[thechat] Ooh, rings *too* many bells

rudy rudy937 at rogers.com
Sat May 11 11:04:01 CDT 2002


> Just yesteraday I wasted ten minutes of my life
> trying to convince the sysadmin that it'd be a good thing
> to change the server to parse urlgoeshere.com instead of
> only responding to www.urlgoeshere.com.  He won't do it.
>
> banging my head on the wall,


miriam, it's usually not necessary to beat up on the guy (or yourself) --
sysadmins are really not all that stoopit (if they are, they don't last
long)

you have to remember that sysadmins more than anyone else absolutely hate
having somebody tell them what to do or how to do it

but more than that, they hate getting fired

so just shoot your pal the following snippets, and mention in a friendly way
that, since you are the main web person, it is very probable that outside
calls about why the urls don't work will come to you, and you are just
covering your ass with the higher-ups, documenting that you requested the
change but it was refused, so that it's not you that gets fired

simple

rudy
veteran of uncountable corporate powerplays and turf wars



snippets follow

only the first one is linked on my venerable Frequent Questions Answered
page (http://rudy.ca/fqa.cfm#A127) -- will add the others soon

 - - - - - - - - - - -

  Duh.
  That's what I say when I go to a Web site -- especially
  one where the company behind it has spent a lot of money
  advertising its shiny new domain.com address -- and it
  doesn't work.
  Try it with some well-known domains, and you will be
  amazed at how prevalent this problem is.
  ... you're the Webmaster at your company, and the
  company president just read this article and called you
  with the bad news! Luckily, it's simple to fix.
    Fix Your WWW!
    http://webdeveloper.internet.com/management/manage_fix_www.html


  However, not all web users know to add the "www".
  I admit that it is a web stereotype to include the
  "www", but many people don't understand the nature
  or purpose of the "www". And so, quite simply, they
  don't include it.
  Using "gateway.com" or "http://gateway.com" does not
  work! Go on, give it a try. Dell is laughing all the
  way to the bank on this usability error.
    Are You Creating a Path of Resistance?
    http://webword.com/moving/path.html

  I group web sites into three categories with respect
  to the Ws:
    * Bad: The site works only with the Ws or only
      without the Ws. (Incidentally, it's usually the former.)
    * Better: The site works with or without the Ws.
    * Best: The site works with or without the Ws, but
      automatically removes the Ws if they are in the URL.
  Fewer and fewer sites I find are "Bad," though there are many
  still out there, and I'm continually surprised at how many I
  come across. At the very least, all sites should work with or
  without the Ws, end of story.
    Removing the Ws from URLs
    http://webword.com/moving/wwwremoval.html












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