[thelist] Whatever happened to High Five?

Palyne Gaenir palyne at sciencehorizon.com
Fri Jun 30 10:27:11 CDT 2000


On 29 Jun 2000, at 22:55, Daniel J. Cody wrote:
>Whats the big deal in moving a site/list/whatever? 

Server-wise?  Dunno, except final notes below.

Name-wise? Used to be nothing.  But it took me 23 days to get 9 of 10 
domain names transferred to a new server recently, this incorporating 
damn near ENDLESS rounds of hassle with internic (NSI).  Having 
regularly transferred domains for what, over 5 years now, I'd say I 
have some idea how to go about it.  It's just that everything that 
was *supposed* to work, didn't.

1.  I'd request the transfer.

2.  Nic would send the confirmation mail-from request.

3.  I'd confirm the transfer.

4.  Nic would send it back saying it didn't recognize me.  In three 
places the header clearly stated I sent from the proper location, 
which was included in their return message to me.

5.  I'd re-confirm the transfer.

6.  Nic would notify me that the transfer hadn't gone through.

7.  I'd re-confirm the transfer.

8.  Nic would notify me that the transfer had gone through.  
Simultaneously it would notify me that the transfer had not gone 
through.  Sometimes just for fun it would notify me yet again that 
the transfer had gone through.  My inbox was like armageddon.

9.  The transfer hadn't gone through.  Three days elapsed while I 
waited for their web site to update to SEE whether or not it had gone 
through.  OK, nope, didn't go through.

10.  I re-initialized from scratch the request to move domain.

11.  Nic requested mail-from confirmation.

12.  I responded as confirmation, checking VERY carefully to ensure 
everything was accurate about the email of course.

13.  Nic responded it did not recognize the email address I sent 
from, which again, was documented even in the "return" of their email 
of my message quoted below theirs, as accurate for the authority.

Perhaps I should note that I had a number of different forms from 
Nic, as if they were somehow not consistent about WHICH form or 
version of form they were sending.

14.  Entire process above ensued again, at least twice.

15.  During this I attempted to call Nic.  Repeatedly.  When calling 
I got the message that they were too busy, to call back, click.  One 
guy told me, "You have to call them after 6."  They close at 7.  I 
never got through.  It wasn't about holding all day.  I didn't even 
have that option.

16.  Finally, at some point in the process, Nic sent me a message 
saying the domain had NOT, I repeat, NOT updated....

17.  When in fact, the domain at that point had been updated.

18.  I rejoiced.

Do this with 9 client domains that you expected to be transferred 
within 48 hours.  I was homicidal by the time it was over.  

My associate said he tracked some of the problems to a bug in their 
system related to their auto-generated forms, and had taken to 
getting up at some ungodly hour in B.C. to reach them on the East 
coast so he could talk to a human and get things straightened out.

In two cases, the only reason it ever worked is because he did this 
for me.  In a third case, he did this, they said it was done, but it 
never was.  In a fourth case, they transferred, conferred with my new 
server's machine, and promptly wrongly assigned the new IPs, although 
my entry and their confirmation had them right, when they went into 
their system they were wrong, the server company couldn't find the 
problem and said Nic was 'caching inaccurate data' for unknown 
reasons.... meanwhile I'm trying to explain to clients...

So finally, nearly a month later, my domains were transferred.  At 
this point I discovered all my SSI's which worked fine on the 
previous server, wouldn't on this one (something about the means of 
putting in the path that worked on the last one and not on this one), 
and so had to revise half a dozen sites quickly.  My BBS's have to be 
reconfigured, which is still going on.

I've moved domains, majordomo lists and message boards around for 
years.  Not until now has it been a problem -- with internic I mean.  
I mean the *scope* of the problem was just mind boggling.  

Now ONE of the domains I requested transferred, in the exact same 
manner as all the others (YES, they are all set up the same way mail-
from/address), transferred immediately upon my request.  

As they all USED to.

Well, that is MY rant to match YOUR rant. ;-)  Sometimes there ARE 
legitimate problems that are not solely due to webmaster stupidity.

Palyne

P.S.  I want to say thank you to the people here who've answered my 
posts recently, you have been a TREMENDOUS help.

<tip type="css/html" level="beginner">
I've found that if I assign more than one class to my P tag, I can 
have the first paragraph be flush-left, and all the rest be indented. 
Of course this doesn't get rid of the large gap between lines that is 
automatically put in by P tags :-(.  But for clients who like 
indenting, that's one way of doing it. </tip>

<tip type="cfml/html" level="beginner">
In making templates for clients to use for *static* pages, I've run 
into the problem that I want to use html 4 and css and CFML, but even 
the best editors will not display all the various 'includes' and so 
the page looks so twisted in their editor they're better off going 
through code.  I've made the code neat enough that it's pretty easy 
to insert body text and styling through a text program, but still 
it's tough trying to get them to learn even basic coding overnight.  
To simplify things, like common tags and the exact specs for a 
"quote" (table with a quote from someone in it), I made a few basic 
style tags, and the table code, as variables in the application.cfm 
file.  Then I teach them just to put in the variable, e.g., 			
<cfoutput>#QtableON#
all the content here
#QtableOFF#</cfoutput> 
and the problem with differing table code or teaching them the detail 
of html table code in this case is not an issue.
Now to get all those static pages into the database...!</tip>

--------
Palyne Gaenir
ScienceHorizon Web Media
http://www.sciencehorizon.com
palyne at sciencehorizon.com
Toll-Free 877-316-0763




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