, and so on and so forth. Further, the mime-type headers in the http responses are sometimes messed up by their apache config, so that when I e.g. save a post in wordpress, firefox thinks it is downloading. They’re not that good.)
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The blog’s been on hiatus for a week or so. In the interval, I finished up at my old workplace, went on a road trip, and started in a new position closer to home. More details of each will be pending, probably.
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